
Monday, January 31, 2011
Chocolate Boxes

Sunday, January 30, 2011
Abstract 20"x23"
Thursday, January 27, 2011
Challenge 53 - Trompe L'oeil
Guest Hostess: Chris Predd of LaPorte IN and Anna Maria Island, FL
Design Concept: Trompe L’oeil (pronounced "tromp loy")
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The art technique of trompe l'oeil involves creation of art that gives the visual illusion that an item is three dimensional. Its literal meaning is to 'deceive the eye'. A full history of this technique can be found on wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trompe-l%27œil and at the AskArt website http://tinyurl.com/4s9wy8u
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Art Examples:
Public artist, John Pugh does incredible wall art using this technique, which is also referred to as art that will "fool the eye". His art is so real that you feel like you could walk into the scene, or that the people are actually sitting there. Here's a link to see some of his work: http://tinyurl.com/27forlx
The Trompe l’Oeil Artists Society website has links to many artists who depict everyday objects by this technique. They appear so real that you believe you could lift them off the paper. Scroll down through the different artists there and link to their web sites to see some incredible work. http://www.trompeartists.com/
Here is a link for a mural artist that creates realistic imagery on walls: http://www.paint-your-world.com/adults.php
3D Street art is amazing: http://tinyurl.com/58ah9b
Here's a link to this technique done by drawing with pencil http://www.jdhillberry.com/tromp_thumbpage.htm
Then there’s the tricking of the eye with things of wood that look like other things (like quilts) http://www.gofraser.com/index10.htm
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Quilt Examples:
Esterita Austin is quilter whose work could fit into this definition http://esteritaaustin.com/gallerymain.htm
Joan Sowada is a master at this: http://www.joansowada.com/gallery.html
as is David Taylor http://www.davidtaylorquilts.com/gallery.html
and Cynthia English http://www.englanddesign.com/quilt-gallery,
Fiber art - http://tinyurl.com/4aopyb5
Susan Brittingham' perspective work is also very realistic: http://sbrittingham.freeservers.com/architectural.htm
Barbara McKie using photo imagery http://mckieart.com/Pages/thumnail_pgs/new_quilts.html
More quilts: http://www.annettekennedy.com/index.html http://www.melissafrankeldesigns.com/gallery.htm
The internet is full of other links on this technique, simply Google trompe l'oeil and you will find countless other visuals and discussions of this topic.
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The Challenge: Create an art quilt using the trompe l'oeil technique, preferably depicting an everyday object or group of objects. The goal is to make it appear so realistic by paying attention to angles and shadows it creates in the position and location it is in. Depict it in its actual size or the correct proportions. Or, create a scene, structures, or landscape using the same technique. Obviously using realistic colors and textures is important in this challenge.
Have fun! Chris Predd
Sunday, January 23, 2011
Challenge #51 and #52

Sunday, January 09, 2011
Challenge 52 River
It is not quilted or faced yet. Yesterday I finally had to accept that something is seriously wrong with my sewing machine and it will have to be repaired so this would be ridiculously late if I waited for its return.
Any comments will be appreciated.
Friday, January 07, 2011
Challenge 52: "Border Crossings"
I couldn't figure out how to make the blocks of color seem "blended," so I gave up on that and tried to sort of confuse the eye instead. I had to REALLY fight myself not to quilt this piece to death (my usual MO) because of the "flat texture" look of color fields. Since there's not a lot of quilting, some of the fabric looks a little "loose" (I'm not really sure how to describe it--you know that slight wrinkly effect you get between quilting lines?) so I'm going to starch and iron it as soon as I find my spray starch (long story).
Your comments are greatly appreciated! Michele
Wednesday, January 05, 2011
Late and Still Uncertain!

This has been a great challenge, in an area I knew nothing about. There have been so many examples and so much to study about color fields and I still, like many others, don't feel I have a true understanding of color field. However, that also gives us the opportunity to interpret the challenge with our best guess!
I am so late and also so unfinished with this, but I'm hoping for a few helpful hints from you wonderful critique-ers. My leaves are semi-sheer and fused and I usually would just plop on some yarns and maybe some crystals, quilt the jeepers out of it and call it good! I think I want to aim at a little more sophistication this time, though. My first dilemna is that I can't even decide if I want it round or square!

I added a detail of the leaves, too, to show a little of the overlapping sheers and the little bit of sewing I have added already.

You have all done such inspiring work on this challenge...thanks for helping me to expand myself!
Fast Friday Fabric Challene 52
stars we gaze upon, that hang in the sky and seem to stare down on us?
I wonder do they know us, who we are,what we do?
"Other Worlds 2" started with the wrong side of an upholsters scrap. I
painted the fabric with a faux metal and patina glaze. Using fabric
paints and pigmented acrylic ink I followed my vision toward a portion
of the universe. ( strictly using my imagination) Free motion
embroidery with the help of some copper fibers ( which I was able to melt) completed my challenge 52. Comments would be appreciated.
This was an excellent challenge . Working with the color fields while
attempting to create an abstract with depth and reason. TY Betty great choice for the challenge:)
Susan Ward
Quilting in Kentucky
Sunset on Emerald Lake
Sunday, January 02, 2011
Challenge #52 Color Field

Color Field #1-1000
Saturday, January 01, 2011
Color Field Your Guess is as Good as Mine

The definition I took was one put out in Art History Basics, stating that color field paintings were abstract, not based on nature, treat the canvas or paper as a "field" of vision without a central focus; emphasize the flatness of the surface, and reveal the artists emotional state of mine or his or her expression.
One of the things I found interesting is that it could be "amorphous or clearly geometric, but is about the tension created by overlapping and interacting areas of flat color."

That's when I hit upon using Angelina and foils. The coppery/gold area you see in the center "stripe" and the white-ish stripe are both areas which have been foiled, one with copper foil and the other with a opalescent one I think of as being gasoline on water. I then put pieces of Angelina down (the pink and the sort of reddish on the far left. The red is much redder in this light that it is in reality as I mixed a bright plum with "rusty nail."
The next problem was how to quilt it....If color field painting were all about flatness, then I didn't really want to have any texture, but quilting is ALL about texture. Even when we are quilting a piece and trying to make it flat, there is texture. So, I used a copper metallic thread and a pearl Sliver thread by Sulky for the quilting in the colored areas. The blue, I just quilted in long wavy lines in a blue rayon.
This is WAY out of the box for me as I don't usually do abstracts. I liked how the angelina and the foil gave the colors and soft edges similar to brushwork.
The piece measures 33 1/4" high x 19" wide. I don't have a name for it and would be happy to take suggestions as well as critiques.
Lisa Quintana aka Michigoose
Color Field


Challenge 52 - "Spinal Dance"
This quilt is totally out of my realm. I rather like the begining rough, but felt it was too small. First I added paint to the workshop piece to try and 'square it up' for quilting. I still felt it was too small, so I added irregular borders. This looked to stark. So I painted and painted and painted some more.
Today I quilted. Not totally happy with the result. However, I am thrilled to have this finished. My first quilt of 2011.

FFFC 52 "Endless Summer"
I have titled my adventure "Endless Summer" which is what I am wishing for in the subzero temperatures of Spokane, WA. I chose the colors of blue (for the sky), green (for the plants), and yellow (for the sun). I pulled out a piece of white silk and used my dyes to paint it, which is another first for me. Once the foundation was done, I struggled with what to add to it. I have been reading some posts about lutradur and it's transparency, so I decided to paint it with the same colors. After it was dry, I sliced it and diced it and then rearranged the pieces into a grid pattern. I think that if I had diluted my dyes more, the grid would have blended more into the background, but I didn't really consider this until everything was already put together. I then quilted it with vines and leaves, and yes, those are the sun's rays peeking out of the squares! I echo quilted around the grid and am thinking that I will add more rays on the outside of the grid. I believe that it loosely fits what I understand to be the colorfield style. It is okay if I didn't hit it on all levels, because I love my piece and it brightened my otherwise very cool day!
Colors
I began to be very worried that, once again, I would not have time to complete the challenge I hosted. But here we go. This photograph does not represent the actual colors very well. It was interesting to work through this process - the study, the planning, the reality check about what you can actually accomplish in a week - both more and less than I thought. After many iterations of oh so wonderful plans, I decided to work with some handdyes I created in October. There are actually six fabrics from a two color gradation from fuschia to yellow with the addition of the high contrast black. I like the decisions I made about the placement of colors. I fear that it is a boring piece even though it is what I was after and I actually like it - the simplicity, the colors, the contrast.
Any comments or suggestions for improvement are very welcome.
Challenge 52 "Undulating Colors", Pam Clark

Series of Twos
9 X 14
Thank you, Betty, for introducing us to the technique and history of Color Fields. I enjoyed all your examples and those some of the members provided. This challenge has produced a great variety of quilts/techniques and I suspect a good learning experience for most, if not all of us. I’m not sure I met the challenge but I had a good time working with shapes and bright colors. Comments/Critiques are welcomed. Thanks, Pam
Four Spirits

Then, of course, the hard part is waiting for the snow to melt! It was a pretty muddy mess when it was all melted, but I rinsed and washed and dried, and this is what appeared. I think it's color field!
I immediately saw 4 spirit figures (or dancers...). It's not quilted .... I might just put it on stretcher bars and hang it.
Comments of course, are welcome!
Wendy in very cold Flagstaff on New Year's Eve
Friday, December 31, 2010
Circles
Although the photo is cropped, I have not actually bound the edges yet. Today was a holiday and so I spent most of it working on this challenge. I had the idea for awhile and my sewing room was recently decluttered for its other use as a guest room over the holidays, so finding stuff and actually sewing was amazingly easy and quite satisfying!
The circles done by Kenneth Noland appealed to me and I did a lot of quilting on this even though his works seem quite flat because I needed some practice. I like the way the turquoise silk pops out. The edges of it are raw and already fraying so they are "softened." I didn't fuse everything down. I cut open rings to avoid having so much bulk to stitch through. I just used a few dots of glue to hold them until I quilted. The center circle is more greenish yellow that it appears on my monitor. I'm tired after a full day of sewing, but it was really fun to do something so different.
I look forward to your comments.
:Diane - yarngoddess
Amorphous by Cynthia Ann Morgan

Playing The Field

This will be around 8.5 X 11" when bound.
Seamed fabric creates a hard edge. One thing I did to mask this was to cut the edges free hand and slightly curved. The edges are still "hard" but not ruler straight. Another thing I did was to use matching colors. The yellow is there to create "vibration" between the two colors.
There were several things I considered experimenting with to give the illusion of painted edges.
Due to the time restraint I settled on painted fusible bond. There were actually two colors of yellow painted onto the glue but the lighter seems to have totally dominated the darker yellow.
The weather did not cooperate. I gave up on the paint drying before Spring, tacked the glue down with the iron and scanned it. For quilting I am thinking putting this over a deep, spongy bat and creating little dimples here and there. I am thinking that will add spots of light and shadow. What do you think?
This was a fun experiment.
Thursday, December 30, 2010
Untitled by Pat f in Winnipeg
Color Fields


I responded to the paintings of Clyfford Still with his very irregular shapes. I used the back side of a hand painted fabric and some of my hand dyed fabrics. I ironed the background fabric to decobond to make a stiff surface-which I've decided is a pain to use because the bond does not hold well. A few lines of stitching were done on the background to make sure it stayed together. The shapes were cut without planning and moved around on the background fabric to make a composition. The thin purple strips in the large shapes were just left over strips of fabric that got tossed into the waste paper basket, fished out again, cut in narrow strips and glued on. A few lines of stitching were done on the shapes too. I haven't bound this and will probably not do anything more with it. I like the way the colors play with each other but I'm not 100% pleased with the composition. A good practice piece of something I will continue to pursue. The size is 18 1/2" by 19".
I liked the idea of cropping the piece via a photo so here is one result. Any thoughts on whether or not this is am improvement?
Fourth and Final Attempt

Thank you Betty, for a very, very, challenging challenge! Somewhere in the reading material I noticed a comment: Bad color fields are easy to do, good colorfields are hard to do. How true!
The piece measures 14" x 17". Three previous attempts, which in no way resemble this piece, have fallen by the wayside.
I started with a piece of wet, white cotton. I painted/globbed lumeiere green and bronze paint in two bands across the middle of the fabric. I then smooshed it around and let it drip in two directions. It was intresting that the green paint separated into gold and green while it dripped. Once it was sort of dry I painted a wash of setacolor paint at the top and bottom.
Even though color fields are traditionally flat I decided to free-motion quilt it. After all, it IS a quilt!
"Marriage?"
Here is my piece called "Marriage?" I guess other than binding, it is done. I was fascinated to read about and learn about color field painting and the various artists that worked in the style. I enjoyed very spontaneously creating this piece by arriving at a general idea then cutting the pieces freehand. I liked the batik textures because they has some similarities to the depth and texture of paint on canvas. I frayed the edges of the fabric to make them less hard-edged.
All that said, I'm not thrilled with the end result. It was a fun and informative process, but I don't feel a lot of love for this finished quilt. I wonder if I should do more quilting on the color forms? It seems that the plain flat fabric is more in the color field style. The shape of the pink piece is annoying me, and I also would like to make the blue fabric in the middle darker, but don't know how to do that without making a big mess.
I forgot to mention, this is 23" x 20."
Comments and suggestions welcome - Sharon
Wednesday, December 29, 2010
Bloc de couleur
R.E.M.
Bucket died fabric cut with wavy rotary cutter. Back ground from Carol Bryer Fallert fabric.
Challenge 52: Lava
Challenge 52: Passion/Heat
This is a small piece measuring only 5 1/2 X 10 1/2 inches. I began by layering different combinations and patterns of fabric dyes onto a variety of silk scraps to attempt to represent my understanding of color field (ie. I wanted smooth color transitions and a sense of glowing). Once I picked my favorite of the group, I wanted to continue the idea of smooth color transitions using thread painting over the dye base. However, to me, the dye transitions were more successful than the thread overlays, so I decided to leave the piece half thread and half dyes. Lastly, I decided to overlay the silk onto both a black and a white background fabric to try to further the idea of subtle color transitions. Thank you Betty. For me, this was a great challenge educationally and artistically. I appreciate your comments.
Tuesday, December 28, 2010
Challenge 52 - Chasing Rainbows

Lisa
In Rainy Seattle
Falling Colors

The size is 14-1/2" x 20"
Challenge 52 Orcas by Silvia Dell'Aere

Monday, December 27, 2010
Visions of Chaotic Butterflies
For this I chose the colors I wanted to use, the 2 oranges and the blue and just cut and arranged until something spoke to me. When I thought it was done I spotted the lime green fabric and just knew I had to add it to that corner.
As usual it needs quilting, right now it is just fused together, quilting will more than likely be echo quilting in each shape and possibly a simple linear quilting for the background. I wanted to get this posted now though since I have a mystery quilt that needs to be cut out in the next 3 days.
After finishing this I was looking for a title so decided to see what each color meant.
Oddly they all represent aspects of ME...so this has become an abstracted self portrait, no wonder I had to use these colors!
After the Storm
however I did study the links and the works presented therein. I have to say, that not having a totally clear idea of this challenge, I went with the images that formed in my mind as I looked, cogitated and drew conclusions.
I definitely look forward to your comments on this one.
This is a real departure for me.. not just the Color challenge, but this is done with newspaper on batting, then adhered to a 'texturized' canvas.
A question has been asked... did I consider not having the two strips across the top.... yes, I did, and in fact, left it for 2 days trying to decide. Yellow is very intense and hard to work with... something I have thought about.... maybe someone will comment on.. is should I make those two at the top paler... should I whiten them. Since this is an encaustic type of piece, it would be easy to do.
Fields of Tulips & Morning Sun

I haven't done any quilting on these as to me they aren't finished. I also noticed that a lot of the samples I looked at were color field and abstract together, which I think would be something that I could achieve. However, that being said I did give Color Field a go and enjoyed the process. I look forward to your comments, and am sure these two pieces will both change greatly in the next few days :-)