Posts Tagged ‘patched triangles’

Scraps Of Inspiration 3

Wednesday, January 4th, 2023

Triangles are one of the most basic primal shapes. It’s hard to say which one is my favourite out of square, circle and triangle, but for the moment let me say I’m on a triangle jag 🙂 or should I say ‘another’ triangle streak.

The following is a slice of detail of a scrap quilt I made for us in 2009 without any intention to exhibit it, because even then it wasn’t innovative, but looking back it might be said to be Modern at least. It was also something I needed to do for my love of triangles and improvisational piecing. I had it machine quilted with a lovely ginko leaf pattern by a Colorado longarm quilter whose name escapes me now, unfortunately.

Ebb & Flow Scrap 2009, detail. Triangles ~6″ side.

So a few weeks ago I had another compulsion to feature interrupted triangle shapes. This time I used hand appliqued stripes of strips that I’ve assembled and begun using in the last month or so (see recent posts) And though I love regular grids, I made this one irregular while still suggesting organisation.

Rough cut stripes of strips – see previous posts – machine basted into place
The left side triangles show hand stitched strips which I’m trimming a bit where necessary as I go.

At this point I’m thinking about the background, those dark spaces. They need to to be patterned either by wavy horizontal-ish lines linking and/or echoing the stripy strips or the texture could echo ‘the triangle’ shape itself. I’m considering a hand quilted mesh of dotted meandering lines forming irregular triangular patterns – and will need to do a sample of course. Where those lines intersect I’d put either a dot or a tiny triangle of some kind…. and at this point I declare my admiration for the beautiful stitch-like paintings of Australian artist Shane Drinkwater which I know are influencing how I see this work moving forwards.

The triangular shapes pinned into place, ready to be basted into position.

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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