Posts Tagged ‘wandering strip piecing’

Alluring Lines

Saturday, August 27th, 2016

posted previously on a great design workshop I attended nearly a year ago in the Wool Museum at Geelong, Australia, with fibre artist Jan Mullen. Photos I took of various activities that day included this and several others of pages of a huge wool fabrics sample book lying open on a table.  This morning, while mulling over a request for information and images of most most significant innovative works had me looking back through photos and information sheets to select a few key works of mine to include in a submission to SAQA for possible inclusion in a book.  Of course, looking back takes time, as it is soooo easy to be distracted 🙂 and I could have my stuff half assembled by now; but revisiting these photos in the files compelled me to resize and post some, shown below.

 

wool sample sheets 1 blog

This morning I revisited those photos of lovely lines and printed this particular one to pin on my wall to look at whenever I walk past.

Wool samples file NWM geelong1

These others are inspirational, too, though for the moment they’re not getting a page of their own on the pin board.

Followers know that I adore  fine freehand cutting and piecing, and I can feel some of that coming on in a way I haven’t quite dealt with it before. To me, the line is the single most important design element, and that includes the expressive potential of the glorious straight stitch.

Segmented Designs 3

Thursday, May 19th, 2016

Today I found these photos of paths, taken about ten years ago in New Zealand, reminding me I’ve had a thing for mosaic/segmented designs for quite a while.mosaics 2 blog

Brick mosaic pathways, New Zealand 2006.

And really, when you think about it a lot of patchwork designs are a bit like mosaics, aren’t they?  With that thought, I looked further in the old files and came up with a few –

mosaic like blog

 

I also noticed this blast from the past, “Hidden Messages”,  which hung only once at a solo exhibition I had in Perth, Western Australia, 1997.  I have no recollection of what the hidden messages were ;-0  but might remember if it was in front of me, perhaps.  It was not one of my greats, and yet finding it today gave me pause to think about it again …

hidden messages blog

Hidden Messages, 1997.     86cm  x 120 cm

 

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.

Bungle Bungles + Glitter

Saturday, August 15th, 2015

With the ghastly weather this week I’ve been able to put some serious time into this next work in the Bungle Bungles series – adding gold painted dots to the pieced shapes, of what will be #7.BB 7 blog_edited-1

This only a small section of it, of course, maybe 25cm square, but the piecing’s almost all done.  There’s more paint needed in places, then it will be ready to layer and quilt. I’m tossing up whether to hand or machine quilt this time, but will have decided by the time I get there.  I have the next one in mind …

Photographing Quilts In The New Series

Friday, July 31st, 2015

Kimberley Dreaming pieces collage blog 2

 

I’ve just set up a photography date next wednesday with my photographer here, Eduardo Baldizan, who has photographed all my work done here, and is great to work with.

Unusually  for me, the bindings and sleeves of three are already properly finished.  Many’s the time I’ve hastily basted these things in place at the last minute for photography – you can’t tell from the front, and I am by nature a bit of a last minute wonder.

And as usual, there’s the lure of a  last minute pressure buzz – I have several days to attempt the next one that I’ve been mulling over while I make # 6, and think I’ll make a dash for it, beginning in just a few minutes.  If its a wet weekend, as expected, I’ve got bags of time …  the entry deadline’s not for another week yet!

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