Art Almost Every Day, Yesterday's Piece, Sunday, August 11, 2013

Good Morning,

Here I am, a day late and a dollar short.... sometimes it's just the story of my life.

I taught a rather large class yesterday at the end of a very tough week and my  hands just hurt too much yesterday evening to even think about doing a piece.  Excuses, excuses!

So this morning I made two, and here is the first.  It began with light pink dyed Bamboo felt which I topped with some dark pink cotton, some wide strips of hand painted fabrics set vertically and some pieced yellow green and white strips set horizontally.

I quilted the background with a stipple in a matching thread color then top stitched around the painted strips and stitched up the middle of the hot pink swirls.  Then I switched to a blue thread and stitched around the perimeter of the yellow green/white pieced units and added short wavy lines along one edge of the yellow green segments.  Finally, I added the bold black swirl using a rather heavy black linen.  

I really like the interaction of the painted fabric with the striped fabric and the background color.  The complementary combination is just so joyous.  I thought that adding the black swirl would spice the whole thing up just enough to make it sing, but alas, the fabric I chose is just so thick and heavy that not only would it not twist up smoothly, it is also doing it's best to overwhelm the entirety of the piece.  Had I used a regular cotton for the black swirl I believe that it would be highlighting the swirls in the painted fabric rather than squashing them.

Now, on to today's entry.......

Heather