The first one of these puff compositions I named Growth, and in the couple of months since I’ve made more and enjoyed exploring them, so they’ve become a series with that name.
Not only did I have no idea what I would do with it, I confess I also bought the gold version on a black background. This fabric is polyester, a very fine jersey knit so a bit stretchy, and when filled with polyester fibre it feels nice and squishy. Very light, so all the large and medium puffs in this group have from 1 to 5 really heavy glass beads right inside to give the group a bit of heft that feels more commensurate with their appearance and size when handled.
I’m currently working on another in cottons and glittery party fabrics in shades of red, orange and pink, both prints and hand-dyed, plus tiny gold beads, of course. It’s the last new work I’m making to include in my January solo exhibition, and I have a date for Eduardo to take some photography early December. But I’ll get back to them sometime early in the New Year, and have plans to go much larger.
For more on how I’ve always chosen and bought fabric:https://www.alisonschwabe.com/weblog/?p=1712 My most important fabric rule is that I only ever buy a fabric that I love, because I know I will use it, sometime. My other rules:
- If it appeals, I buy a 1/8 – 1/4 metre/yard
- if I really like it I buy 1/2 m/yd.
- If it’s something special to me I buy 1 – 3 m/yds.
- If I am quite over-the-top delirious at finding it, which has happened a couple of times, and I’ve just bought what was left on the bolt.
As I go larger with thee forms, making balls of waste fabric into the core inside to puff covering could become something of a stash reducer. Although as quilt making artists go, my fabric stash has always been very modest (which I attribute to my peripatetic life history) Starting from the time I took up quilt making in 1989, to when I began living here in Uruguay c. 2000, I was used to being able to pop out to a nearby fabric store that stocked only the kinds of fabrics I liked to work with any time I liked/needed to. Such shops aren’t a thing here, which in turn influenced me to explore ways of working with other fabrics, both natural and man made.