Journal Quilts 2003 Made for the Journal Quilts exhibit at the International Quilt Festival in Houston, Texas in November 2003. |
January My idea this year is The Progression of Materials From Minimum to Maximum. For the first month I've just used batting scraps, pulled and stretched cheesecloth (painted with Setacolor) and rayon thread. Bare minimum, essentials, color. Quilting lines become very important as the focus of the design. The exposed batting is a nice creamy color that goes well with the gentle pink of the cheesecloth. |
February Sheer - layers of sheers still have texture, especially when you intentionally put the wrong side out! This one sheer with large gold embroidered polka dots was much more interesting on the wrong side of the fabric. |
March Silk - Floaty feeling of un-quilted silks, hand-painted with Setacolor. The dark shapes give the design a grounding, but the layers move in the air, movement/dance expressed. Reminds me of the troubled spring sky outside. |
April Fringe - Also silk and hand-painted with Setacolor. I love this contrast of the smooth silk (with the painting making it look wrinkled and textured), and the fuzzy, furry fringe. Majority of the weight at the top of the design instead of balanced throughout. |
May Tyvek- painted with metallic acrylics, heated, stitched on machine. I like the contrast of the smoothness and bumpy, piled-up melted parts, opening out onto holes exposing the painted batting inside. I emphasized the holes with additional thread painting stitching around each hole. I will never forget the squeaking sound of the needle going through the two layers of Tyvek and batting. |
June "Normal" - Or at least normal for me! An all pink study, out of my hand-dyed and painted fabrics, closely free-motion quilted. Texture is established by patterns of quilting and some of the lines on the painted fabric. Mixture of normal piecing and raw edge appliqué. |
July Scraps - Using many colorful scraps of hand-dyes, batiks and other commercial cottons left over on my worktable. A lot of my small pieces get their materials in this manner, I just can't throw away the scraps that are out. I am drawn in and seduced by the juxtaposition of colors and patterns. I leave the shapes as is, and don't fuss too much with re-cutting. The design and placement of the fabrics is intuitive and somewhat of a working meditation. Quilted in random sized circles. |
August Beads, Shishas, Thread Painting - All purple-ish, except for a few yellow spots, different types of fabrics, cottons, satin, silk, polyester, flexible shisha mirrors, glass beads and rayon threads, edged in purple chenille yarn. This was an experiment in how the thread painting that I like to do shows up on the different types of materials I used. |
September Leather - Hand-dyed and painted fabrics, painted leather, rayon threads, edged in eyelash yarn. This design experiment emphasizes the heaviness of the leather shapes, and the flatness of the "right" side of the leather. The texture of the "wrong" side of the leather was a good base to bridge between the cotton fabric and the leather pieces. I used a decorative stitching with varying stitch length to emphasize the curved lines. |
This page was last updated on: November 1, 2003
