Friday, November 30, 2012

Falling leaf

When I am falling asleep and fall it is a gentle slow descent.  It feels like a leaf falling from a tree.  This tree is all thread painted.  The first border is hand dyed.

Pat Havey

Golden Swirl Cushion

Golden Swirl
 
I got the idea for the design while cleaning. My hanging chair had the cushion I made ~ 40 years ago. Then it blended with my colors; now it was an eye sore.  Because of my tedious construction method, I spent three days working on this before I attempted the cording.  Unfortunately, I did not check the fit before I added the cording.  This is the first time I have ever attempted cording.  It took me one lone evening.  As you can see, it is still not finished.  I'm adding it to my pile of UFO's so that I can return to my bed quilt project.  If each of us made just one bed quilt for Sandy victims, we could cover half of the families.  These are going to the folks who have lost everything.  I think they need a bed quilt a bit more than I need a cushion.

Tuesday, November 27, 2012

Nightly Hot Flash Rituals: Ignition to Afterglow!

 

The quilt was designed in Make the Cut Software. It was cut with my electronic cutter using both the positive and negative shapes for the quilt.

Had a lot of fun with the titles including A Hot Flash Slumber, Dreaming in Technicolor and Hot Flash Blastoff among many others about my chronic condition.

Sunday, November 25, 2012

Golden Spiral

Golden Spiral or Fibonacci
This piece represents flying and falling in a storm such as Hurricane Sandy.  I was going for abstract, but I am a pictorial quilter by nature, and the NYC skyline found its way into the piece.

I began with a square and followed the Fibonacci directions to make it a rectangle, then made another square and rectangle in the upper right corner with red & orange thread.  The fabric was shibori painted in two directions, then dyed. The subdued colors represent the darkness of a storm. Free-motion quilting was practiced with variegated thread around all the horizontal storm lines which represent the wind. The vertical lines were enhanced with novelty threads and represent the rain pounding down.  The Golden Spiral is a wind gust, or could be a tornado brewing.  Hand-painted and dyed fabric  novelty threads, and netting. Finished size: 21" x 13".  Thank you Silvia for this fun learning experience.

Friday, November 23, 2012

Challenge 75: Falling in a Golden Swirl


Fast Friday Fabric Challenge #75, November 2012

Challenge Hostess: Silvia Dell'Aere
Title: Falling in a golden swirl
Due: Dec.1, 2012

“Do you know the terror of he who falls asleep? To the very toes he is terrified, because the ground gives way under him, and the dream begins.” -Friedrich Nietzsche-

How many times did you fall in your dreams? You can roughly fall and wake up jumping in your bed or you can glide in a low fall while falling asleep, you can fall for just few inches or you can take a long long flight... what about you? How do you fall in your dreams? And how deep are they?

Make me know through a quilt. Tell me not your dreams but how deep they are, show me the moment you fall asleep.

You can make an abstract or pictorial quilt, choose the style that best fits you, but experiment with the “golden ratio” rule to compose your quilt.

Golden Ratio Resources:

Wikipedia about Golden Ratio (very extensive): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_ratio


Golden Ratio in photography (but useful for quilters too): http://photoinf.com/Golden_Mean/Eugene_Ilchenko/GoldenSection.html
or tiny:
http://tinyurl.com/y8u7rv

Examples of Golden Ratio in art: http://www.goldenmeanart.com/


Golden Ratio Quilts:

Searching with Google for “golden ratio quilt” or “golden mean quilt” or “fibonacci quilt” you will find lot of quilts that depicts the classic Golden Swirl, and a few quilts with a totally different subject that are composed using the Golden Ratio (in its swirl, rectangular or triangular representation or the Fibonacci series that generates it) as a way to divide the space and manage the number, position and dimension of the objects.

Quilts of this kind are:



“Yoyo1: Forward Pass” by Helen Remick

So... let’s get to work and have fun with this! :)

Friday, November 09, 2012

Challenge #74 Done!

"On the Hunt"
Finished this piece 12/27/12, but am posting based on an earlier date that will fall under Challenge 74 works.

This piece started as a UFO (the background part - that was created from a Japanese block pattern).  I had fun in creating the 'hunter' faces ~~ that are based on mask patterns from one of the fabrics.  This 'take' on the Mission Possible challenge theme is that these hunters are hunting some of the buttons that have decided to go into hiding (and are visibly invisible).

Thursday, November 08, 2012

Cityscape on the River

12" x 21"
This is really better as a touchy-feely kind of piece as the main fabric that I used is an Oriental flocked fabric that I picked up a couple years ago.  The buttons stand out much more in this photo because of the lighting than they ordinarily do -- except, perhaps, for the three red leaf buttons on the right side.  What seems to have happened is that the buildings themselves attracted the buttons to themselves!

I originally had all of the Oriental fabric in a single piece, but then cut it apart and interspersed some other red fabrics, and I sewed windows on one piece with gold thread.  And since the shapes did not conform to rectangles, the result is a rather abstract cityscape.  I was not certain about the selection of the batik piece for the water, but it forms quite a contrast to the buildings.

I welcome any critiques for this admittedly late posting.

Friday, November 02, 2012

Button Quilt

Button Pony - My button horse was fun to make, like a mosaic with buttons. He does not show up well in the photos. The baby  is highlighted with fabric paint; the tail and fur are made from scraps of braided trim. The buttons are from my collection! haha I am sure I am not the only one who collects buttons. Thank you for this fun challenge.