Living This Creative Life

I have two favorite quotes. The first one is by Emile Zola, "If you asked me what I came into this world to do, I would tell you that I came to live out loud". I don't know who the second one is by, but it goes like this, "If you're not living on the edge then you might as well jump". Both of these sentiments sum up my personal philosophy of this experience we call life on earth. Enjoy!

Wednesday, March 20, 2013

Art Every Day, Wednesday, March 20, 2013

Good Afternoon,

Here is today's new piece.  I shoot quilting how to videos several times a year and one of the producers emailed me yesterday to ask if I could do two more, 15 minute segments on top of the 8 I'm already doing (tomorrow). So, I had to come up with a couple of techniques really quick and I like killing several birds with the same stone, so, today's piece is using the "Schnibbles" technique.

I started with a piece of black batting.  Then, I chopped up a bunch of hand dyed fabrics, ribbons and fibers which I scattered on top of the black batting.  Next, I laid a piece of fine, black tulle on top and stitched the begeebers out of it with long lines moving in every direction in black thread.  

Next, I backed some yellow and green fabrics with iron-on-adhesive, cut out the flower and leaves and ironed them down then top stitched with the black thread.  Finally, I trimmed it all up and top stitched down some multi-colored rick rack as an edge.

What fun! It feels like a party.....
Till tomorrow,
Heather

2 comments:

Unknown said...

It makes me think Spring is actually on it's way even though we had another skiff of snow this morning!

me said...

This is a wild, interesting piece!

With so many snips of color in so many places, the black behind it all really holds it all in unison with the aid of the black quilting lines on top. I'm always amazed that it's so hard to see the tulle...

Making the flower yellow was the perfect choice, it can really speak more loudly than the busy background. Actually the colored bits seem more like mid ground and the batting provides the calming, stable background.

What the yellow flower does for me is pull out all the rest of the yellows and provide a lot of cohesion between the focal point and the colors that float on the black.

The black really helps the colors pop and even the trim around the edge just sings.