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.