Aquatic Symmetries

~23" x 20"

For this challenge, I combined #62 from Wendy Wetzel, "Notan" and Pam Harris's #43,  "Under the Sea" -- and while combining those would give me  the wonderful title "No Tan Under the Sea", I decided not to inflict that on you!

Notan involves the use of pieces cut from one side and "reflected" on the other, and I realized as soon as I got started that picking a batik was a fortunate choice!  I started with the vertical line of reflection from a piece of the batik, then made a curved cut that would cover a missing piece of the background fabric.  It then seemed only logical to add a few more cut-outs in those lines -- and I could put in scraps of the blue behind those shapes!

And because they seemed to need it, I used fabric paint for the eyes of the fishes.

It's been a wonderful run for the Fast Friday Fabric Challenge.  I thank you all for participating!

Orchard

10¼" x 22½"

Earlier this fall I had gotten scraps of that tree fabric in brown and green from my quilt guild, and was so delighted to be able to make use of them here!  An orchard combines the sense of order of planted trees with the individual way that each of the trees grow.  It makes me think of the fresh outdoor air and the anticipation of the harvest at the season's end.  And the wider than normal proportions of this piece (I don't choose the dimensions so much as the picture does!) makes me long to go outside in early spring and just spread my arms wide and take a deep, deep breath.

I welcome your comments.

Flower Garden

   13" x 20"

I'm generally a vegetable gardener, but that was simply too many letters!  I liked that "flower" had the same number of letters as "garden" so that each flower letter could grow out of a garden letter.  I pulled out various of my floral and leafy fabrics for the letters and put them against a couple brown earthy fabrics. I mount my pieces on foam core, with the fabric wrapped around to the back, actually stitching through the foam core (it's not hard, just use a thin needle!), and used pebble beads to avoid the dimples that otherwise form in the fabric, and regular beads in the upper part.

I'm just a bit later than usual this time!  Comments welcome.

Z Barcode

12¾" x 16"

11/24 -- I updated this a bit by adding black and white beads around the inner edge of the border to emphasize the barcode pattern.  It very much perked up the piece, I think!

Original post

The most natural thing I could think of incorporating a bar code was a zebra, hence, Z Barcode!

I used two widths of black ribbon for the bar code, with a Micron pen to put in the smaller code stripes on the mane, head and legs.  The background is simply a dyed piece from my stash, and bordered with bias tape.  I sewed the basic zebra shape onto black to give it enough outline to stand out against the background, and used what I call the "scribble" stitch on my machine around the edge of the black.

I welcome your comments.

Suicide Prevention Week

12/30/14  I decided to get this piece truly finished before the end of the year.  I strengthened the text, and put the quote on a separate piece of fabric as a tombstone,  I used a pillowcase backing with a hanging sleeve, and a black fringe on the bottom.  I trimmed the drapery and put Fray Check on the edges, and decided not to actually sew it down but let it flare a bit.

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Size: approx. 24" x 18"

About the time I posted this challenge, I saw an article in the editorial page from someone who had been stopped from suicide, and it mentioned National Suicide Prevention Week.  Sept. 10th is World Suicide Prevention Day, and the national week is the week including that date (though the article gave a later date for the week).  The recent death of Robin Williams immediately came to mind.

I took a photo of him that I found on-line, photo-shopped it, keeping his eyes blue but changing everything else to grayscale, and printed it on white linen.  I used wood grain fabric for the coffin, and wrote it the words.  I added the rose, done with foil, in part because the words weren't quite centered in the space, but it does seem to balance the picture.

The quote, ironically, is Williams' own words.  Who knew he was struggling so much in his private life?

Normally I would mount this on foam core, wrapping the edges evenly, but I am not completely happy with this piece.  I welcome any suggestions.

Window with Flowers

Aug. 19, 2014  I've done a bit of enhancement to Window with Flowers: beads and a bit of foil in the flowers, and some fabric paint to add the clouds in the window.  I tried using deColourant to change the blue to white, but it brought out a bit of yellow instead.
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21½" x 21"

I have a set of five fat quarters which are different colorways of the same pattern, and I finally got to use four of them!  Normally I would cut leaves and flowers individually, going with the patterns on the fabrics, but for this project I folded and cut several at once, using the little pieces between the cuts for the stems.  I chose a dark green thread to satin-stitch the leaves and stems in order to give them better definition.

The bright red fabric (the source of tomatoes in an earlier Fast Friday piece!) pushed itself forward as the unlikely background, with the blue fabric becoming window panes.  I quilted lines in the lower part to indicate a table surface, and lastly, added a few dead leaves around the flower pot.

Thank you, Lisa, for a fun challenge.  Comments welcome as always!

Purple Sunset

18" x 21"

While late, this was a fast project nonetheless, started Wednesday June 11th, finished Wednesday June 18th.

I had just gotten back on the 10th from two weeks away, and found a packet of purple fat quarters, so I added them to my bag o' fabric which I brought to the guild room for "Open Paint" day Wednesday.  A friend had a photo of a seaside sunset which caught my eye, and I set out to try to recreate that scene.

I rearranged elements a bit, and put the sailboat closer to center rather enlarged -- which then meant that I needed to put in a larger building than the little one I had inserted.  Then the tree at left didn't feel right, and it got overlaid with a larger tree with just a bit of outlining.  The yellow part of the sunset was then overlaid with just a bit of Angelina fiber, and it was done!  I took it the evening after I finished it to the meeting of the Framingham Artists Guild, where it won the "Art of the Month" award!

I look forward to your comments.

Snow and Crocuses

13½" x 17"

A picture of early spring, I think I have it -- Impressionist style, probably not!  However, I always love the sight of the first crocuses to pop up among the leaf litter from the previous fall.

With this piece, I began the sacrifice of a mattress pad for my backing, and found that the top layer of that pad could be pulled off and made a nice impression of snow on the ground.  All the other pieces are cut from various cotton fabrics, and then I over-painted with some glitter fabric paint.

I would love any comments on this.

Sea and Sky

16½" x 13¼"

A while ago I had gathered some black and white fabrics, and I always have plenty of blues, so I got a good start on this piece, until I found that the sparkly organza overlay somehow got cut at the bottom, and I had to piece another scrap on top and hand-sew it in.

I found the larger pattern of the black and white fabric to be too stark as it was, so I mixed some blue and black ink into water and dyed them, with a bit more blue applied to the edges.

The only added color would be the bit of silver in the sky with their "reflections" of the sparkles in the water.

Thanks, Ann, for a great challenge.  Comments welcome, as always!

Butterfly Dreams

25" x 21"

"Once upon a time, Chuang Chou dreamed that he was a butterfly, a butterfly flitting about happily enjoying himself. He didn't know that he was Chou. Suddenly he awoke and was palpably Chou. He didn't know whether he were Chou who had dreamed of being a butterfly, or a butterfly who was dreaming that he was Chou."

The web is full of philosophical musings about this story (alternate name given as Zhuangzi) from 200-300 BC.  I decided that it had to be depicted with the contemplative philosopher meditating as an image on a butterfly wing, and originally thought of using reds and oranges, but it was the purple satin that led itself to become the sage's robe, and the purple and blue scraps to define the wings.  I made a couple of butterfly stamps and used some purple gauze as the wing surface, cutting out the other butterfly shapes and sewing the edges with coppery metallic thread.

Typical of me, I allowed an extra week for everybody to complete this challenge, and took two weeks for myself!  I welcome your comments.

Flowers in the Window

20" x 25½"

Maybe it's a bit lame to be posting this piece from the last challenge right before I put up the next challenge, but anyway, here it is!

I can't even claim that it is all that cubist, but I went rather freer in my cutting than I usually do, instead of following shapes in the fabric. I added the dark fabric behind each of the planters to give them greater definition.

The flowers, especially side ones, seemed not to stand out from the sky that well, so I used a bit of foiling around the edges.

I like it as a piece in itself, but not necessarily as really fulfilling the challenge.  Your comments are welcome.

Whirling Star and Tree

20" diameter

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.

A Jungle of Tomatoes

25" x 17½"

Last year I came up with A Neighborhood of Zucchini so this year it's back to the garden with a Jungle of Tomatoes, and I couldn't even keep it contained within the original space I had started with!  And that's also what made me take more time in completing it, I'm afraid.  The leaves aren't quite right for tomatoes, but the jungle aspect certainly comes through!  What doesn't show as much are the bits of highlight I put on the tomatoes.

Later is better than never!  Your comments are always welcome.

Lord of the Rings

16" x 13½"

It will come as no surprise to those who have seen my early entries that "The Lord of the Rings" is my favorite book so it was my immediate choice for this challenge!  My initial idea was to have just the hand reaching up to the ring strung on a chain, with the title and author, but my husband felt I needed to include the Eye of Sauron.  For that, I used Angelina fiber with some black strands to be the cat-like pupil of the eye.  I used two layers of dark blue organza to somewhat mute the background; both the eye and the hand are between the two layers.  One mistake was to stitch the chain and ring last, because when I was placing them, I found that the chain needed to go behind the eye, and that was a bit tricky!

And while I normally go with less regular shapes, that's not the way books are made, hence the rectangle!

I look forward to your comments.  Thanks for the fun challenge, Sharon.

Pouring T

21" x 17"

I seldom include letters or words in my pieces, but the challenge called for them, hence, Pouring T, quite literally!  I tried cutting the letters out from fabric, but since I was unwilling to sew all around the edges for each letter, I tried out a technique that came through Joggles.com recently.  They had a video of printing using adhesive foam and pieces of foam core for printing, and since I always have loads of foam core scraps, I gave it a try.  The printing came out a bit light, but I filled in the T's with the same marker I had used for ink, and outlined the H2O steam and felt satisfied with the result.

At first, I was going to crop the kettle, but it wanted to be included in its entirety -- though it didn't want to have a handle!

Thanks, Ann, for a fun challenge.  I welcome any comments.

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!

Night Time Window

Size: 16½" x 14¼"

I finished this yesterday and took photos, but didn't post because I felt I really didn't have good enough lighting, but it's no better this morning with our heavy snow still coming down.

This is a rather three-dimensional piece, with the curtains coming out from the background and the little table is actually a little shelf of foam core.  I recently got that background fabric in a Sweet Treats collection, and even before this challenge came up, it said simply "wallpaper" to me!    I tea-dyed the curtains and tablecloth because they were too light for the contrast I wanted.  I made the bowl out of polymer clay and the flowers and leaves are separate pillow-like pieces.  The tablecloth is lace backed with fusible interfacing and edged with the same lace that edges the curtains.  The black sky seen through the windows is a glimmery black fabric, backed by a dark silver.  The last touch was a scattering of tiny foil stars that I came across in my stash, which I hadn't known that I had.

I'm not fully satisfied with the flowers, actually, and might look for miniature artificial flowers to replace them - let me know what you think!  Comments welcome.

Winter Stream

Original

16" x 20"

2/22/13 - I added some Angelina fiber to the stream to enliven it a bit, and using Inktense color pencils, added a bit of green to the shrubbery, and some darker brown in the foreground.
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I used some upholstery fabric for most of the background, the part at the bottom and center using the front side and the top and just below the stream using the reverse side.  The shrubbery is some home dec fabric, again using both front and back.  The stream itself is a heavy patterned fabric, overlaid with Angelina fiber held down with the addition of some white beads.  I used the fringed selvedge edge of the background fabric on the edges of the stream.  Just a bit of silvery fabric and some lace became the rocks on the near edge of the stream.  The tangles of thread from the fabrics was too good to throw away, so they added some more texture in the foreground.

I also added a bit of foil to create some frozen grasses here and there, but they don't actually show up that well.

I know this really needs something more -- suggestions and comments will be appreciated!

Three and Seven

14" x 19"

I could not settle on a single auspicious number, so I chose the month and day of my birthday, and made those the central elements.  The idea of special numbers seemed to relate to astrology, and I have had the starry constellation fabric hanging around for a number of years now, so I used that for the background.  The blue anemone fabric was a find from a store near Berkeley which I found last summer, and it matched the blue in the constellation names, so it became a kind of nebula surrounding the center.  I initially used a blue water kind of fabric for the center, but I liked the stark black better.  The blue specked fabric made a good transition.

One thing that I can't show here is that the stars in the background glow in the dark!

This was two days, start to finish, so finally I can post it before the end of the week!  I welcome your comments.

Golden Spiral

26" x 17"

12/9/12 -- I just took a new photo of Golden Spiral with better lighting, which lets the spiral show up much better.
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I had not intended such a literal depiction of the challenge theme here, it just happened that way!  When I described the challenge to my husband, he told me of a dream he had been waken out of with the sense of falling into a swirl of gold, and describing it to another friend, he remembered an old image of himself falling off a tall cliff and flying.  So both of these dreams became embodied in my piece.

The background uses the Fibonacci sequence in widths, going from bottom to top.  I used various tulle fabrics in these layers, dark green tulle doubled in the bottom, single in the second line, then the fabric that was under that by itself in the double-width, a lighter blue-green tulle over mottled green/white fabric, then a white tulle with a yellow swirl as the background behind the figure about to fall off the cliff.  The cliff itself has a layer of black mesh to tone down the rather bright gold on dark brown.  The spiral is a bright gold cord, which comes across as rather duller than it really is.

Thank you, Silvia, for this challenge!  I welcome any comments.