Four in Art: Light- Shimmer

With the New Year we have a new theme for our Four in Art group.
The theme for the year is Light, which provides a host of exciting possibilities. The sub theme that Catherine has selected for this first quarter is Shimmer.

I have been lucky to have been out in my kayak a bit over the last quarter. In November last year, just after the theme was announced, I had a great trip with my Dad and (then) 17 year old son on Lake Monowai over in Fiordland in the deep south of NZ. Only about three hours drive from home, but a world away too.

We had some pretty strong winds when we set out, and there wasn't much shimmer on the surface of the water- more white horses and we were mostly concentrating on not going backwards! And there are no photos of that as we were far too busy keeping going forwards to record the effect of wind on water!  But on setting out from the hut the next day it was calm again and over the next couple of days we had plenty of opportunity to enjoy the patterns on the surface of the water and I was thinking that it really fitted my personal definition of shimmer. But had to look it up when I got home to be sure. The definition I found is:

a subdued, tremulous light or gleam. 4. a quivering or vibrating motion or image as produced by reflecting faint light or heat waves. 

This effect is really pronounced on water. It was the effect on calm water that I really hoped to capture.

 The colours and patterns vary depending on light and reflections

Those loopy patterns of dark and light shown here on the right hand side of the image are particularly captivating in the shimmer department I feel.

But how to do it? In the back of my mind I think, was the work of Pauline Burbridge who has experimented with shimmering on water, much more articulately than me, but hey you've got to start somewhere!

So I projected a photo on to the wall and because I can't really draw to save myself, I traced  that to cut shapes out of freezer paper that I then ironed onto shot cottons in four shades and fused and layered them onto a background.

Always nerve wracking to begin to add stitching when I'm fairly happy with the progress so far! And the raw edges are a challenge...

The piece measures 42 x 26cm or 16.5 x 10.25 inches and I faced it to finish.

Nowhere near as pretty as the real thing, but I'm happy to have had a go at capturing it.

Next quarter the sub theme, which I've selected this time, is Light in the Darkness which should give everyone plenty of scope. That's due to be finished on the 1st May.

In the meantime check out how everyone else has interpreted the theme at their individual blogs and/or the Four in Art blog


Betty at a Flickr site 
Catherine  at Knotted Cotton
Elizabeth at opquilt.com
Janine at Rainbowhare
Nancy at  Patchwork Breeze
Rachel at The Life of Riley
Simone at Quiltalicious
Susan at PatchworknPlay

Four in Art- Second Quarter

Time for the second quarter reveal for the Four in Art group. This quarter's theme was Colour: Music, an easy theme I thought... I had an idea right away but in the end I really struggled to bring it to life.

As soon as the theme was revealed, I thought of a quote I had heard years ago, about how the colour purple might be described to a blind person as the deep notes of a trumpet. I searched for the quote and couldn't find it but the image was quite visual to me, with purple sound waves emanating from a trumpet in profile. (I had a hard time getting the colour to show up as the purple it is so you'll have to take my word for that. After weeks of sunshine today is grey and dark so hard to photograph true colours).

I made three different attempts to realise my idea and am still not at all happy with the result. In fact I'm feeling quite embarrassed having to publish my effort... but the idea of the group, for me at least, is to stretch my creative muscles in making something to a theme within a timeframe and to try to identify what makes something work or not. So I'm trying to hold it lightly as a learning experience. Maybe you can help me identify what would have made it work?

I like my profile trumpet which I cut out and fused to the background. I like the idea of the sound waves, but they're not quite right. I tried ribbon on another one and I've tried different colours and shapes. Perhaps the wave form is not right across the space? I quite like how they're fading out, but maybe the zigzag needed to be denser?

Or they needed to be altogether fatter? Or the waves all needed to match and echo one another?  I tried different waveforms but couldn't decide what worked. Perhaps the problem is with the negative space? Definitely the quilting is a problem. My initial idea was to echo quilt the waves and I tried more colour with lines in a lightly variegated purple thread- lots of unpicking after that...

In the end I ran out of time- there's learning in that; but don't seem to have had much success on trying to start earlier- spent plenty of time reading this and this and this...so now I'm all sorted!

My daughter has it worked out, she said sometimes creative projects just don't work and you probably should just scrap it and try a new idea- yeah- that one! But I would actually be interested to read your comments as to what would have improved this one, coz I feel like success must be in there somewhere trying to get out.

You can see how the others in our group interpreted the theme; we have a blog, Four-in-Art Quilts, but you can also visit the rest of us here:

Betty         https://www.flickr.com/photos/toot2

Catherine    http://www.knottedcotton.com

Elizabeth    https://occasionalpiece.wordpress.com/

Janine         http://www.rainbowhare.com

Nancy        http://www.patchworkbreeze.blogspot.co.uk/

Rachel        http://www.rachel-thelifeofriley.blogspot.com

Simon         http://quiltalicious.blogspot.com

Susan         http://patchworknplay.blogspot.com

Four in Art- Microscopic Colour

There's nothing like a deadline for getting going on a project! I'm lucky enough to be part of an online group called Four in Art where we challenge ourselves to come up with a quilted something to fit a given theme four times a year. This year's theme is Colour and this quarter it's Microscopic Colour. I found it a pretty inspiring theme and had several ideas which I could have followed up on. Whether they would have worked is another thing, but nice to feel inspired to begin with!

I remembered seeing these brightly coloured images of microscopic algae, but I didn't remember they were called Diatoms. An image web search of "microscopic colour" quickly located and named them for me. Apparently the Victorians had a thing for photographing them and arranging them in patterns, often in circular forms.

Diatoms are widely varying in form, but almost always show bilateral symmetry so I thought I could use patterned features of fabric from my scraps and cut them out and fuse them onto a background.
I have done almost no appliqué and have always shied away from fiddly edges, so wasn't sure how this would go. I decided to raw edge appliqué them, hoping that the stitching would represent the silica cell wall that is a defining feature of diatoms. I think I could have made more of this perhaps with a denser stitch. To be honest I was a bit scared of ruining it. If I'd had more time I could have experimented with that step a bit more.

I decided to do free motion echo quilting around the shapes in black thread. I thought about using monofilament for a bit of shine, but ended up deciding on the plain black.

To finish I used a facing (tutorial here) rather than a binding as I though the binding would provide a too dominant defined edge on such a small piece. It finishes as 12" square.

One slight issue which I hadn't anticipated, is that I used cotton bamboo batting which I had on hand, but it has bearded very slightly. I was trying to remove the dust/lint and on close inspection realised that the quilting process has actually pulled very tiny threads of batting up to the top of the piece. I haven't struck this before, perhaps I'm just noticing this because of the dark background. I'd be interested to know if others have had this issue before and what to do about it?

Can't wait to see how others have been inspired by the theme. You can check them all out here on the Four in Art blog from 6am Monday 1st Feb US EST. Being in NZ I think I have a slight head-start.