Posts Tagged ‘strip patterns’

“In Fourteen Hundred And Ninety Two…

Monday, August 14th, 2023

Columbus sailed the ocean blue” go the famous first two lines from a children’s poem on American history of which I first learned while we lived in USA, 1987-94.

Probably in 1991, before the quincentenary of the discovery of what became known as The New World – the Americas, Quilters Newsletter Magazine announced some competition or call for an exhibition to go in their pages to help mark this huge event in modern world history. I don’t remember the exact details of it, however I clearly remember making my entry, which unfortunately was not selected:

“In Search Of The New World” 1992, 130cm x 130cm

Last week I realised that although this quilt was listed in my ‘master list’, I hadn’t noticed a photo of it anywhere for a very long time. Since then I have been searching, knowing it has to be in my computer somewhere – and eventually just an hour ago I found it in an external hard drive I haven’t accessed for years. Please share my joy! One possible reason for not finding it is I didn’t have the title exactly right in the search – duh. Anyway, I immediately re-saved it into this computer, and now it will probably pop up somewhere just because I’m no longer looking for it…

Detail “In Search Of The New World”, machine pieced and quilted.

I was a bit disappointed when my work was rejected, but I’d already had acceptance and rejection experience so took it philosophically. When the selected ones were published later that year, I saw there were some some much better ones than this one.

Now looking at it, I know the shiny blue fabric said ‘water’, and the earthy coloured strips said, to me anyway, ‘earth’. If you look carefully, in the detail shot you can see spherical shapes representing the round earth, (as many at that time still believed the Earth to be flat) but now I see those spheres were way too subtle, but it’s an interesting idea I might revisit some time. Probably the horizontal strips of fabric should have had some green in them, to suggest ‘land’. Plus the strips themselves were perfectly straight edged, not at all land like… I had not yet learned the basics of improvisational cutting and piecing, but If I’d known them then, those strips might have looked more like islands in the blue, and been more appealing. The best features of this landscape+history inspired work are the wonderful cerulean blue polished cotton furnishing fabric, and the inspired freehand watery machine quilting pattern.

New Collector

Monday, May 16th, 2022

These two quilts have just been acquired by the Australian Embassy in Buenos Aires, Argentina, which also serves Australian interests and Aussies in Paraguay and Uruguay. Here in Montevideo last week, I handed them over to an embassy staff member who was about to return to Argentina after some business here. As most of our consular needs can be handled here in Montevideo, I’ve only had to attend the embassy in person a couple of times in the last decade, so I expect that might be the last I see of either of them. I understand they’ll be hanging in areas fairly accessible to the public, and look forward to seeing the installation shots. In their new posts I hope they give embassy staff and visitors pleasure for years to come.

Ebb&Flow #10 “Red Tide” 157cmw x 114cmh
Timetracks#4 “Surge” 100cmw x 106cmh

Another Discovery

Saturday, October 27th, 2018

 Mirage 1, 2005.    75 x 100cm                     Oscuro, 2002.   122cm  x 100cm.

 

These two small wall quilts date from early 2002.   Looking through archived images this morning I found the one on the right, and though I remembered it, and occasionally come across it in the deepest recesses of my storage area.  For a while I couldn’t remember what on earth I called it, but eventually I did, and I now believe the illustrated catalogue to be complete.  The key word is ‘believe’, leaving some wiggle room for another discovery.

Mirage 1 was really just a sample to see how fine I could go with a wavy line approach, and gently waving lines like these have characterised my technique ever since.  It’s no great art work, but a little piece I love and usually take to any technical workshop that includes freehand piecing.  I had just been inspired by the new appearance of very finely pieced works by well known Australian artist and friend, Margery Goodall, which has since become a signature element in her textile art.  The title reflects the shimmering quality of a mirage.

Oscuro also has little artistic merit, but is another piece I needed to make.  The arcs of colour which began appearing in my work several years before seemed appropriate for those unforgettable images of rolling, falling, clouds of smoke, ash, all manner of debris, that filled our minds following New York’s Twin Towers attack in 2001.  The barely visible machine quilted pattern is of same-colour grey arcs over the entire quilt.  Oscuro is spanish for dark.

Natural and Man Made Tracks

Friday, September 28th, 2018

I remember taking this wonderful pic of many Man-made tracks criss-crossing the foreground in the Egyptian Black Desert  SSW of Cairo over 10 years ago.  Other timetracks, the worn down mountains surrounded by the fine sand deserts have been shaped principally by wind erosion.

The human bootprint I cropped out of this lovely pic would have told you these are very tiny little ‘cliffs’ in fine sand, photographed on our local beach just a few metres above the edge of the outgoing tide.  So, this time the erosional force is water, also indicated by the fine pattern of wiggly lines which are tracks of tiny little bivalves that burrow into the wet sand as the tide retreats.  I always feel I’d like to do something with the lines on this surface – well, make that something more – although this next image is a quilt,  New Directions, made many years before I saw the  pattern on the beach.

In “New Directions” (each square 12cm) the lines and arrows represent people coming to our ancient continent from all directions over its entire  human history.  The black/tan signifies the original immigrants, the Aboriginal people, who crossed the land bridges from Asia, at least 60,000 years ago.

 

Ebb&Flow 26

Monday, September 24th, 2018

Round 2 of the 2018 SAQA Online Auction of 12″sq. quiltlets starts today at 2pm Eastern Daylight Time USA, 3am EST Australian time, 3pm Uruguay time.  The works are all donated by Studio Art Quilt members each year to support the organisation’s touring exhibition programme.  Full information on the auction and the online bidding form is all here

My donation, Ebb&Flow 26, is well down the page.  The background fabric is silver speckled black, and it’s machine quilted with silver metallic thread.

 

A couple of friends collect them and have attractively grouped several pieces together on walls in their homes – why not start your collection today?

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All images and text are © Alison Schwabe
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