The inspiration and process for making my "Stone Love" quilt

In 2012 at the Festival of Quilts in Birmingham UK I attended a class called "Digital imagery in stitched textiles" with Sandra Meech.

The aim of the course was to make the connection between the images we take with our cameras for inspiration, painted surfaces we do for fun and their important connection to fabric and stitch through collage.

For this class we were asked to bring several black-and-white photocopies, different saturated, on cartridge paper, of something we would like to to use and work with during the class and also one or two pages with our personal writing, describing the theme of our choice.

As Sandra said "The use of personal imagery and writing is a wonderful way of expressing a personal theme".

As I love stones and stonewalls my choice/theme was a very old church ruin, Karnbo church ruin, situated very near where I live.

I took a lot of photos of the ruin, above are just a few of them. I also wrote an A4 page by hand describing when it was built (during the 1200 hundred century) rebuilt etc. With lots of photo copies of the church ruin and the handwritten text we started to paint every page with diluted acrylic paints. Brusho, Koh-i-noor (bright water-based dyes used for painting on paper) and procion dyes also work very well.

As a background for the collage one white A4 copy paper was folded vertical  and one was folded horizontal.

5 - 7 pieces of paper in different widths were then torn from the painted theme photocopies and personal handwriting and then glued to the white copy papers. Our collages where after that photographed for the computer and printed on fabrics.

Left:
Vertical collage on paper and
below:
The paper collage printed on fabric.

Landscape collage printed on paper.

The same paper collage printed on fabric.

As another exercise I tore paper strips from my black-and-white photocopies and also a little piece from   a painted paper and made a collage.

The collage on the right hand side was then my inspiration for the Latitude Quilt´s  March quilt with the theme LOVE.

I called my quilt "Stone Love"

Sandra Meech has written several books. In my possession I have her three latest.

Connecting art to stitch. 2009. ISBN: 978-1-9063-8810-2

Connecting design to stitch. 2012. ISBN: 978-1-60705-622-5

Creative quilts. Unlock your creativity with design classes and techniques. 

2013. ISBN: 978-1-849941-112

Those books can not be to warmly recommended.

Enjoy

Ann-Mari

Under the Surface...

What a great theme chosen by Ann Mari!...This is the challenge I have been waiting for...I love to get up close and personal with nature both physically and in my art work, so I think this is the way I will go with this theme. Getting down to the cellular level is something I have always been very interested in, so this challenge suits me to a T!

The two artists that Ann Mari mentioned are truly inspirational and only goes to remind me how far I have to go! As I was scouring the internet this morning (yes, finally my internet has been restored!) I found an article about an exhibition that was done through SAQA a couple of years ago called 'Art meets Science' which may provide some additional inspiration for this theme:

Art Meets Science

http://www.cdc.gov/museum/exhibits/artmeetsscience.html  

Studio Art Quilt Associates, Inc.

June 11 – September 5, 2012

Art Meets Science, organized by the Studio Art Quilt Association, features thirty-five textiles by international artists—all masters in transforming quilt making into art making. Collectively, the textiles draw upon scientific theories or phenomena in new and unexpected ways. They illustrate, with strikingly visual impact, a gamut of scientific ideas, from the harmonies of randomness to the dynamics produced by scientific imagery. Many of the quilts are inspired by the "world unseen"—microscopic reflections of viruses, bacteria, and other cellular forms. David W. Fraser, M.D., the exhibition juror and a textile expert, is also an epidemiologist who was one of the leaders of CDC's Legionnaires' disease investigation in 1976-77.

Left: Anita Welty, Virus H5N1, 2009. Right: Virginia Abrams, Lipid Cells, 2009.

To see more, check out the following link:

http://www.saqa.com/media/file/Exhibition_info_for_Venues/Artworks_Art_Meets_Science-web-revised.pdf

Happy quilting!

Amanda

'HEAD-SPACE' by Linden Lancaster

'Head-space Linden' by Lancaster 2014

How do we react when we feel trapped in a negative situation? Our thoughts will determine how we respond. Perhaps we might:

Ignore it and put our head in the sand?

Curse and rant about it?

Worry and fret until we make our selves sick?

Become resigned to it?

Hide?

Become a ‘Pollyanna’?

Analyse it?

Pray about it?

Become comatose?

Run around trying to fix things

Perhaps all of the above?

This piece was designed from a simple exercise of cutting a circle into 16 pieces and arranging with the parts while keeping the integrity of the circle. The white is meant to represent the negative space in this instance. Windows were cut out of the black fabric and then fused over the white background. The figures were quilted with a free motion foot through the three layers with heavy black 30 wt black thread.

'Head-space' detail

'Head-spac'e detail

Next challenge theme: UNDER THE SURFACE

I think there will be many interpretations to ponder about:
- under the surface of the see
- under the earth crust
-under our skin and perhaps also
- under our personality.
Those are some possible ways to interpreat the theme I have thought about and there are certainly many more ways to approach it and develop it into into a piece of art.

Examples of artists I am thinking of that have explored the wonderful microcosmos under our skin are:
Karen Kamenetzky  -  www.karenkamenetzky.com  and
Betty Busby - www.bbusbyarts.com

I admire their quilts!

Hope you find this theme exciting and makes your artist juices flow!