One of the challenges for me as I approach our Fast Friday Fabric Challenge is to get real about what I can do in a week, satisfy the requirements of the challenge, and satisfy my desire to push myself to create something new, quickly. This was created from a photo of a child's hand holding beautiful stones to bring to mother. The rocks, of course, were really grey and brown with some flecks of other colors. Both the child and mother find them to be truly beautiful. The arm and hand were traced from the photo to a piece of white paper, then transferred to the fabric using Faber Castell Pitt Pens which are India Ink. They dry quickly and are permanent. I held the pen straight up to mark the dots which create the shading. Being the impatient person I am, after a few minutes I chose to use a bolder pen tip than what I started with. Although I am pleased with the results, they would have been finer if I had used the finer pen tip throughout. The rocks were free motion embroidered using three different variegated threads. The contrast between the threads and the fabric is a bit more subtle than I would have liked. The stipple quilting was an opportunity to practice something that I don't use very often.
I enjoyed creating this work - from taking the photo, converting to a sketch, tracing the important lines, tranferring to fabric, free motion embroidering, and stipple quilting. Thanks so much for creating this challenge Kathy. It was great fun.
Any comments or criticism are very welcome.
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8 comments:
Betty, this is so delicate one can almost feel the love between the giver and the recipient. This is an emotional piece.The surprise element I would say is the hand.. unexpected for sure. The stones are exactly those that would enthrall a child. The stippling does a nice job staying in the background. Well done!
I like that your piece is so different from the others. You took the challenge to another level. Great job on the hand and the stone. The only criticism for me, would be to crop it so the hand and the stones really become a close up focal point.
Thanks for the kind words Carol and Janice. I agree with the comment about cropping the piece. I think I will crop it, put a real binding or facing on it and mount it on stretched canvas.
I love the emotion in this piece, as any mother would attest. Your quilting is well done. Chris Predd
Betty, I like the way you did the shading in this piece with thread. I agree that it would be improved by cropping. Nice interpretation of the theme, kind of grabs at a mother's heart!
Betty Very nice, I like how you have interpreted the theme of the challenge, I see others have already suggested cropping which would have been my main suggestion, but I also wonder if you added some shading, either with gray thread or ink to the bottom edges of the hand - not in the hand but just outside, if that wouldn't help the hand to pop just a bit more. Maybe if you put a piece of tracing paper over the cropped quilt and drew on that just to see how you like it. That way if you decide you don't like it you wouldn't have damaged the quilt. Lovely piece, and I would hate for you to do that to it.
Kathy
This is a lovely interpretation of the challenge! A very soft, "touching" piece.
I love the simplicity of the line drawing against the densely quilted background. My feeling is if you crop, perhaps only the top and left sides so as not to diminish the feeling of reaching out? Lovely!
Cherie
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