{"id":8787,"date":"2024-09-23T13:31:32","date_gmt":"2024-09-23T18:31:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.alisonschwabe.com\/weblog\/?p=8787"},"modified":"2024-09-23T13:53:37","modified_gmt":"2024-09-23T18:53:37","slug":"8787","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.alisonschwabe.com\/weblog\/?p=8787","title":{"rendered":"From Small To Large"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

My quilt in the SAQA Benefit Auction, Spirogyra<\/strong><\/em>, sold in the middle of last week, and today I received notification that the buyer is a maker herself and a well known Californian collector, so I’m very pleased to have a piece in her collection at last. In thanking her for her support of SAQA, I wanted to give her some insight to the thinking and processes that led me to make the 12″ auction piece, way back in early February this year. (That’s a time I often find it convenient to do a couple of small projects while working in front of a cooling fan) That’s quite a while ago now, so I needed to look up a few blog posts and after thinking about it for a while, my email to her included the following comments: <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Since I began freehand cutting and piecing in the early 90s, inserted strips or wandering lines, as I think of them, have long been part of my work.\u00a0 These strips began signifying bits of memory, as a way of adding important colours into essentially landscape backgrounds, as I frequently associate places we’ve lived or travelled with particular colours.\u00a0 My textile art background from waaaay back is interpretive or creative embroidery, and I have long felt that the most expressive stitch of all is that most basic one – the glorious straight stitch including the stemmed versions of other stitches like french knots and fly stitch.\u00a0 \u00a0These elements came together in 2020 with\u00a0Pandemic Pattern\u00a0<\/a> With plenty of time at home to follow ideas, and having always been a keen sample maker, I joined some scraps of fabric in earthy colours and trimmed them to segmented strips which I then couched\/hand appliqued with gold thread, a work that became\u00a0Bush Colours<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0 It is really a landmark quilt, because many works featuring segmented lines have followed.\u00a0 I love the whole process of piecing and raw edge stitching\/couching of those lines.\u00a0 Experimentation and sample making early this year led to making\u00a0Spirogyra. Green is my favourite colour, and from that section of the colour wheel I have heaps of scraps and offcuts after making a bedspread several years ago. As these particular techniques are incredibly economical in fabric usage, I have enough to continue producing works featuring these colours for quite a while yet!\u00a0<\/em> The links in this paragraph go to specific blog posts dealing with these works in detail.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Quite often small works such as those in SAQA’s annual Spotlight and Benefit Auctions or the Ozquilt biennial Australia Wide<\/a> calls (40cm sq.) lead on to larger pieces, such as the one I’m now working on, with a working title of Spirogyra 2<\/em> – <\/p>\n\n\n

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Being larger gives scope for much more complexity and exploration of the depth created by weaving the strips over and under. <\/p>\n\n\n

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Quilting has started, and at the moment is fine traditional quilting along both edges of the segmented and the machine+hand sewn strips. The blank empty gaps will need to be quilted by something that retreats to the background. ie is less visible, in a darker colour and a fine texture, suggesting the watery medium of a pond or very slow river, in which strands of Spirogyra float. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In addition to my belief in the value of making samples, I also believe that in writing about my work and thinking a little deeper about certain aspects of it helps me understand the role of textile art in my creative life.<\/em><\/strong> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My quilt in the SAQA Benefit Auction, Spirogyra, sold in the middle of last week, and today I received notification that the buyer is a maker herself and a well known Californian collector, so I’m very pleased to have a piece in her collection at last. In thanking her for her support of SAQA, I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8787","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/s6uxpF-8787","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alisonschwabe.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8787","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alisonschwabe.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alisonschwabe.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alisonschwabe.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alisonschwabe.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8787"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.alisonschwabe.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8787\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8795,"href":"https:\/\/www.alisonschwabe.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8787\/revisions\/8795"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alisonschwabe.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8787"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alisonschwabe.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8787"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alisonschwabe.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8787"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}