Joy, Peace

These two quilts, "Joy" and "Peace", are in remembrance of my sister, Joy, who died May 3, 2013. I wrote a lot of memories and thoughts on them, both fronts and backs.

His Eyes Bored Into My Soul

 
I took this picture of an owl when my husband and I were in Alaska a few years ago.  His intense stare has always enthralled me.  I used Photoshop filters to alter the picture of the owl.  I found a yellow fabric in my stash that matched the yellow of his eyes, to help highlight the eyes.  I used browns as the frame so as not to take away the intensity of the eyes. As shown by the close up, the owl is heavily quilted except for the eyes and the beak. I have always wanted to do something with this photo and really enjoyed making this quilt. I have several other ideas for eyes but decided on this one.  I may continue with this theme for a while. I truly enjoyed this challenge!

The Eye of the Beholder

I loved the idea of this challenge but really didn't have the time to put my design into fabric.  But it excited me so much that I felt I could at least do the design work and I will work on creating it in fabric later.

I entered a photo of an eye into PSE 11 I also entered a photo of this cute little baby.  I deleted the background from around the baby and reduced its size in order for it to fit into the pupil of the eye.  I also made the baby a little more opaque than the eye.

I then went to my filters and used the cutout filter in eight layers to create this image.  I'm very happy with the results, wish I had time to work on it now.

Night Vision

15" x 19"

5/9 -- I have renamed this piece "Night Vision" instead of "Night Eye"!
----------- Setting out to do this challenge, I looked up drawing an eye in a "how to" book for the basic shape.  The original picture was in pencil, so there was only dark versus light -- and the dark seemed to prevail in what came together!  The "eyebrow" is from a fabric scrap from a costume project I did this winter, which had a grey floral border on black fabric, used for a 1910's mourning dress, but the curve seemed right for an eyebrow.  The red of the eye came from another costume scrap.  It doesn't show very much, but above the eye I used some navy blue as "eye shadow".  The netting and a bit of thread painting created the shading in the upper part of the eye.

I had tried out a silver sharpie for lines below the eye, but it wasn't right.  Black ink did not cover it, and unfortunately seeped into the white.  I ended up using black foil to cover the silver, and a bit of silver foil to create the reflection of light in the eye.

For a quote, I had this in mind: "The light of the body is the eye: if therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light."  Various translations have the words "healthy", "sound", "unclouded" or "good" instead of "single" so maybe I should try to get that black smudge out!

Comments welcome -- as well as suggestions for a better title!

The Eyes Have It

"The Eyes Have It" is mounted on black felt, then quilted, is 6" x6".

I Only Have Eyes For You

 

The quilt is uses positive /negative images for the eyes and is based on the quote:

 The eyes are the mirror of the soul

Designed in Make the Cut software, cut with an electronic cutter and free motion quilted.

 

Iris

The iris of the eye is named for the Greek goddess Iris who was goddess of the rainbow, so I chose to incorporate the whole of the rainbow as the color of this eye.

This was a fun challenge.  I'm most pleased that I was able to pull all the colors from my scrap bin -- except for the rainbow stripe and black & white background fabrics.

The finished piece is 15" square.  Comments/critiques are welcomed.

Robert Hartley

My Eyes

My eyes are from a Photoshop drawing that I finished over the weekend.  Much of the work I've been doing lately are combinations of freehand line drawings and my altered photographs layered in Photoshop.  One day, maybe some of them will find their way into art quilts.

Challenge 80: The Eyes Have It!

Theme: The Eyes have it.

Host:  Tobi Hoffman

Due Date:  May 4, 2013

When I was growing up, one friend of the family had a drawing by an artist who specialized in scientific illustration.  The picture was maybe 15 inches wide and 10 or 12 inches in height, and quite accurate in detail; at that size, it was a striking piece of art.  A one-time artist roommate of mine once chose a Time Magazine cover of Martin Luther King Jr. as a subject; she painted one eye first, and then moved out from there for a complete portrait, but that eye was still notably the center.  Many writers and sages have used the eye as a metaphor, praised the beauty of a lover’s eyes, talked about it as the window of the soul.  For this challenge, focus your eyes on the Eye, or Eyes, as the subject.  It may be part of the face, or stand by itself, be realistic or not, be a single eye, a pair of eyes, many eyes or pairs of eyes.  For that matter, it may not be even a human eye, but an animal’s, cat or goat or fish.

As an added piece of the challenge, take one of the following quotes (or find any other that you like) for further inspiration:

The eyes are the mirror of the soul.  Yiddish Proverb

The eye is the jewel of the body. Henry David Thoreau

No eyes that have seen beauty ever lose their sight.  Jean Toomer

When life gives you lemons, squirt someone in the eye.  Cathy Guisewite (“Cathy” comic strip)

There is a road from the eye to heart that does not go through the intellect. G. K. Chesterton

The eyes like sentinel occupy the highest place in the body.  Marcus Tulius Cicero

You can't depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus.  Mark Twain

The eye sees a thing more clearly in dreams than the imagination awake. Leonardo da Vinci

You never know how you look through other people's eyes.  Ralph Waldo Emerson

An eye for an eye only ends up making the whole world blind.  Mahatma Gandhi 

Images of the eye:

Cartoon eyes: http://tinyurl.com/FFFC80-1

Human eyes: http://tinyurl.com/FFFC80-2  

Animal eyes:  http://tinyurl.com/FFFC80-3  

Abstract eye art:  http://tinyurl.com/FFFC80-4

And some specific examples of eyes in quilted art:

Rose Rushbrooke:  http://www.roserushbrooke.com/sheeps-eyes.html

Cindy Bettinger (check out the header on her site and her portraits): http://www.cindybettinger.com/gateway/art-quilting/

Maria Elkins: http://mariaelkins.com/index.php/quilts/

And one further note: have fun with this!