Saturday, September 09, 2006

QUILT CONTENT

I have some finished work to show on the blog.


In an earlier blog I mentioned a trip to the Youngstown, Ohio Butler Institute of Art where I saw Robert Motherwell paintings & collages that screamed "Art Quilt!" to me.

Here is the first quilt I have completed based on Motherwell's series "A Little Spanish Prison." He was so moved by the Spanish Civil War & fascist regime that he used the same motif over & over again changing the colors. In his honor, I call this quilt "Guantanamo: A Little American Prison" and will let any other comparisons to the political world be yours to make.



All quilting kept very simple. Hand-dyed cottons, fused; frayed unbound edge beneath, measures 18"x 40".






This is "Breathe" is 24"x36"all fused hand-dyed cottons, with vintage brass buttons from my great-great aunt's button box. It is an adapted 9-patch with what I like to think of as a rib-cage and lungs through the middle.


This is "Endure," the piece a made in July in Mrs. Mel's Indianapolis workshop. It measures about the same as the one above, 36"/24".



It was my intention to limit the pallet contrasting the bold with the neutral, and then adding the yellows to make it pop.

I pray that I didn't ruin it with my machine quilting. I know that the stitch in the ditch and the straight sewing were fine, but I don't have confindence in the free-motion stuff. the quilting is done in a variegated YLI cotton thread.







And a close up.

I have one more new piece ready to quilt, maybe this evening, and hopefully will be able to share it soon.

1 comment:

Karoda said...

looks like you're in a grove! the one you did in indy is a fun design.

PURLS OF WISDOM

"Color is the real substance for me, the real underlying thing which drawing and line are not."
--Sam Francis

"The great man is one who never loses his child's heart."
-- Philosopher Mencius

"We wear our attitudes in our bodies."
-- Patti Davis

Colour embodies an enormous though unexplored power which can effect the entire human body as physical organism.

Colour is a means of exercising direct influence upon the soul.
--V. Kandinsky
I found I could say things with color and shapes that I couldn't say any other way.. things I had no words for.
--
Georgia O'Keeffe

Nothing is really work unless you'd rather be doing something else.
--
J. M. Barrie, Peter Pan

Faith is like driving a car at night. You never see further than your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.
--
E. L. Doctorow

Somebody once said that people become artists
because they have a certain kind of energy to release, and that rings true to me.
--Dale Chihuly