quake quilt

I finished the first quake quilt, well, in fact the only quake quilt that I needed to make. The tissue paper (see previous post) did sort of work, strangely better through the HP up and over than through the Epson straight path. I used a method I found on the internet where you fold the tissue paper over the edge of a piece of A4, and then stick it down with tape. Fusing to freezer paper worked, but I couldn't get it to separate afterwards. But I decided against the tissue paper, as it was very grey and depressing looking. My last attempt was to use extravorganza. This gave a less black print, and I found the white look a bit offputting. So I painted it with a weak wash of green and some metallic acrylic. I liked the look, but from more than a metre away it totally got lost.

OK. Abandoned that plan and decided to put writing on with fused fabric. I also felt that the right side of the seismograph was a bit empty and meaningless. So I fused on 3 different buildings showing damage - just in a cartoonish kind of way. Not to get too literal. The final thing was to make the lettering for the top word, using one eighth inch strips - very fiddly. I'm glad I don't write names on grains of rice for a living!

I am happy with the finished article. It has impact, and tells a story. Although it was one of my projects that have to come from the stash, while I was shopping for fusible web, I saw a FQ of some gorgeous Australian designed print, that was perfect for a binding. Pillar box red with dark blue and gold. It tied everything together well.

Tomorrow I will revisit some felting ideas.

Spring cometh

It was a bizarre start to the day, when I awoke to an inch of crunchy snow, but a blue sky and sunshine. Luckily it had all melted by lunchtime when the temperature was more like 17!

I have 3 quake ideas in the assembly line. The first is of a seismograph of the 7.1 quake, but on a strip pieced background that hints at grassy paddocks and landscapes. Over that I want to put some transparent newspaper cuttings, or figures representing the important information. I found a site which lets you write your own newspaper headline and beginning of an article. It only has one style, though. I tried to do a test print using TAP, but it didn't work - not enough of the ink transferred. My next idea is to try tissue paper on a carrier sheet and attached by textile medium. Again I will do a test run.

The other two pieces are a fault line idea from another set of strips out of the scrap basket, and a wide wavy village in the Laura Wasilowski style. I am not sure they will all get made, as the traumatic effects are receding.

I have been investigating online C and G course in quilting, but it seems like they are almost extinct, just people who are already enrolled finishing their classes. A bit disappointing, but maybe I just need to do the work myself and not 'study'.

Ups and downs

Last week I finished a FFFC project more or less on time. However, while I was nearing the end, Christchurch was hit with a huge earthquake and 400 or so aftershocks. It was such a trauma, both to live through the quake, and then to have a week of life disrupted, demolition, amazement at the damage, and loss for some. Though I had enforced time off work, since all schools were closed in the area, it was hard to focus on art and gardening or anything else I would normally revel in. Now I need to work through some of my emotions in a quake quilt.

But the FFFC project was a good one. As always, I found that something that caught my imagination, and had its own momentum for execution, meant a successful outcome.
The parameters were metal and optimistic colours. I went to my mixed media drawer, toyed with copper knitted wire, stainless steel mesh and foils. The copper wire was in a tube, which suggested fish scales to me. I am not that excited by fish, and idea of a mermaid came to me. I researched online drawings, and cobbled together sections from 4 of them, giving a mermaid sitting on a rock, admiring herself in a mirror.

I had several sea fabrics, one of which seemed ideal - some movement but not stormy. I worked through the value issues, where the fabric that I really wanted to use for the tail was too close to the rock background. In the end, it seemed fine to use a terracotta, since mermaids are mythical and we can portray them how we like! The long hair meant I could get away with only showing one hand, and a token Barbie face put on with textile markers. I made the mirror out of a kind of angelina fused on both sides with black misty fuse. I used a floral print that I've always wanted to use but has sat in the stash for 10 years. Fussy cut and layered, it made a good border, giving the illusion of a tropical island. The sky was a fossil fern in a warm yellow.



Near the end I added the copper wire, The tube was too dense in the narrow area, so I cut in half, which left a few sharp ends that need bending before using a metallic thread for a buttonhole couching.

I put on a false back, did a minimum of re-quilting and put on some beads for a necklace and to catch down the copper wire.

To finish - binding? facing? no, satin stitch with a couching of banana fibre.

It's really not my thing - fantasy and cuteness! But I love the composition.