The shape of texture

My local fiber art group, QuArtz has been spending this year studying the elements of design.  For each of the elements (line, shape, texture, balance) the group was issued a challenge.  You saw my result for the challenge related to "line" here.  In that post I noted that we were also challenged to come up with a piece relating SHAPE and TEXTURE, but with the added obstacle of incorporating a copper "scrubbie".

Well, it took some time, but here is a close up of what I did with the scrubbie.

I pulled some of the wire out of it, turned it into a bow and attached it.  I made some of the scrubbie pieces into little rolls and attached them with hand stitching.  Fancy machine stitching was used to apply the cotton pieces.  Here is a picture of the entire piece.

I called it The Shape of Texture.  Incorporating the scrubbie was indeed a challenge.

I hear music, music, music

Among the many challenges that I have on my plate, I really need to continue the work on my piece for Tangled Textiles.  The theme, MUSIC, was to have a reveal on November 30, but as you can see from the blog over there, it's been postponed till January 12th.

This gives me a bit more time to add some finishing touches to my piece.  In the meantime, you will have to be happy seeing a sneak peak.

I'm off to sing some more and see if I can stay in tune.

Remnants are revealed

It was reveal day over at Tangled Textiles yesterday.  Go have a look! Everyone is showing off their interpretation of the theme "Remnants".  This is my piece and yes, it still needs to be bound or faced.  I am waiting to see what my TTs suggest.

My initial idea was to rust fabric.  I had never done that before and thought using some rusted fabric would add to the idea of a remnant piece of cloth.  Well the rusting did not happen.  Instead I decided to go in a different direction, which I  suspected would take a little less time.  I scorched pieces.  The quilt has a pieced background, FMQ (which is hard to see in this photo), and applique. 

This piece represents the remnants left after a fire has roared through a home leaving behind the remainder of furniture, appliances, photos and family heirlooms.

A Blue reveal

It's reveal day over at the Tangled Textiles blog.  You can see what others are revealing today relating to the "blue" theme.    Here is mine. 

TA DA!!! A Blue Delft Tragedy! I learned some valuable lessons with this one.

I found this fabric and thought it was perfect. With a bit of fussy cutting it could work for the images on the mask.

It was tricky cutting all those tiny shapes, but here is a close up of some of the pieces that I fussy cut.

 

I had to figure out how to get the shadow on the mask and at the same time have the blue flowers on the mask show up.   I tried several different fabrics but thought I would be able to get the best result by using organza for the shadow.  I could fuse the organza, but what to use.  I experimented with Wonder Under and Misty Fuse. 

 If you look closely, you can see that the Misty Fuse piece shows hairline webbing and I didn't want to have that showing on the organza.  But how do you cut up the organza so that it doesn't fray....

with a wood burning tool. It works beautifully. But I learned that it was easier to burn it if the fusible web paper was left attached to the piece.  So now I had all the pieces for the mask, but what about the background. A sense of tiles for the background would be good. The grid created with blue satin ribbon, looked a little flat.  Some FMQ helped.  Here's a close up.

It was time to apply the mask to the background.  I fused the mask to the background and discovered that I not only had "shadow" on the mask, but some shadowing from behind too.  Look closely....

See it there on the forehead?  Oh well...I'll know better next time. 

Round One completed

Well, the first round of the Tangled Textiles group has finished. Initial uncertainty and trepidation  has given way to a sense of accomplishment.   Think of it... as a group we have revealed 64 quilts since we began with Beverly's"Games"  challenge announced in April 2011 and completed with Vicki's "Beginnings" this past month. 

from upper left these are the pieces I created  for
Games, Celebrate, Tools, Look Up, Green, Balance, Architecture, Beginnings

We have learned what we like, and what methods we prefer to use to create our pieces.  Encouragement and support from the group has given me the courage to experiment and try techniques that I would not have considered in the past.  Looking at the ones that I completed like this, what do you think? Is there a commonality in these? Is applique where I'm headed?

The journey thus far has been more than I anticipated and what a wonderful journey it has been.  I'm very excited and pleased that we have decided to continue the journey and look forward to seeing what the next series will produce.

Now I just have to get brainstorming my next one.