Posts Tagged ‘inspiration’

Segmented Designs 2

Sunday, May 15th, 2016

Experimenting with little bits of metallic leather applied with metallic stitchery met the requirements of the SAQA auction. It arrived safely. Mosaic quilt blog

Mosaic Pathway, 2016.  12″ x 12″    SAQA Online Auction 2016.


With the silver mylar stuff  I mentioned last post, I’ve since begun a reasonably large piece, 90cm x 120cm   It is feather light, compared to what something similar using leather, obviously!    One thing about this stuff is, that when ironed from the wrong side after being attached, the cut edges pleasingly sort of round off, as if trying to turn under, which gives a nice smooth finish which you may be able to pick out on the sample on the very left side of the collage below –

Mosaic design silver pathway blog.

If it all turns out satisfactorily in accordance with how it’s going so far, I could enter it in Quilt National, so that’s probably the last you’ll see of any of it until it’s exhibited somewhere.

Tetrahedrons In Transit

Wednesday, May 11th, 2016

All three pieces I entered in Wangaratta Art Gallery’s Petite Miniature Textiles Biennial Exhibition 2016 were accepted, and I’m happy to say are now on their way to Australia.  The Exhibition opens on June 4th and runs through until 17th July.   All entries had to be within 30cm x 30cm x 30cm.  I love miniature textile works and would love to see this popular biennial show.  If you’re in the northern Victoria area over that time, you can go to http://www.wangaratta.vic.gov.au/recreation-leisure/art-gallery/visiting-gallery.asp for gallery times and other information.

Wave blog

‘Wave’  2016.   18cm x 18cm x 18cm x 15cm.  Soft sculpture.

FairyBread blog

‘Fairy Bread’  2016.  18cm x 18cm x 18cm x 15cm.  Soft sculpture.

Morse blog
‘Morse’  2016.  18cm x 18cm x 18cm x 15cm.  Soft Sculpture.

How did I come up with their names?  That’s always fun and is sometimes a challenge.  Any Aussie will get the Fairy Bread one – non-pareils, aka in Aus as “100’s and 1000’s” are sprinkled over thin slices of buttered fresh bread cut into triangles – a mandatory item on any kid’s birthday party menu.  When I took these pieces to my wonderful photographer, Eduardo Baldizan, I hadn’t yet named the other two, and he used ‘Wave’ and ‘Morse’ to identify the pics of each one when sorting their files – and I loved those choices, so they stayed.

With the three pieces, each18cm x 18cn x 18cm x 15cm, plus the weight of the box and paper to stop them rattling around, the total weight of the parcel was only 0.4kg   They’re light as a feather.  My regular followers recall I blogged about their development first here, then and finally.  Others made since these have been in colours other than cream – and the other day it occurred to me it might be a good idea to Scotchguard (r)  these, so I hope that helps to keep them pristine.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Segmented Designs

Wednesday, May 4th, 2016

Three years ago in the Denver Botanic Gardens I took this pic of this lovely path in one part of the garden, printed it out and have had it up on my pinboard on and off for ages, feeling I had ‘to do something’ about it.

mosaic path DBG blog

Mosaic style pathway, Denver Botanic Gardens.

More recently I’ve discovered fabulous installation hangings by Christine Mauersperger whose simple stitch designs I’ve always loved, and buzzing around somewhere in the depths for several years has been some of the work by Olga de Amaral one of whose beautiful hangings stopped me in my tracks in the foyer of the Hotel Santa Clara, Cartagena, Colombia.

On the weekend I found some bits of metallic finished leather that were surplus to several pieces I made in the Tracks series.  Well, I ‘found’ them when the biodegraded bag they were in fell to bits in my hands and they cascaded to the floor.  In the Tracks quilts, leather pieces were laboriously hand stitched from behind to the base fabric, which was then quilted.  It was hard on the hands and won’t do anything more that way.  For some reason just then a lightbulb came on – leather snipped into bits and machined onto base fabric could make a mosaic-like surface.   Heartened by a quick sample, I realised it would make a good 12″ square piece for the SAQA Auction – so here it is completed.  Two layers of fabric were torn to size and bonded together with fusing web; then the machine applique using gold metallic thread was also in effect the quilting (through two layers of fabric)  The leather pieces stopped at the rough edge – no binding or other finish was necessary or imho appropriate.

Mosaic quilt blog

12″ quilt for SAQA Online Auction September 2016.       Full view left, detail right.

While working on that I had other ideas, and today fiddled a bit with slivers of mylar-backed ripstop nylon- left side of this pic –

Mosaic samples blog

Samples – mylar/nylon left,   metallic leather right

I bought several metres of this mylar/nylon, about 150cm wide, @$2/m, in the cheapo fabric zone of Santiago de Chile, several years ago, mainly because I can’t resist glitter and would have bought gold, too, if they’d had it, and also I guess because it was a cheap challenge.  The piece I have in mind will make a slight dent in it, and I could also use the mylar as a base fabric…goodness, I’ll have that stuff used up in no time!

Lines- Seams Waiting To Happen

Tuesday, March 22nd, 2016

I’ve previously blogged about my approach to planning  https://www.alisonschwabe.com/weblog/?p=1010  and in that particular post used a collage of diagrams on pages from it:

Collaged sketch book pages

One was a snippet from a diagrammatic sketch of a man wearing heavy outdoor clothing featuring a fisherman’s rib neck on his sweater.  I saw it in some ad in an Aussie newspaper back in about 1995, and clearly remember it but can’t find the actual pic.  It inspired me to sketch the pattern of knitting and the use those lines and shapes in a commissioned quilt for a book “Quiltskills” 1997, published by the Quilters Guild of NSW.  Each chapter featured particular skills useful to contemporary quiltmakers, illustrated by a quilt made especially to go with the article.  Mine was chapter 2, Irregular Shapes.

Anyway this morning I found a very old and poor image of that quilt, Waterweave”,  the colour of which somehow seems stuck at ‘too green’ but anyway I’ve put it alongside that line diagram to show how for me a basic diagram can lead to an actual quilt.  Its typical of my planning that I work things out as I go, and usually know when its time to stop.

Waterweave quilt and sketch blog

 

As a student and then teacher of geography, illustrating whatever I’m talking about with a simple diagram is what I naturally turn to, so my designs in fabric and thread tend to develop from that kind of mark making, too, and I’ve mentioned before that I see almost any line as a seam waiting to happen.

Tetrahedrons, Continued…

Tuesday, March 8th, 2016

This one is almost ready to sew up and I  thought I’d document a couple of steps with pics –

inside a tetrahedron blog

1) Showing the back/inside of the structure, where knots anchor the thread as it goes to the front.

black stitching blog

2)  Three of the triangles sewn together to provide the one working surface.

black and white ready to sew up blog

3)  When the stitching is finished, the final side seam is closed and the base sewn on.

I have done several now, and am enjoying making them.  In the next group I will do surface design before covering the template pieces, to see how that goes – probably some combination of paint and stitch – ideas for which are coming far faster than my ability to make them!  I may have some thinner batting somewhere and may replace batting with a couple of layers of cotton fabric – I learn something or tweak a detail on each one, but this is probably the last how-to on them, though  I have no idea where this 3D quilted textile art will go from here.

 

 

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