Posts Tagged ‘red+turquoise’

Scraps Of Inspiration, 5

Monday, January 30th, 2023

My regular readers know that a few months ago I acquired an exciting bundle of offcuts and scraps from a fellow quilter who dyes and sometimes prints her fabrics before using them in her original art quilts. By taking up her offer to send them free to someone who could use them, I helped us both feel good about ticking at least some of the boxes on ecological issues associated with textile waste going into landfills.

Earlier in this series, I quoted a comment by a fellow mixed media artist, Sarah Shoot, @sarahshootmixed that ‘red with turquoise is always fantastic’ and as I worked to complete the applique of strips of stripes onto the triangles piece, I thought at lot about this red + turquoise colour combination. A couple of days ago I selected a bunch of scraps from pale azure blue to strong turquoise green, interspersed with thin touches of some other colours from the opposite side of the colour spectrum.

I sliced into those to produce some long strips of colour/print segments, and once I was satisfied with the arrangement, machine basted them, and today began hand appliqueing them with that favourite orange-red thread which looks lively against the strong red background.

Auditioning applique thread, but finally chose the red/orange I’ve used a fair bit lately. Lucky I bought ~3600m of it!!

I have another couple of hours’ work to finish this stage, and am already thinking about the layering and quilting treatment. Because of their relative positions on the colour wheel these combinations against the red really sizzle, and I keep thinking about how in relationships they say that opposites attract – wherein might lie a suitable title.

Scraps Of Inspiration 2

Saturday, December 31st, 2022

Browsing on Instagram recently, a comment by a fellow mixed media artist, Sarah Shoot, @sarahshootmixed that ‘red with turquoise is always fantastic’ grabbed my attention. I have some super strong red fabric and many scraps and oddments in turquoise blue/green shades. I rushed to those scrap bags for bits to scatter on it – and she was right, it really is a highly dynamic colour combination.

I had set aside a small piece of this brilliant red on which to applique some triangle shapes in reds and orange-reds for my 2023 SAQA Auction 12″x12″ piece, which I normally put together at this time of year, and it’s often a sample, a model, or a tryout for a bigger project. But at this point I decided to abandon that colour scheme, and those triangles will be fine for something else. I’ll get to a small red+turquoise piece for the SAQA Auction soon – once I’ve reached the quilting stage on this larger work I’m busy on at present:

The triangles are now all stitched on, and I’m ready to start placing the strips of stripes, or stripes of strips, whatever 🙂 basting them down and finally deciding on which style of stitching and which threads to use. It will be eventually quilted, too, somehow, and I still need to decide whether or not to use a thin batting between the front and back layers. I feel some sample making coming up perhaps, as I don’t want this to be too puffy, and these days 2 layers stitched together is fine in the art quilt world – though of course it isn’t in the more traditional quilting world.

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