week 42--orange

So this one took 'only' 7 months.

Last summer, my tiger lilies bloomed so beautifully in the back garden and I immediately began a fabric version of one. It was proving to be pretty cool, but complicated... layered fabrics, paint, embroidery, wire, clay... These are supposed to be quick (one week--HA!) little pieces of art.  And there it still sits, another 'UFO' cluttering my work table.  Later this past summer, we painted our house a lovely shade of pine green ('Dakota Shadow'--wouldn't you love the job of coming up with paint color names?!?), with purple shutters ('Black Amethyst') and an orange door. A really orange door. I couldn't find a paint chip that I liked, so had it custom-matched to a just-right piece of mat board behind one of my son's art class projects. Suggested names have included 'pumpkin guts' and 'Blade bag orange' (our newspaper--The Blade--is delivered in plastic bags this color). I hadn't made the connection between the door and this project until recently; when it hit me, out came the orange fabric scraps, of which I have many since making a couple of big deal quilts in '06 and '08.

Commercial cottons, fusible web, embroidery floss, decorative fiber.

week 39--white

White isn't just white.  It comes in lots of colors. Yeah, sounds weird, but it's true.  Just go to the paint store.  I pulled every chip that had the word 'white' in the name.  From some of them I cut these snowflakes, representative of the gazillions of flakes that Mother Nature has dumped on us this year. (What is this--Minnesota?!?) Shown are Ash White, Cottage White, Nano White, Muslin White, Antique White, White Lagoon, White on White, Weathered White, Stone White, Shamrock White, and Ballet White.   Other chips I pulled but didn't use include Granny Smith White, Whisper White, Mirage White, White Fur, Steam White, Swan White, Dove White, Pure White, and--believe it or don't--White.

Stay warm.

Cotton, paper paint chips, cotton thread, glass beads.

week four--black

So I could have shown things that ARE black: ink bottle, arch-backed Hallowe'en cat, old-fashioned phone, little dress--but those are just pictures, representations of black. What IS black? Quite simply, a lack of color. The opposite of white, which is all color. This white background fabric has tiny circles (really tiny, about 1/16th”) , some of which I filled in with a pigma pen; the idea was to fade out into the white. All in all, not very well done, I admit; rather lame, in fact. Not even a bead on it—I tried a few but they didn’t really add anything. I would certainly not call this ‘art’. But it was a tougher concept than I thought it would be and I clearly did not push myself this past week. (My original idea for this would have taken much longer than a week.) We’ll see what this coming week’s word will bring...

this week's word: shadow

I liked this word as soon as I pulled it out of the bag, then I got stuck. A shadow of what? The trees at the park made great long, grey lines against the bright white snow, but I wasn't into making a 'pictorial' piece. Hmmm... Then while looking through my fabric stash, I saw a favorite batik, one with kanji all over it. I wondered what the symbol for 'shadow' is, so looked it up and decided to make a shadow of 'shadow'. I dug out fabrics in light and dark shades of the same colors, so to create the illusion on the background. I suppose I could have used a slightly darker grey for the smaller kanji, but am generally happy with the overall results. Machine-pieced background, fusible-web applique, machine-quilted and bound.