Have you ever just gone into the studio to play with something quick and ended up with a composition that you liked so much that you might use it start a series? Well, I made a sketch the other day of a fossil and decided to make a small fabric interpretation of it. The first thing to do was to choose a background for it. As I learned in my recent class that I blogged about
here, the fossil needed to rest on something. I decided to choose the shape in a shape background. So I got out some fabrics and cut out some rectangles and placed them on top of some dyed cheesecloth.
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| fabrics on cheesecloth on top of white crinoline |
Then I thought it might need more, so I tried this combination.
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| Another possibility |
I decided I didn't like the piece that was separated from the others. Then I hand stitched the pieces of fabric onto the cheesecloth and crinoline. Next, I sketched my fossil onto the back with pencil and free-motion sewed it with black thread from the back.
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| Interpretation of fossil sketch on fabric 12x12 |
After looking at it for awhile, I felt something needed to be added. So I turned it over and was going to add a bird to it on the orange-red rectangle so that the bird was looking downward towards the fossil. But, I had a photo of my two nieces from when they were toddlers sitting on a rock that I was going to do a series on in fabric and I got the idea instead to do this.
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| The Puppeteer |
I removed part of the rectangle and put one of my nieces on top. She was playing with sticks so I got the idea to make it look like she is manipulating the fossil. The piece is still in process. I like all the raw edges. I'm not sure how I want to finish it. But how it evolved was fun and very intuitive. I can see making a larger quilt with this theme and then some other ones building off of this idea. I'm linking this to
Off The Wall Friday where you can find other art quilt blogs. Please make comments on their posts to let them know you stopped by. Thanks for visiting.
I love this, Regina, and it definitely your style. It is great fun to play with a composition and be open to going with the flow. Really looking forward to how you finish it.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Judy. It does feel good to be open to letting fabric speak to you.
Deletevery interesting to hear about your process with this equally interesting piece. I like the layers, the textures. LeeAnna
ReplyDeleteI've always loved the texture of cheesecloth, but have never used it as a background layer before. I'm not sure it even needs quilting.
DeleteReally interesting piece!
ReplyDeleteThanks, Angela. I haven't decided yet how to finish the edges. Time will tell.
Deleteohhh I like the transparency and play on scale in this one!!
ReplyDeleteThanks, Nina. I used Photoshop Elements overlay command in layers on the photo to get the transparency look on my niece. Then I printed it on muslin and cut it out as a rectangle and sewed it on top of the scrim.
ReplyDelete