Embroidered Collage

I'm still amazed that I reached the blobby figures in the atcs by beginning with snowflakes.  These three sketchbook pages show the progression.

 The first set of snowflakes is on tracing paper, created directly by tracing various feature from one snowflake in the book of micrographs.  Then I began looking at various features and trying those out.  The little line of figures on the second page was created by putting tracing paper over each spoke of the upper left snowflake, turning the circle into a line.  Then I tried enlarging them.  I did this again with another snowflake and then explored a different feature.  Wendy was most interested in the first set of figures, I imagine it was partially because they fit best into the afternoon's exercise of having a simple shape.  So I developed those further.  I like all the little arms but decided to work with the last one I drew where I pulled the arms into the body, at the upper right of the third page in this orientation.  I had intended to add the holes when I made the atcs, but never did follow up on that.

Working with tracing paper was more effective than I thought it would be.  Wendy pushed the technique to even greater lengths in her own sketchbooks, where she often had three or four layers of paper with various details and coloring overlaid on top of each other.

It never occurred to me to look at ATCs from a distance, but when Wendy had me pin the first iteration of these up on my design wall I realized what she was talking about.  I still don't think they always need such contrast, since most often a card is viewed intimately, but the additions I made to the rough images below did make most of the finished cards above better than they would have been if I hadn't been thinking about values during the embellishment stage.

I made the first iteration of imagery by playing with the blobby shape template and just cutting and moving shapes around on the different surfaces.  Fusing was the primary construction technique, with a little bit of acrylic medium when I added paper.  The picture of my workstation from Day 1 is from when I was almost halfway done with this part.

I trimmed them down to size or wrapped them over Peltex and began embellishing with watercolor crayon and stitch and eventually a little colored pencil.  I worked on that second stage off and on all week in spare moments until they were completed.  The ones with paper and fabric are slated for a swap in an online group and I'll find another swap within which to trade most of the purely fabric ones.

I wasn't in the right demographic for this presentation!  Well, I was on the information side, but the frequent references to "you probably wore something like this in the seventies" and such definitely made me chuckle inside.  I'm 30.  I was BORN in the seventies.  Those connection points were relevant for most of the room though.

On Sunday night Gayle spoke about her book Uncommon Threads: The Art Quilt Revolution in Ohio.  I had no idea that the state had been such a center for the movement.  Overall, it was a different perspective on the history of art in quilting than I had seen before.  I was intrigued to see that the first exhibit of "Patchwork as Art" was all the way back in 1909, and yet Gayle also showed a quote from the New York Time in 2002 which commented on museum-goers being surprised to see beaux-art blankies as art when they should be craft.

I didn't quite realize how the art quilt revolution in the seventies, although the term wasn't coined until 1986, and by an Ohioan, was based on the artistic exploration of the sixties, which was partially based on the vast number of students in the universities following the GI Bill after World War II.  And many of the quilters learned their skills from the ladies who had made quilts of necessity during the Depression.  It's hard for me to remember sometimes how influences span decades, although, when I think about it, my husband and I are looking forward to seeing the summer Transformers movie - which was spawned from our childhood two decades ago.

The presentation concluded with more slides of images of various quilts made by Ohioans over the years, and it was interesting to see the mix of styles.  I wish the color on the projector had been adjusted a bit though.  It kind of washed a lot of the images out.  I didn't buy the book itself, although many did, and Gayle was signing them in the back after the presentation was over.

Ten uneventful hours in the car brought me home again last night.  I'll start writing all those "later" posts tomorrow, from the trips and presentations to the art I did and have to continue working on to a final assessment of the whole experience.  In the meantime, here's the final picture of my design wall from Friday afternoon.

The end of the week banquet was hilarious, with its short and entertaining summaries of the classes, the joke contest, and the seemingly never ending supply of door prizes and raffle prizes.  I received last year's gallery issue from the Surface Design Journal as a door prize, which I did not have, so that will be nice eye candy to look at.

During the afternoon we walked around and looked at the works in all the other classes.  I'd been doing that off and on during the week, so didn't see much new, but it was still fun and I enjoyed arranging my design wall.  I put up the photos of the Footsteps, as someone had suggested earlier in the week.  I have a picture, but I'm too tired to download and resize and all tonight.  So, later.

In the morning I did do one improvisational piece and then set up a neat embroidery oriented piece from a little piece of fabric that I found in my stash.  I worked on that during the afternoon.   I painted another piece of fabric a bit and did other such tidbits.  I received a critique on my Footsteps from Wendy and it was definitely a different perspective than I'd heard before, giving me some things to think about.

All my art and supplies are packed up and in the car along with Tina's, ready to go tomorrow.  Well, except for the bag with my watercolor crayons, about which I had second thoughts about leaving in the car in the sun... 

Today we worked on narrative quilts.  I'd never actually tried to tell a story in quilt before, so this was something a bit different for me.  I listed some options and then picked the day that we brought our new kitten home a few years back.  I'm not quite sure if I'm done or not, and want to talk about all the technique details together when I present the finished work, so no pictures tonight.

What was different was working on one piece all day and not doing anything but that, with breaks for food and such.  I think if I was a full-time artist I would need to have more than one piece going at once, so I could move between them.  Of course, if I was a full-time artist I wouldn't be able to spend all my time doing art anyway because marketing would be a major factor... 

Another problem was that I desperately wanted my acrylic paints to make the background.  What I did with the fabric worked well - it even fit the definition of a quilt.  I machine stitched and fused and used the techniques well - but I would have preferred to make the entire piece more mixed media instead of all fabric.  It still has texture variations and I think the result is effective, but I don't think this is a direction I want to head on a regular basis. 

I won't forget, though, that there is a slightly different approach in creating a work this way.  It might be something I'll repeat in spurts to practice technique and push my brain one way or another.  And learning things like that is part of why I'm at QSDS, so that's good.

We have tomorrow to complete our piece, so if I'm done I'm not sure what I'll be up to.  I'll see if Wendy has suggestions or maybe I'll just do more of yesterday's caught fabric improvisational work. That would be cool.