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!

Thursday, March 7, 2013

Art Every Day, Wednesday, March 7, 2013

Good Morning,

I made this piece last week before leaving on this trip and here in the hotel room in Baton Rouge it looks so different as a photograph.  As you can see, I just wanted to quilt. I started with a warm, multi-colored fabric that I placed on top of a cool blue green, dye painted batting.  Then I stitched it all in a darker blue green. 

This piece really shows how thread effects the surface of fabric.  As I said above, it's all stitched with the same thread, but depending on the stitch design and the build up of that thread, it looks different, not just stylization wise,  but different depending upon how much thread is built up in one area.  Notice how much more noticeable the areas stitched with the circles/lines and circle/sand dollars and paisleys are.  These stitch designs require lots of over-stitching on the same line to form the design and as that thread builds up the stitch line becomes heavier and heavier and therefore more noticeable.

Now, I'm off to teach embellishment techniques to a group of southern ladies.  I'm quite excited to get to play with a new group.  Not that I don't love my home group, but I do like to shake it up a bit.

Till tomorrow,
Heather

2 comments:

me said...

This is a very interesting study. It's a perfect example of what you said a few days ago, that the quilting trumps it all.

Usually colors do their thing, receding, coming forward, taking over, etc. Not here. It's plain to see that if the stitching didn't cover the whole piece, that the color would not look so unified at all.

The areas with the darker stitches both stand out as more noticeable and recede a bit back of the others because they are darker. That kind of blows my mind a little.

I love how you are able to make a single piece of fabric look pieced with the use of line and with your quilting within those lines. It's a great example of the power of line, and one way to use it in fiber art.

Your color choice of batting makes it seem like some of the fabric on top of it is translucent- because that same color peeps through a lot of the dyed piece.

Steph said...

Love this piece! Love how the stitching makes it almost looking like undulating fields. The stitching really makes some sections recede and others advance. Very interesting. Encourages me to make a piece like this - just quilting.

Enjoy the south!