Craftmanship issues

A recent morning on the quiltart list there was discussion of techniques. The previous writer had issues with fusing of uneven cutting and fraying edges, and I posed the question whether readers could conceive a design in which frayed edges and uneven cut lines, with fusing technique, were appropriate.

Well some of the answers were interesting, but I then realised I had done such a design myself, not too long ago, in which the pieces were either fused (the hand dyed squares in this piece) and or frayed – the gold scrim squares are hand sewn onto the top of the larger squares, and despite beng cut on the cross this stuff does fray easily – witness the fraying doubled over edging that surrounds the quilt.

This small quilt uses a traditional pattern of a square within a square to explore particular techniques, but overall the design isn’t too crash hot in terms of vitality and excitement, and this is probably why I haven’t exhibited it anywhere yet. And yet it is one of those pieces that somehow become important on the way towards new developments.

An earlier version of this post had this and a detailed view but the buttons would not open to show the pics, although they had done so when first posted. This is the best I can do for the moment, however, and maybe I will learn something blindingly obvious to everyone but me on this new blogger program, or need to take another path after a while.

2 Responses to “Craftmanship issues”

  1. Nellie Bass Durand says:

    Well said! There is so much that I do that’s “just playing”. Sometimes a piece does evolve into art.

    I’m so glad to finally see posts on your site. For the longest time there was just a general description of you and your work.

  2. Elle says:

    I think that it (fraying) is always appropriate if that is the artist’s intent.

    Alison, I was looking at my copy of “Make Your Own Contemporary Quilts” the other day and stopped at one thinking “Hmmm! I like this! It kind of looks like Alison’s pieces.” I laughed when I realized that I forgot that it WAS. If I try it, I’ll make sure to send you a picture of it.

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