Red Connections Sample

 I  ran into Gillian at FoQ and showed her my  sample piece for 'Red' - a section of old red and white quilt painted with acrylics using torn masking tape samples. I aim to make a piece 60 x 120cm for an exhibition I've  been invited to contribute to on the theme of 'connections'.  

I was really pleased with how a similar piece 'Nautical Dawn' turned out and I received some lovely comments from people so i'm looking foward to stitching new piece to death once painted!

Red: check

I will apologize right now for already being done with my pieces - I don't want to impose any pressure on anybody. It just so happened that I have been teaching a class of mentally challenged adults and just to keep my own sanity I took to the sewing machine.

This little fellow is 40 x 80 cm. I really had not intended on making a lady bug at all. In fact, I was determined NOT to make one, because they are too cute. But as soon as I was done piecing, it occured to me that the center circle looked just like a lady bug - so I did what the quilt was telling me to do and made a little friend for him.

 

The right picture was taken in the dark (you can tell, I guess ;-) ) to demonstrate the glow-in-the-dark thread I used to quilt the upper left stripe.  Taking pictures of the dark version is always a pain - I need to set my camera to the highest light sensitivity and then I have exposure times of two minutes and more. 

Since I didn't realize we had settled on the 40 x 80 size, I made a second piece, which is 150 x 180 cm. Both quilts are silk. This time I added three termites. And no glow-in-the-dark thread. And it doesn't matter at all that it doesn't fit our size requirements, because I have a second group in Dallas, Texas that is also doing a red challenge and it fits perfectly into their set of rules.

Oh - and then I decided to take a break from spirals. I will stick to the insects and to the monochrom scheme, but I have a few changes in mind. Next week I have a wonderful week off of work - and the kids are either at work or on vacation - so I have a great week of sewing ahead of me!

Red

I wasn't sure if we were going to show the progress of our work so since Uta has put hers on the blog I thought i would do as well.
I have been known to change my mind so i might do something else, especially as I like working in Red.
I have made a few quilts using fabrics, carpets in a shop as the source of inspiration and I love Indian textiles so I made a few drawings shown here

So I spent some time this week, in between getting ready for the Festival of Quilts, printing and stencilling some fabrics- no photos.
Now I just need to decide how much piecing and applique I do.
I must be in a red mode as yesterday I started making a new Voyage quilt - it's only A3 and needs some  more painting and printing on it but it is getting there. It's a pity the Thermofax screens dont join up like i wanted them do but maybe with some stitching it wont show the gaps
Gillian

Working in Red

Ok – I admit that I had suggested ‚red’ as the rule for our first project because I had already had an idea what I wanted to be doing in red. But first of all, y’all can do that, too, when it’s your turn, and second, I don’t consider that cheating because I hadn’t started on the project before we were “officially” on the go, and because my idea changed somewhat along the way. And I was thrilled to FEEL how working with red has a stimulating effect. Have you felt similarly?

Barbara’s suggestion of size altered my orgininally planned dimensions, i.e. “small square” turned into “long horizontal rectangle”, I did not entirely stick to the 40 x 80 cm Barbara suggested, however, instead it is slightly longer, almost 90 cm.

I have been in love with Kathy’s technique of very narrow lines which she published on her blog, and every once in a while I try my hand at them, still figuring out a way how to make whatever I produce look like me, and not a copy of Kathy.

So I made a red piece with narrow red lines, and cut that up into squares, 6”. Into these I inset circles (more or less ‘real’ circles, some of them do have little dents, but that’s just fine), and into these insets I again inset another circle, taken from what had been taken out to begin with.

Trial piece - in the end I chose a different fabric for the first inset

These squares are offset with simple red squares, and then I added lots of quilted and embroidered circles.

The original idea had been geared towards the exhibition I will have next year in the fall in the Fagus Works in Alfeld, Germany, the very first building that Walter Gropius was commissioned to build after he had set up as an architect. This is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site, with a museum, including a large room for various exhibitions, and I will be sharing this room with two other German quilters. We have chosen our working title as “Inspiration Bauhaus”, and that’s where the red circle sort of fits in – although, of course, the shapes in Bauhaus’ Basic Course were the blue circle, the red square, and the yellow equilateral triangle.

As I was working, and after my original size of approx. 40 x 40 cm had already changed, I decided on even more changes: this little red fellow will have a bigger blue and an even bigger yellow sibling. The blue one has already been sewn and is now awaiting quilting. 

This one doesn’t go with our project ‘red’ anymore, though. But they will be shown next to each other in Fagus Works in October 2014.