A Haiku Of A Different Colour...

I said that I'd picked two lots of fabric last time... here is the second selection.

I've written a few kitty haiku in my time... but this will be the first time I've featured cats in a haiku quilt.  I have made cat quilts before... as well as the cat hater's quilt I made for my husband (another story, for another time...), I have an occasional series called Mooncat... check him out here.

I think this particular combination of fabrics works very nicely; but I don't see it as restful, as the haiku quilts were intended to be.  It will be interesting to see how that turns out, if it will be possible to make quilts that embody stillness, or the movement towards stillness, with fabrics that are not of themselves restful.  I'm looking forward to that particular challenge.

Colour Blind?

No, I'm not.  But I am easily led astray.  Looking at one of my friend Angela Huddart's posts on Facebook, I remembered that I wanted to continue the series of visual haiku I had called 'Meditation in Purple And Gold'.  This little series I talked about a little here.  Each quilt was made to a strict set of rules (as a haiku is written), and each one had a piece of a particular fabric, a lovely commercial purple with gold metallic swirls.   Sadly, I don't have any more of it, so I can't make more of the same.  And as Robin is still without a job (anyone want a good FD?), I don't want to spend any money (I don't have it to spend...), so buying more of it was out of the question.  So, I went a-hunting.  For purples.  For one cloth with a large scale print (ish), one with a variety, and one that was purple and gold.  Easy, right?

No.  I don't have any.  Nothing like.  I found some purple batiks, and put one to one side, but the rest didn't work... though I did like the look of a dark grey/almost black fabric with random leaves on it, so that was put to one side also.  Then there was the interesting print with orange in it...and a cat fabric...and something else...they went to a different side (as it were...), but with the same intention, of making meditative quiltlets.

I thought for a minute that I would have to buy some fabric after all... but then thought about the hand dyes.  I hadn't used them in the meditation quilts, but thought that I might print on one with gold paint... and above is the final selection.  Yeah, okay, the hand dye is closer to pink than purple, in that section at least, but it works really nicely with the rest of the cloth.  So we shall see what we get.  And you're not getting to see the other set...I didn't take a photo.

And as I was coming out of the cloth studio, I spotted a large piece of purple organza:

Okay, more lilac, really, with interesting areas of blue.  There must be a metre and a half, maybe two metres in the length.  It is crying out to be hand stitched, possibly in gold thread.  I'm whining in my head even as I type, because I know what a pain that's going to be... but you know how it is.  When the fabric talks, the artist listens...and gets on with it.  Wish me luck, I'll need it.  But first, I need to iron it...

Meditation in Purple and Gold : Changing My Mind...

...again.  Usually, when working like this I would just Make Another One...but when something doesn't feel right, I feel the need to improve it.  The last piece I made looked like this (you can read about it here)

But... like I said, it didn't feel right.  So... here it is again, but with the long strip removed, and replaced by a rectangle.

As well as changing the third piece of purple fabric, I've changed the orientation, and much prefer it that way.  It feels as if it has a strong horizontal flow, despite the obvious verticals.  Looking at it here, I'm wondering about moving that third piece of fabric down a bit...it might give a better balance...   Ultimately, there are so many choices... perhaps this one needs to be Left Alone, and the series of sketches continued. 

Meditation Continues...

Wonder if anyone noticed the not so deliberate mistake in the last post?  The stitch was large scale, sure enough, increasing progressively across the piece, but it was made using the purple metallic thread, doubled, rather than Decora.  This quilt, however, does feature Decora (knew I'd used it somewhere...).

The third fabric is working quite well; it's a floral dress fabric, a light weight muslin, close to cheesecloth, and therefore difficult to work with and much lighter than the quilting cottons I'm working with.  I debated the wisdom of moving from one problem fabric to another, but decided that the print was what I needed.  I think it was the right decision, all told.  This piece has a 'dangly bit'; I wanted to emphasise the purple verticals; the appliquéd strip combined with the large stitches does just that.

Blogging, I think, is as much about talking to oneself as it is talking to an audience.  I had taken and edited this photo yesterday, in preparation for today's post.  When I looked at it, though, I realised that I had put the dangling strip too high on the quilt; it looked unbalanced.  So, reader, I unpicked it, and replaced it.

In this version, it is lower...but it's still not right.  And it wasn't until writing this post that I realised why; it looks like a bit of washing hanging on a line.

And this is the final version.  I'm still mulling about whether I should have it starting up above the section with the gold lines...but I don't want to lose the length of that vertical, so I suspect it will now stay as it is.  Thank heaven for blogging...and photographs...and scissors...

More Meditation... When Is A Series Not A Series?

I showed you the first of these pieces yesterday, 'Meditation In Purple And Gold', here.  It's interesting, working in this way, creating 'rules' for myself to follow...though they are not rules as such, more like limitations.  In this particular series, the basis of the limitations are simple.  Use three fabrics.  Use three pieces of the most important fabric (the purple and gold).  The rules, of course, are made to be broken... the first piece in the series has four fabrics, and I think might be the better for it.  So...guidelines, not rules.

The three pieces are very small; I've been working with these colours, and this was my way of using up the scrap.   The first piece is 14" by 7.5" , the second, , 9" square, the third, 5.25" square (all approx).

Two of the three fabrics were inherited  from my friend, the late Lynn Bunis (still miss you, Lynn x ), the third a large scale turquoise poppy print which I bought on a whim.  The darker turquoise with all the different colours in it, was a fabric I couldn't really see how to use, a semi abstract, large scale beach theme, with shells and fish .  Cut up, though, and used more or less at random, the inherent meaning of the shapes on the cloth is lost, and it becomes a mixture of colours and shapes that are interesting, pleasing to the eye, but much more difficult to decipher.  THe purple fabric is a stylised spiral pattern with occasional dots.

Now, though, I have to make more decisions.  I've run out of the darker turquoise fabric.  I considered cannibalising it from one of the unfinished tops I made to start with...but that doesn't feel like a good option, even although one of them isn't yet spoken for.  So I can't continue this series with these fabrics.  In addition, I've got small amounts of the purple and turquoise poppy fabric, though parts of the latter have strong yellow elements, which I've been cutting around, so not as much fabric available as you might think.  I think in this case, I'll continue with this theme, and substitute a third fabric, continuing under the same guidelines as before.  

Is it a series?  Mmmm... if a series is a cohesive body of work, then yes, arguably, it's a series.  But I'm not convinced.  I actually think that this little body of work is a series of sketches, a way for me to explore what working in a series might mean for me, and how to approach it.  This is, in many ways, most unlike me; I tend to turn up and work with what comes to hand.  I'm not good at the structured, make a sketchbook, research etc approach as seen in an art school near you... but these little pieces have given me a direction to move in.  I'll continue to make them until the fabric runs out... and then I'll make the series that is waiting to be made.  

When is a series not a series?  When it's a preparation for Something Bigger.

Meditation.

I've always thought of my art work as a meditation; the amount of focus and stillness that is needed to make just the right mark at just the right time is very similar, I think, to that of a meditator focussed on a koan.  Yesterday, though, I decided to begin to make a series of small pieces called 'meditations'.  This first one is 'Meditation In Purple And Gold'.  The photograph is disappointing; this piece looks much better in real life, I think.  It is made from four fabrics, two large scale and one small scale prints and two tiny pieces of hand dye.  Interestingly, what looked teal in the piece reads as grey in the quilt, but has returned to teal again in the photograph.

So...I pieced at random, and because I liked the selvedge edge on one of the prints, a blue poppy, I kept it, meaning to make it the focal point, intending to have it turned round the other way, like this...

...and it's interesting this way, too.

Problem was, though, that the piece felt disjointed.  I machine quilted in the ditch to stabilise it, as well as into some of the large, dark blue curves.  That didn't help.  So I hand stitched in purple metallic thread over the entire quilt, with the exception of the cloth with the gold spirals.  That unified the piece, somehow, I think by making the purple theme uniform across the quilt.  And because I haven't stitched the purple and gold fabric, it makes it stand out just that bit more.  So I turned the quilt on its side to emphasise that connection between the three pieces of fabric, and I think it works.

Here's a close up of the stitch.  It's not perfect.  The stitches aren't uniform;; neither are the lines perfectly straight. Know what?  I chose to make it that way.  I think it's more interesting to look at.  I stitch the way I draw, varying the marks to give the eye something to look at.  I don't think it detracts from the piece; rather, it improves it.  And the day I can show something like this at a quilt show without having to explain all of that, will be the day when I know that the quarrels between traditionalists and art quilters have finally been put to bed... pun definitely intended!

It Started...

...with a rectangle, that blue rectangle there, and a burst of energy from somewhere. I've been recovering from a family visit, a shed move and a massive house tidy up (some of these things aren't quite completed yet, either), not to mention a summer cold, and not much is getting done other than sleeping and sneezing. So when I had an unexpected burst of energy this afternoon, I went up to the cloth studio and looked to see what was around. I prepped several things for quilting, even quilted one, then picked up the blue rectangle and though, what am I going to do with you?

The upshot was...absolutely nothing. As is the way with these things, the rectangle quickly got removed from the equation, and 'Meditation in Yellow And Blue' was born. It's a small piece, just 8 1/2" by 13 1/2", and I suspect it would be better framed. It is made from small scraps of commercial fabric, fused to one of my hand dyed cottons, with a little foil added. It has a thoughtful feel to it...hence the title. I'll add it to the artmixter shop later today, if you want to see detail shots.

And I'm back to work...and suddenly I feel better. Wish I could say the same for my throat...sigh.