This blog is my visual diary, Part A .which is why I sometimes write about my process here. This and the previous posts combine insights to process with considerations of technical possibilities. After my previous post, I spent a morning on another sample, working with the same shapes and lines based on the photo heading that post.
Beach ‘cliffs’ beside sample based on the diagram, approx 20cm x 30cm.
Conclusions:
cut less vertical, wider, shapes to emphasise spreading deltas
the row of short upright-ish shapes is good, but could be a bit stockier
horizontal lines between sections are too wide
patchwork in some parts, fusion in others?
achieve more drama with contasting plain fabrics
consider slight slivers/dabs of colour
fme around the basic shapes?
depending on the scale, break up larger areas with surface design techniques
Triangles are one of the key shapes in traditional geometric patchwork, but patterns in natural landscapes can also suggest triangles. Think mountains, volcanoes and deltas, and there are probably more, as Nature is infinitely complex, and I know, I am rather preoccupied with Landscape.
I take photos of patterns in the sand as I walk along our beach, and this favourite photo can be summarised as ‘triangular’ cliffs and wadis fanning out to deposit eroded sand onto the next flat part of the beach. I was standing with my back to the water’s edge. Below the ‘cliffs and the deltas’ there is a different pattern of wiggly lines, the fine trails left in the smooth wet sand by little bivalves following the moisture as the tide receeds.
The footprints at centre bottom and right edges of the photo demonstrate the scale of this beautiful mini-landscape, but editing removes them, raising questions:
Is this an aerial view of a little section of a sloping beach?
or a section of a landform out in a vast desert?
The pattern then, is a plain area above a line of triangular shapes, beneath which is a ‘segmented’ zone, beneath which is a zone crossed by intertwined lines. A rough hand drawn diagrammatic analysis is shown inserted between sections of the photo:
As I mentioned in a recent post, I’ve been inspired by this favourite photo for a while now, and yesterday put my hands to work on it, coming up with this partial sample:
sample of top sections of beach ‘cliffs’ pattern; width approx. 30cm.
Just because I love triangles didn’t mean I could whack them out and achieve the same kind of organic look my diagram based on the photo has, and as I did a bit of unpicking and reshaping,I learned that
I really need to cut each triangle deliberately, individually, to guarantee different sizes and variations on ‘triangle’ result. More haste less speed.
As I lay each triangle edge to edge with the next to sew, I may need to reshape slighly with a slight curve to achieve the organic look I love. For the segmented section below that, depending on the scale of the work, it may be important to organically shape each seam, but it would be very important to avoid any regular, repeat orientation of these vertical segments or stripes.
In using natural landscape colours for this design, the result is something pictorial, which I don’t want in patchwork, as I believe there are other, better ways to make pictorial art.
But focusing on the shapes in non-landscape colours plus black or other background fabric will highlight the shapes I’m so intrigued with.
Peridocially I write a post titled ‘Browsing with Pinterest’. Today I have ‘holes’ on my mind again, and invite you to dip into one of my own Pinterest boards with the theme ‘holes’. Pinterest is such an interesting app for those of us who, in an earlier life would have cut pics from Mum’s old magazines and pasted them into a large blank paged scrap book, often without comment. When I was young kids also collected playing cards for their images, haggling with fellow collectors to exchange something we really wanted from their collections in turn for something we hoped they’d want from our own pack. sometimes what you wanted needed two cards to be handed over… and so people built quite large collections, some almost too much for young hands to hold and manage, she remembers with envy.
Just the process of browsing and cutting out images we liked was so satisfying, possibly ‘therapeutic’ using a C21 buzzword, and a perfect ativity to help keep kids occupied on a rainy afternoon, in the same class as sorting out Mum’s button jar, and choosing the best ones for extra attention. When we tired of that, or the sun came out, all the buttons went back into the jar to be sorted again another day. Do kids still do that? Indeed, do people still remove buttons from discarded clothes, or change buttons to give a new lease of life to an aging garmet? It was all about the process, saving or cutting out, maybe sorting, but not necessarily doing anything more. If you kept a few loose you always had something interesting to paste onto the protective brown paper cover on your school books.
From several works and samples
Pinterest subscribers can go online to look for something in particular or just just browse through the images Pinterest selected for us to see because of images we’ve previously saved. It is no exaggeration to say that you can spend hours enjoying images in exactly the same way as we carefully thumbed through discarded colour magazines. To cut up old womens magazines was ok, but we’d never have dared to cut things out of a National Geographic, regardless of age.
A hole’s essential characteristic is that you can see, or have some glimpse, of something beyond the edge of the hole. Holes can be deliberate or accidental, can imply deterioration by aging or be part of something called ‘lace’ , on which I’ve mused before.
Inlaid brass elements, public walkways, Miami International Airport
I have several boards or ‘themes’ for images I save, and holesis one collection to which I fairly often add an image. Holes intrigue me for their potential which is not limited decorative patterning. Enjoy my board!
I just finished this year’s 12″x12″ quilt for the annual SAQA benefit auction. I try to make it early in the year, but think January 21st. is the absolute earliest that I’ve ever finished one.
“Afterglow 2″ to be sold at the annual SAQA Benefit Online Auction of 12″x12” works by member artists, in September 2020.
It features freehand cut and machine pieced patchwork, and was machine quilted with flourescent red-orange thread. The inspiration was fire ravaged Australian landscape. In some regions hit earliest in this disastrous bushfire season, some trees and other vegetation are already sprouting new leaves.
Fellow SAQA member Regina Benson asked why, after years of making one of these works annually and each of us never feeling comfortable with the format, why did I comment I was now feeling more interested in this size? My answer included these points:
Despite the very large quilt top I just made, I have been thinking a bit about where to from here. I don’t normally do pictoral designs, and in quiltmaking I’ve always been primarily focused on presenting impressions through colour and line, mostly using pieced fabric.
Since the 70s I’ve loved creative, interpretive embroidery, often over paint, and ‘stitch’ is never far from my mind.
Though I love and admire the large stitched installations of Dorothy Caldwell, Christine Mauersberger et al, I recently found myself looking at gallery pics of a recent exhibition of quilts wondering whether I want to make ‘large’ works any more.
My works are gradually downsizing, recently 60-125cm range.
I keep thinking of groups of small works. I love the work of Helen Terry http://www.helenterryart.co.uk/blog and this exhibition of thematically related works in several small formats struck me.
“Afterglow” is a 1997 quilt I made after spending a 6-week artist in residence term in Katherine, Northern Territory. It’s a memory quilt, of walking along a dry creek bed in the bush, late on a very, very hot day to go to a cool waterhole picnic spot with some friends. The fierce heat was radiating off the rounded riverbed stones, but the thing was, after cooling off, on dusk we had to return along the same path, and the heat was still palpable.
This is one of my favourite beach photos. I edited out the footprint, doing which made the scale quite ambiguous, emphasising that erosion patterns are erosion patterns, whether in a vast desert or along the margin of your local beach. For this slide I drew basic lines and collaged that beside part of the pic as an example of how I see natural patterns, and how this one could be used in a textile artwork. This one has always fascinated me, and now it’s pinned up behind my ironing board ,where I see it daily. It’s calling to me and though I have other things to do today, I really do need to get cutting and sewing to see if I can put this into some fabric form. Yes, today, right after I finish this post.
In my advanced improvisational patchwork construction workshops, a power point presentation includes some other examples of how we can use using patterns observed in nature:
Highlighted on a computer, an interesting section of the lines on this shell could be a starting point for a patchwork unit (whatever scale you like, but in this case, the smaller the scale, the more difficult, finicky, this type of pattern becomes) It could be wonderful on a large scale… mmm. Freehand rotary cut through two contrasting fabrics, use one line to start from, and add more. A good rule here is “Less is more” (of both cuts and degree of curve) One cut=one seam, so two cuts close together when sewn up form a strong line against the contrasting background.
