My Element Quilt

For the Material Mavens internet group that I am a part of, our fourth quilt (which was due March 15) was to depict the theme of "Element."  We had such a great variety of interpretations of this theme!

I chose to go way back to the ancient philosophers, who believed that all the world was made up of four elements:  air, water, fire, and earth.  I decided to do an abstract quilt.  I sketched a number of designs and chose one of them.  Curved lines always appeal to me, and so each of my sketches involved lines that curved and intersected one another.

Once I had my design, I made templates by tracing the shapes the lines formed onto freezer paper.  I used all batik fabrics, selecting blues that reminded me of sky (for "air") and water; for the latter, I had some wonderful fish-motif batiks.  I likewise chose batiks that spoke to me of fire.  And then, fabrics in browns and greens--some with leaf designs, some that looked to me like tree bark--for the Earth quadrant.

I prepared all the fabrics with Wonder-Under, and then I ironed the freezer paper to the fabric and cut the various shapes out with scissors.  These pieces I then adhered to some polyester felt for the batting.  I saw that a few areas needed some additions, so I free-hand cut a few other shapes.

I echo quilted around the shapes, using thread colors that blended in with them.  For the backing--applied after I had quilted--I used what I had first intended to be the front:  a 12"x12"piece that I had string-pieced to tear-away stabilizer, using many of the same batiks but also some regular quilting fabrics.  I loved this design, but it didn't have the abstract look I was seeking, and thus it became the back!  Lastly, I bound the quilt with some pale green batik that appeared in the Earth section of my quilt.

Here is the back of the quilt:

P.S. to Vincent's Chair: The Quilt's Back

I forgot to say anything in my last post about the back of my Vincent’s Chair quilt.  I deliberately used a fabric that might seem rather discordant, but as a matter of fact, it has a connection to the front.  Provence is famous for its fabrics.  I associate blue and yellow prints with this part of France.  In fact, while in Arles, my sister-in-law and I did a bit of shopping, and I bought some blue and yello Provençal fabric which I am saving for some special project.  I also bought two table cloths and a set of napkins.

So it was fun for me to look through my stash of blue and yellow prints to find one to put on the back of this Provençal quilt of Vincent’s Chair!  This piece was not bought in Provence, but it fits right in.

The back looks a bit odd, with the varying colors of the binding, but of course, they were chosen (as explained in the former post) from the fabrics that lay along the borders of the quilt.

Today is Reveal Day for our Material Mavens Group!

Alice's South Quilt--Vincent's Chair

I hope all readers of this post will hurry on over to The Material Mavens blog to see the gorgeous quilts that are going up there all day today, January 15.  I am blown away by them.  I thought the first two groups of quilts were wonderful, but it seems to me that our Mavens are really pulling out all the stops on this theme, South, and the results are varied and beautiful.  I can't wait to see them all!

In this post here, though, I thought I'd write a bit more than I did in my narrative on the Mavens blog about constructing my quilt.  I won't repeat what I had to say there, but will amplify it a bit.  I DID think immediately of doing a Vincent Van Gogh quilt, based on one of his works that he did in Arles, where we visited in 2009.  Choosing which one was difficult, though, as I had so many from which to choose!  My final decision was based on the simplicity of the composition of "Vincent's Chair" and the fact that it moved and touched me emotionally.

I loved thinking about Vincent painting this picture of the rush-bottomed, yellow chair in his room, and including the crumpled up tobacco pouch and his pipe.  I had some sprouting onions myself in my kitchen, and that he included a box of sprouting onions in his painting was another homey touch that I loved.

Believe it or not, the simplest part of the quilt was the part I had the hardest time with--the background!  I made three different versions of it before I was satisfied!  The first, the one most faithful to the colors that I could see in the print that I own of this painting, just looked to dull and washed-out to me.  Van Gogh used bright, vibrant colors, and these were too grayed down.  My second version was better, and I actually hand-embroidered the grout in the tile floor and loved that part of it, but that one was rectangular and "framed" with bright yellow fabric, to represent a wooden frame.  But putting that onto a square piece of batting and seeing how odd it looked to have two wide strips at the side and two narrow ones at top and bottom made me discard #2.

Didn't like the background color of the
door but it was nice to
have another chair on which
to practice with my pastels for fabric!

I didn't care for the frame, but I
did love the way I handled
the grout with
hand-embroidery

So I decided to change the proportions of Van Gogh's original work.  I sketched off the painting on graph paper, placing my freezer paper template for the chair to aid me in placing the grout lines on the tile floor:

the sketch on graph paper

I cut out the pieces for the wall, door, and floor using my freezer paper templates:

templates for background and chair's seat

I free-hand cut the onions and their green sprouts from batik fabrics.  After sandwiching the quilt I did the floor stitching, the machine quilting on the wall, several green lines of stitching on the door.  Then I fused and appliqued the box and the chair in my usual way.  Finally, I did what was the "new technique" that I try to employ on each MM quilt--this time, shading and shadowing with fabric pastels.  THIS step was the most fun and gave me the biggest sense of satisfaction in this little 12"x12" quilt.

Surprise in the Midst of Drought, Number Two

Surprise in the Midst of Drought, #2

This is the second quilt I have made based on the photo I took during the hot summer drought of some brave little wild flower survivors!  A friend like my original quilt so much that she asked if she could buy it.  I didn't want to part with it, since it was the one I had done for my Material Mavens group, but I told her I'd love to make a second one for her, as a gift, not for her to purchase.

 I had lots of fun making the second quilt!  This is the second duplicate quilt I've made this year; the first one was the Michigan Beach Boys quilt, which was different in several ways from the first.  This one, too,  is NOT an exact duplicate.  I used the photo to guide me, not the first quilt.  So the flowers appear in different positions, and I included more of the green leaves.

Just to compare, here is Surprise in the Midst of Drought, Number One below.  I took this photo outside, and it's interesting to me that the hand stitching seems to show up so much better in this one than in Number Two:

Surprise in the Midst of Drought, #1

So now I'll who a photo of Number Two, taken outside, to see if the stitching shows up better than in the one I took inside, beside a bright window, using no flash.  Here's the outdoor shot of #2.  The colors are truer; definitely, I need always to take these little quilt's pictures outside on a bright, sunny day:

Outside shot:  Surprise in the Midst of Drought, #2

And now, just for fun, I'll reprint the photo on which these two quilts are based.  As you can see, I took great liberties with how I interpreted this photo in my little quilts.  In neither are the flower positioned as they are here and I didn't include nearly as many of the green leaves:

My Surprise Quilt for Material Mavens

"Surprise in the Midst of Drought" is what I named this quilt

Last Tuesday, November 15th, was the second "reveal day" for  the international art quilting group of which I am a member, The Material Mavens.  Our first theme was Harmony; this second one was Surprise.  I based my little 12"x12" quilt on a lovely discovery I made on September 16, the day after our first reveal.  It was still hot, still summer here in Texas, so I set out on a walk very early in the morning.  Just a block from my house, I saw in the middle of a patch of weeds some little wild flowers blooming.  We'd not had rain for months!  How could they have survived?  I thought about these flowers while I walked, and then realized that they could be turned into a quilt on our new theme, Surprise.  So I went back home for my camera and took several photos.  The one I liked best was this one:

I used batiks for most of the dead weeds and also for the flowers' living ones and for the flowers themselves.  A fusible web was added to the fabrics before I sliced them into various lengths and widths, and then I fused them to the background fabric, which was a left over piece from the fabric I painted for the Three Boys quilt--the beach fabric.  I couched two different yarns to for more weeds, and after I cut free hand some flowers and leaves, I appliqued them by machine with a tiny zig zag stitch.  Then I used an embroidery running stitch and embroidery floss for the quilting.

I will post on our Material Mavens blog some additional "process" photos, and more details about the construction of this little quilt.  But here are a few photos of the quilt in process:

fusing the first weeds down to the background

couching the gold yarn for more weeds

couching the brown, "hairy" yarn

appliqueing by machine the flowers and leaves

a close-up of the embroidery stitches  used for quilting this piece

Three Lake Michigan Beach Boys Quilt --Now in its Home!

This is the quilt that I have posted about earlier at great length!  I wrote 11 posts about the construction of this quilt back in July and August.  As discussed no doubt there, this is the second quilt I've made, based on a photo taken by the mother of the two little boys on the left five years ago.  I gave the quilt to their mother, our daughter Susan, for a recent birthday. Now the quilt is hanging in her home, upstairs in the playroom, a wonderfully sunny sort of loft area that all the bedrooms and the stairway open into.  It is hanging above a sofa that we gave to Susan many years ago, when she started graduate school in North Carolina and had almost no furniture to furnish her apartment.  This sofa has had so many different reupholsterings!  For years it was in our den in our old house.

It is exciting to me to see this quilt now in its new home!  This is such an appropriate spot for it, and I think it looks great hanging here.

My First Material Mavens Quilt--Asian Harmonies

This is my quilt for my new Internet Art Quilt group, The Material Mavens.  Our group is made up of 12 art quilters from the East Coast to the West, down to Texas, and across the Atlantic to Scotland.  We make 12"x 12" quilts based on themes chosen in turn by our members.  Our first theme was Harmony.

I debated many ideas and designs before finally settling on this one.  Here I sun-printed the Chinese characters for harmony on some fabric that I had just painted, using a combination of two blues and black, acrylic fabric paint.  To do this, I cut out the characters from craft foam and laid them onto the background and then placed the fabric in the sun.  As hot as it's been, and as bright as the sun, the printing process took very little time.

Then I cut out from commercial fabrics the Yin-Yang and fused first and then appliqued it with a small zig zag stitch to the background.  Next from some lovely Asian-themed commercial fabrics I cut out two Koi, whose tails and bodies just fit each side of the Yin-Yang.  I used the same fusing and applique methods as before.

I backed the quilt with some blue fabric that is printed with Chinese characters--who knows what words are used there!  I used the pillow case method of finishing the edges.

a close-up view of the sun-printed Chinese characters for Harmony

A close up of my two koi

The back of my quilt