Grey Challenge - "Back To Scissors"

Recently I came across some paper cuts samples I made many years ago when I taught youth groups. It inspired so I decided to transform it into fabrics.                                                                 

I used recycled curtains I painted in shades of gray and from it I created the background.            

Paper cuts were placed on a shrink fabric and from it I cut the patterns I wanted.                                      

It intrigued me so much that I made several models.                                                                          

                                                                       

From: erezziv

Challenge #3

Hi all --

I am going to pose the next challenge even though the current challenge is not technically due till the end of next month.  We sometimes have some open spaces in our calendars to get started early, and even if not, we always think about our next pieces for quite a while before we actually start sewing.  So I thought I would get this up right now.

As I count the months, challenge #3 is due at the end of June, so we have plenty of time.  (Tell me if I have calculated wrong.)

I suggest we use the same size as before -- 40 x 80 cm, in portrait orientation (tall and thin).  The challenge: have part of your quilt be in large scale, and part of it in small scale.

That means part of the quilt will have large pieces, and the other part will have small pieces.  Or if you're working in surface design, part of the quilt will be relatively sparse and the other part will be dense.  Or one part will have big flowers and the other part will have small flowers.  Or whatever other way you choose to interpret your "scale."

Here's an example of what I'm talking about.  This is my Quilt National '11 piece.  The yellow part on top is relatively sparse (large scale) , while the green part on the bottom has lots more lines and tinier bits of fabric in between  (small scale).  At least that's how I would interpret the challenge for my own kind of piecing.  You will no doubt interpret it differently for the way you like to work.

By the way, following Mags' comment on her thumbprint quilt earlier this week, I think it's perfectly OK to use the 40 x 80 size as a general approximation, not an exact measurement.  It's hard to make a quilt come out to an exact size, no matter how careful you are.  Quilting takes up some of the fabric, and it's hard to tell in advance how much bigger you should make the top to compensate.  The only way to get a perfect size is to make the quilt deliberately too big, quilt it, then be prepared to cut off whatever you need.

I think that leads to bad design -- I sure don't want to have to wait till the very end to find out that my piece is two inches too big, and then have to decide whether to cut it off the right side or the left side.  I have already decided that I want that much of an edge for reasons of design and composition and I don't want to have to cut it off.  Or even worse, have to add some on because the quilt ended up a bit too narrow.

So I think we all should shoot for 40 x 80, or whatever size the assignment calls for, but if we end up a bit off that's fine.  The quilts will all look fine in a gallery if they're all pretty much the same size and shape.  At least that's my opinion.  What do you all think?

New schedule for giving a guideline!

After Jayne's need to concentrate on educational things forced her to 'bow out', this is the new schedule for giving guidelines:

Kathy (give new guidelines by end of February 2014),

Barbara (give new guidelines by end of June 2014),

Gillian (give new guidelines by end of October 2014),

Margaret (give new guidelines by end of February 2015),

Eti (give new guidelines by end of June 2015).

Grey Challenge - Inky Index

This is my response to the challenge of  greys - my touch of colour is  the greys themselves. The black and white photo of my stained finger came out of the printer with a purpleish cast!

When I was on the Human Marks workshop with Dorothy Caldwell in Puglia, I took a photo of my index finger stained and ingrained with Indian ink after a morning of making fingerprint marks.
I  manipulated the photo in Photoshop, dividing it into 6 overlapping sections, and printed it out on a commercial batik (with marks that reminded me of my fingerprints) treated with bubblejet set.
Machine quilted .

I'm enjoying working to the 40 x 80 cm size although this is actually  38 x 80 cm as I didn't 'measure twice, cut once' when trimming to size as I usually do.  An extra 2cm on the RH side would have  made all the difference.  Ah well, lesson learnt.

Knit and Stitch at Olympia 13-16 March

Exciting!  Found out today that an image of the stitching on one of my quilts has been used to advertise exhibition 'Halfway  Between' at  Spring Knit and Stitch show at Olympia . And then I noticed that the Contemporary Quilt exhibition shows  one  of  Gillian's! 

Quilt number 2

Hi
Here is my second quilt.
 undestood that we have to use bkack and white fabrics. I didn't use grays.
If you think it' not right I'll make another quilt next month.
Eti

 

 

 

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Grey Challenge / Happy New Year

First of all, I would like to wish all of you a Happy New Year 2014!

Mine certainly had a  happy beginning, because I finally managed to get my grey piece done.

Grey is definitely a challenge for me, being a color I would never choose on my own. But I did not need to stretch too far out of my comfort zone doing this one, since I am working on a monochrome series which includes spirals and insects. The spirals representing the ongoing repetition of life and the insects being the most successful species on earth conquering life's challenges.

But - just to add a new element - I did incorporate hand applique this time, which I have never done before in this series.The silk fabric is really a grateful fabric when it comes to hand applique, the stitches just seam to disappear on their own.

The monarch butterfly is machine embroidered with it's wings added as 3-D features.  The pattern is a design I digitized according to my own pattern.