Art For Oct 10, 2013

Good Evening Again,

Here is a piece that I disperse dyed while at my Taos retreat last week.  This statement, " ...and then we set it on fire." will be the theme of next year's Taos retreat.  I absolutely love the sentiment.  It has so many meanings.  We did set lots of stuff on fire while at the retreat; batting, fabric, sage and we melted Lutradur, felt and Peltex too. But the statement can also refer to how "hot" our students were and how wild some of the techniques are that we taught but most of all it refers to how fiery the art is that was made during the week. 

For this piece, I chose a piece of hand dyed cotton, some hand dyed Mexican Jute and some dye painted batting, all in varieties of violet.  I lit the edges of the dyed cotton to burn it then layered it up on top of the jute and batting and topped it with the bleached words. 

The words are quilted inside the letters to make them clearer and easier to read.  Then I outlined the words and heavily stitched the blue background with a small stipple.  The burned fabric is stitched in various sized swirls in matching thread and the jute is stitched with a straight cross hatch.

The piece is very simple but the quilting adds lots of texture and visual interest and the piece has great depth.

Till next time,

Heather