Meanwhile, Back at the Ranch

As a matter of fact I have been sewing; in between collaging, printing, and virtual gallery viewing. Last month I improvised a piece from leftover blocks and some Grunge fabric I had forgotten I had.

“Whitewashed”
“Whitewashed” detail

I overprinted my leftovers with gesso and a stencil, ergo the name.

More recently I continued work on my circles and ovals. First, I decided to separate the pieces by warm and cool colors. Then, I spent far too much time playing around with arrangements.

Here’s front and back of my pink bubbles.

Front ironed to freezer paper

I sewed each silk piece to a cotton batik backing, turned it right side out, stuffed it with a piece of very firm batting, and sealed the opening with fused fabric. As you can see, I went with whatever fabric scraps I had on hand.

I was glad my plan to get the pieces off the wall without losing the layout by ironing them to freezer paper worked. Thank you, Elena Stokes, who wrote about this method several years ago.

Then, I designed a quilting layout and quilted each piece separately with the hope the lines would match at the edges. They did, mostly.

I tried to color code the lines to keep track of them. I felt like I was designing a subway map.

Now that the first quilting is done and I’ve hand sewn the pieces together I see I need more quilting. My experiments have led me to zigzag lines that echo the straight stitch ones. Onward!

Linking to Off The Wall Fridays.

5 Comments

Filed under Art quilts, In Process, Modern Quilting, Techniques

5 responses to “Meanwhile, Back at the Ranch

  1. Pingback: Trying Out 3D | The Snarky Quilter

  2. Barbara

    I like the way the negative space of “Whitewash” makes the dark pieces seem to float.

    • Thanks. I won’t pretend it was deliberate, but it does work out that way.

      • Barbara

        The exact effect, I find, is sometimes surprising but it flows from the intuitive artistic choices. I work primarily intuitively with an idea and a mood in mind and work toward that, making decisions and changes as I go. Following you for a while, I suspect your process is similar.

      • For this piece, I began with leftovers from two other projects, cut them up a bit, and recombined them. More and more I like to work with the limitations I impose on myself, as I challenge my brain to make something of particular fabrics or colors. Sometimes I have a clear plan from the beginning and choose the colors and fabrics to work with that, but more and more I like to play within a set array of material choices and develop the piece’s idea from them.

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