Simplicity...

...is a laudable aim, but not always easy to reach.  One of the fabrics that survive the cull was a piece of  brownish hand dye, which had then been discharge dyed.  It was interesting enough by itself, but somehow not cohesive enough to make a single piece.  Reader, I cropped, and the jury is still out on the main piece.  However, I had a few pieces left over, and nothing that would go well with them.  Whilst I do now have someone to help me out with the more physical work, I'm not yet set up for dyeing...so thought some more.

If you're a long time reader, you may remember the Meditation pieces, and the haiku quiltlets that followed.  They were made following a fairly rigid set of rules that restricted the number of fabrics used.  The results, I thought, were simultaneously simple and complex (no, I don't know either).  So I wondered... if this brown cloth was not good as it was, could I cut it up and restructure it, in a similar way to the haiku, but only using a single cloth?  Turns out, I could.

So far, there are two small pieces.

I've tried to work with the curves inherent in the cloth, giving a sense of movement across it.  The premise is incredibly simple: I'm not so sure that the reality is.  I've only used one thread, too, a variegated dark brown and gold thread that delineates those curves.

And here's the second piece.

Fewer curves, here, but a couple of sections that look like calligraphy, reminiscent of the Natural Graffiti  quilt I made.  In fact, I suspect some of the fabric in that was dyed at the same time as this was.  Again, just the one thread (I'm hoping to run out of cloth before I run out of thread...). 

Was it a worthwhile experiment?  I'm not sure.  I think I have more to learn from it, so I'll persevere.  I don't think this is an approach that would lend itself to most fabrics, certainly not commercial repeat patterns, unless they were on a very large scale, curtain fabrics, perhaps.  But it's certainly a way of working with those fabrics which are too interesting to get rid of, but not coherent enough to use as they are.  I've got enough fabric for another couple of quilts: this time, I'll take a leaf from the haiku quilts, and dial down the size quite significantly, and see what happens.   I'll let you know.