Many years ago, I created the mandala shown here, with three whirls in black on a white background, and a solid five pointed star which wasn't really there, but implied in the missing parts of the three whirls. So for this challenge, I decided instead to have a background picture, with a similar whirl pattern.Making it was harder than I expected. I first laid out the tree, a rather simple one, on a piece of white fabric, then taped together enough paper to make the whirl pattern, cut it out and laid it on top, and it was too big! I ended up cutting three spirals, and laid a star on top, then cut out the star, and decided to make it with lines instead of solid. I pinned the paper on my tree and carefully cut the fabric. Once I satin-stitched the pieces down, I felt I had lost too much of the tree, and added lines of stitching across the white. The star is edge-stitched with gold metallic thread, in part because it didn't seem to come out as well as I expected.
And then, with all that done, I saw that the left arm of the star is over-sized! It is not completely finished, still needs to be tacked down on the foam core circle, so the circle will be better defined when that is done. I'd call this a partial success. Karol, thanks for an interesting challenge. I welcome any comments.
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3 comments:
It is so interesting to see the thought process which each individual goes through to arrive at depicting the negative space. In your work, the negative swirls really add interest to an everyday object. I also appreciate the way in which you constructed the background on this piece.
Wow, Tobi. Yours really did get complex in the middle there. Cool idea. I wouldn't worry about the arm of the star. Sometimes I do stuff like that just to make it more interesting and less predictable.
Karol
I really like the abstractedness of this little quilt. The colors are happy, and the swirls add so much interest. Pam Clark
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