I contemplated what I would do for the perspective scale thing. I really like the different mindset for the Gimme piece of work posted previously. I took a recent visitor to the Museum in Reading, near us, where there is a Victorian copy of the Bayeaux Tapestry. http://www.bayeuxtapestry.org.uk/ At sometime in the past I had thought of using early medieval (anglo-saxon etc) art style in my work, as I am not confident about drawing people. I figured the style was so archaic, any mistakes in my stuff would just blend in!!
Anyway, I never did any of that at the time. But when I saw the tapestry, I realised the archaic style was actually a different way of depicting scale and perspective! For instance, the horses are bigger than the castles and churches. Men setting a building alight are as tall as the house.
When my visitor went, I got out my books with medieval history. I sketched Lady Sew-Forth by looking at a picture of a king being crowned. He had a church in his hands...that became a sewing machine. The sceptre became a rotary cutter, the crown was decorated with needles as big as the scissors also on it. The throne became a cutting table with drawers overflowing with fabric and thread, and so on. I had a lot of fun with it.
Then I realised it was similar colours to a cheater panel someone had given me years ago, knowing I like history. They are prints from the book of hours of Richard Duc de Barry. However, having seen a modern copy of the book of hours, these fabric panels really looked bad! Sooo, what I have done is cover the main print with a thin layer of this stuff like angel paper, which knocks the colour back a bit and pushes the people you can still see on either side, into the background. Then I used other pieces from parts of the cheater panel and placed them here and there to pull the whole thing together. Then I did free motion embroidery. I think using black for the Lady, and grey for the table helped to give a better perspective, too.
I will probably do a black binding, but I actually may make this into a cushion.
Sandy in the UK

Christine's Evening in Sherwood Forest

Finally I have my challenge done. It was done a few days ago but my scanner was on the blink. Somehow it fixed itself. This challenge really had me perplexed; I started 2 others before deciding to go with this one. I have to admit that this was an older JQ that I never finished. I couldn't figure out how to do the leaves so it has sat in a file since the summer. I got the idea after watching the "New Adventures of Robin Hood" on BBC America, I wanted to show the magic of Sherwood forest. I don't know if I got the challenge right but I am pleased with the overall result.
I am looking forward to your comments.

Lake Onalaska by Lisa Konkel

I didn't even get started on this one. I've been too busy trying to get Christmas gifts done. I have thought about it, though, and I immediately thought about a postcard I made last summer.

The card is done in watercolor crayons and pencils, with hand-sewn details. The tree leaves are black tulle fused with misty-fuse and caught with more hand stitching. It is bound with a sheer black ribbon.

I will still try to do this challenge properly, when I'm a bit more caught up with life.

Blue Door by Penny Irwin

Blue Door
8.5" X 11"
I chose to work with the landscape photo.
My pattern was drawn onto freezer paper. This was pieced together with the aid of a glue stick.
Different values define the areas in the photo. The door is meant to be the focal point and was given a larger scale than in the photo.
The blue and red "door" colors are repeated in a couple of the prints. Vertical lines are repeated in both print and quilting.

Garden Benches

I started with a photo that I took in Hamilton Gardens in New Zealand, where I was standing under a trellis structure built over an intersection of walkways. I planned to put that structure in last, and found that I could not get that effect because of the scale and point of view that I had established in the picture -- not to mention misinterpreting the design of the bricks in the intersection. So I have three posts of a structure, and trying to create the part that would connect to the fourth one, behind the viewer so to speak, just didn't work.

I added the shadows last, partly because I was also adding shading beneath the benches, and also shaded the farthest post and part of the trellis, and that at least created some dimensionality to the piece.
The benches are Etal, a kind of metallic paper, my first use of that, though I've had it around for a while. And next time, I'll just glue it on; it kept breaking the thread as I tried to sew it!

Afternoon Snack

(20 x 16)

When I began this quilt, I thought I might cut checks from fabric in perspective to match the photo. Then I spotted the perfect fabric that had checks on it already, and angled it similarly to the table cloth in the original photo and forgot all about perspective. When the top was nearly completed (before I started the quilting), I realized there was no perspective on the tablecloth. I am looking down at the top of the tablecloth, but sideways at the bowl. I left it that way, because I liked the overall composition, and the distorted perspective wasn’t bothering me. So I decided this was a case where “You are allowed to break the rules, after you have learned to do it right.” It bothers me a bit that I didn’t realize I was breaking the rules until it was nearly done. Your comments are welcome.

Welcome to the Neighborhood

I decided to sacrifice the process for the design. I hope I met the challenge. I used very simplistic shapes to portray the proportion and the scale as the house got farther away.

Karen Markley

Old Fence Posts

This old corner fence post across the road from my farm house has always fascinated me. I've taken countless photos of it and decided to use one in a quilt for Challenge 15. The fence post is formost with the old barbed wire wrapped around. They catch the drifts of the winter snows which pile in front of them. In the distance there is another fence row moving horizontally just below the horizon line and a grove of trees beyond that. The stormy sky looms overhead. I machine stitched the barbed wire roll and the weeds growing around the posts and below them and closer yet to the viewer. I also used prismacolor pencils to shade the drifts of snow.

Jan Johnson

The photo I used for this challenge is an old one I took in 1981. I have kept it all these years because the angles of the cactus against the old mission have always intrigued me. When Cynthia asked that I hostess one of our challenges I immediately knew that it would involve this picture. So now that I had the chance to use it, it presented a few challenges for me as well as everyone else! Finding the correct angles of the door and windows kept me busy, and figuring out how to represent the ornamentation above them was fun. I ended up dissecting an old crocheted doily for that. This is just the top and needs to be backed and quilted. I am thinking of beading the cactus a little bit to give it more detail.

Santa's Coming!

Santa detail

.Santa is appliquéd, I used velvet, felt , a smidge of satin for the boots, batting for his beard, and cotton fabrics.
The snow is painted using fabric paint, *sparkly silver* mixed with white, the sky is also hand painted, it is a bit bluer in person, with white and grey highlights for cloudiness , doesn't show too well. The tree trunks were done with Tsukinek inks, as were the shadows. I made the foliage with fabric paints and a stencil brush by pouncing and then drew additional branches with the inks.
The cabin was hand drawn on a pice of fabric and then detailed using pigma pens and fabric crayons, originally Santa was going to be much larger, but my daughter said he was WAY too big for the scene so I changed him. The smoke coming from the cabin's chimney is batting.
I'm not quite sure if this met the challenge or not, but I had fun making it and experimenting with different things ,of course I realized after that the sky should have been a night one, but oh well! Comments welcome...

Challenge 15 'She Dances Alone'

The inspiration for this piece comes from the women in South Africa who spend their lives providing for their families sans men. So many of them are looking after their children their grandchildren etc. The scene, the moon is shining down on the village and she dances alone. I hope I have achieved scale and proportion with the large size of the dancer and the smallness of the hut. I could have put in a larger moon, but I wanted the light from the moon shining on her as well as the huts.
I used silver thread to luminate the dancer and the huts.
Thanks for the great challenge.

Two Moons in My Window - November Challenge

What a challenge! I've done so many realistic landscapes that I really didn't want to do anything that I've done before.... so on the night of the full moon, I glanced out my kitchen window. The moon was rising in all her fullness over the roof line of my neighbor's home. I saw an interesting play going on as I also saw the driftwood and obsidian wind chime that hangs above the window. It was one of those images that stuck in my head. So I took a pix of it the next day, and then played with the image in a editing program until I got a fun image that resembled a charcoal sketch... and then the true inspiration came... it's all thread painted on muslin. No piecing, no applique, just 5 hours of thread painting, which I finally completed last night. Whew. Threads used include wool, rayon, cotton, and I tried to use a variety of patterns to add texture. I think the sky is a bit bright, altho I was trying to go for a night sky rather than a pale one. And I could have layered the greens more to show the mountains in the distance.
I think I'm going to mount it on stretcher bars rather than bind it.... could be a nice addition to the house!
Critiques of course are welcome!
Wendy in Flagstaff

Chroma-zone

This is a doodle that has been floating around in my brain for a couple of weeks. It has be coming out in my sketchbook, on napkins, and on the back of envelopes and just about anywhere I am hanging around with a pencil or pen in my hand. I thought it might be an example of scale since the basic shape varies in size as it moves along. I sketched this first onto the background fabric, spent a good bit of time adding pastel shading to the "cells" and then added a shiney net-like fabric over the whole design before outlining all my lines with thread. I like the effect of the overlay, but it totally irradicated my shading. I cut away some of the net fabric and exposed the background as the rainbow effect of the net fabric over the whole piece was overwhelming. I enjoyed working on this, totally immersing myself in the project since I had such a short time to get it done. This will probably be just the start of my "chroma-zone" series since I really enjoy drawing these shapes. Any comments would be appreciated.

Just posted my attempt at scale/proportion. In my estimation, it's not
very successful. I decided to work in black/gray/white. I sketched out
the building and tried to eliminate a lot of the detail and stick to
just the shapes. Using a photocopy of the picture, I looked at the
grayscale and cut shapes without using any patterns. The best part is
the lower left corner where you can see some distance through the
curved openings. The rest leaves a lot to be desired.
I learned:
- abstracting from a photo is difficult - I tend to want to put in
more detail
- although I had an idea of what I wanted to do and had thought about
it during the week, I really didn't have enough time to execute it.
But then I'm not sure if I'd had more time, it would have looked any
better.
- this exercise was probably not the best one to do in a monochromatic
color scheme.
- don't attempt this when you're tired!

Kathy Angel Lee

Scale and Proportion

My first thought after reading this challenge was to look at my son's photos because I remembered a great photo of a huge Egyptian temple with large figures carved into the side and tiny humans at the bottom. Then I decided that there was no point in just reproducing an image that I already had. But I put this photo onto the yahoo website so you could see it. So back to the drawing board. I've been wanting to do more abstract, collage pieces and thought this was a perfect place to start. So I did a drawing of the basic outlines of the shapes in Anne's photo of the building and the cactus, then grabbed some fabric that I had used previously in an "ugly" fabric challenge (the white fabric-not really ugly at all!). I had also read on the first link in Anne's challenge that "large scale objects create obvious visual weight. We automatically perceive larger objects as closer and more important than small ones". I was trying to see how true this was by including the bright orange rectangle and using the large white fabric more as a background fabric. Certainly the orange is eye-catching but the large white area still dominates the piece. Over all it's not a top ten piece but I did learn something about abstracting and using different fabrics in one quilt.

Dreamscape - Moonrise

With the full moon earlier this week, it seemed appropriate to use the moon for this challenge.
The moon is large in proportion, it's my attempt to emphasise how the unearthly beauty of the moon affects me.
The colours rather unrealistic, but it is my dreamscape.
Any comments welcome.

Hangers On

Scale and porportion..It trully was a Challenge. Most of us really know what that means but when used in 'artistic jargon' we tend to second guess ourselves. Me, too!!
Anyway, with a needle and thread, and my Embellisher I set out to accomplish that which I wasn't sure I could do. Why is no one surprised I used leaves for this? The only thing I brought with me on this trip in the way of something to work with was this leaf imprint. [It would have had to work no matter what the theme!!].
I had a lot of fun shopping for the 'ingredients' and this is what I came up with.

I started with black felt, layered some cheesecloth and texturized with the felting needles.Then I layered some Fun Fur yarn to resemble branches on a HUGE tree. I hand
stitched in a large stitch to mark out the branch lines. Then I felted again. One the leaf, [check the 6th picture in the Misc. photo album] I colored with Prismacolor pencils where the copper paint didn't fill in. Then I added sparkle tulle and felted like crazy to a white felt. I cut it out, hand stitched down the center and texturized the veins with the felting needles, then went around the edge to secure. I hand sewed the smaller leaves and beads on. The top piece of fabric is felted on as well.
It is my intent to leave the fraying parts beyond the felt when I can properly finish it.
I heard there was a new snowfall overnight where I live, so hence the white and those few leaves that 'hang on'. It measures about 8 x 7 or so.

Looking forward to your comments.

Kathy Lichtendahl - Scale

Here is my entry to Challenge 15. I just couldn't resist the play on words. The finished piece is about 10" x 14" and includes beading, hand embroidery, metallic threads, fabric painting and more.

Challenge 15 Autumn Leaves

As many have noted, this challenge was quite, um, challenging! I chose to take the idea of exaggerated scale in the foreground. The background is a photo transfer on silk from a photo I took in NY a few weeks ago. The leaves are fused from some silk I dyed this summer and free motion quilted with gold silk thread.

I think I was heading in the right direction, but I am not totally satisfied with the results. I never know what to do with a photo transfer (as in how to quilt it, etc.). I quilted some texture on the background leaves but left the water alone. I also think the placement or size of the larger leaves is a little off somehow.

But, totally unintended, I think I somewhat captured the effect of backlighting that I have been wanting to portray in a quilt for the longest time! Thanks, Ann, for a great challenge idea! As always I welcome any comments or suggestions.

Brenda Jennings