Pasture management systems no.1

This naive style landscape explores the use of fences to subdivide pasture land. Pasture management is in my farming background, partly from having owned a sheep and cattle farm, and partly because I used to teach it at part time courses for an agricultural college. This is what is called an extensive system, where animals, let us imagine sheep and cattle or sheep and goats, live in the same field all the time, but each field only has a small number of animals. Its advantages are that there is less movement and therefore less stress on the animals, and the water supply can be rationalised. It is the least labour intensive method, and a system that has been around for hundreds of years.  The disadvantages are that the grass is not utilised to its maximum, as some will be trampled and not eaten, animals can pick out the tastier grasses and leave the ones they don't like, and parasites will be more difficult to manage.

But enough of that! This is not really what I wanted to make for my final challenge, which is a detailed portrait of some refugee women and children in a camp in Pakistan. A fence is in the foreground.  It will take me at least another month, though I have done all the preparation. I was just too busy at work to have the time.

This second choice combines elements from the first one in the fences series (green) with elements from the art deco one. It intrigues me that we can assemble a limited number of 'marks' and shapes, and yet we find them convincing as a landscape.

Winter in my garden

I choose leaves as my theme for this years serie. I have already worked with leaves as a leaf was one of the objects I used during my C&G course, my second assesment quilt was based on leaves and I used the gingko leaves for my silent theme quilt a while ago.
So when I discovered we had to work with green for this quilt I was relieved. Blue might have been more challenging for my theme.
I decided against appliqueing green leaves on a background and so making a quilt similar to my second C&G quilt.
I recently read an article in Art Quilting Studio about discharge printing with leaves and decided to try this technique on my first quilt. I used different dry-pressed leaves I had collected in our garden in the past years. They are the same that can be used for the sunprinting technique Nicole recently described on this blog.
I cut several pieces of different commercial hand-dyied green fabrics, applied a thin cot of discharge past on the side of a leaf I tought would show more details (veins) and carefully pressed he leaf to the fabric and left it there for a moment. after peeling back the leaf I let the fabric dry and then ironed it. This was like opening a present as it was then I discovered how the print had turned out.

As the fabric I choose is not very dark the discharge effect looks more like a shadow or to me like a ghost image of a leaf.
I was afraid that piecing the different prints would add strong lines to the quilt I put the pieces of fabric onto the batting and left the edges raw.

I free-motion quilted around the leaves but not inside as I wanted to keep this ghost image feeling..
I only quilted some curved lines into the background as I didn't want the background quilting to distract from the leaves.

I decided on the title winter in my garden for this quilt as at this time of the year all the leaves are missing and here are only there ghosts.

Sabine

Green Pears

The theme I have chosen to work with for the year is “Fruits and Seeds”. It would have been so easy to simply incorporate a bit of green foliage for this challenge, but I wanted to do a bit more than that. I took photographs of pears and, after much experimentation, created this image using digital manipulation in PaintShop Photo Pro X3. I needed the image to be clean and simple so that it would work with the repetition. I then generated several colour gradients which all moved from green to another colour e.g. green – yellow, green – magenta, etc. I coloured each pear in from a different gradient. It was printed out using an inkjet printer on white cotton poplin coated with inkAID. The design enabled me to work within the limitations of an A4 printer – no awkward joins to deal with. The backing is felt and interfacing. The quilting is a straightforward free machine meander stitch using a variety of Isacord 40 threads. I chose to edge the piece with a machined blanket stitch.

Etude 1

I like abstract pictures, fotos and quilts with a clear geometric design. In opposite to this strong formal design I like it when such quilts show details like fine quilting and/or  embroidery.

For this series I decided for rectangles as the main design element. 

When the colour "Green" was announced as theme for this quilt, I remembered that years ago I embroidered a semicircle with beads in green! I always wanted to integrate it in a little abstract quilt. Now its time had come :)).

The green fabrics in the quilt are selfdyed, the stripes of the background are scraps from old bought fabrics.

Only one semicircle in a quilt with straight lines looked odd, so I added two smaller semicircles. These pieces are made from painted bondaweb. I put some fabric scraps and Angelina on it and fused it with organza. When I embroidered it with some beads, sequins and handstitches.

Lines of green sequins connect the green rectangles, beaded semicircles and the background.

This quilt is 60 cm x 42 cm (24'' x 16,5''), the quilting is done by machine.

Apologies to Monet

About 3 years ago I did a batch of hand dyes with pleating and dropped colours, and got several pieces I really liked but have never used. This green challenge gave me the chance to use one of them. It is whole cloth apart from the appliqued fence and birds.

Several things contributed to my inspiration. Firstly, I had photographed some canola fields near a river some years ago, and played with photoshop to give a crosshatch effect, which I intended to stitch one day. Secondly when I created the gate and the fence I immediately thought of Monet's magpie, even though his painting is of winter. Thirdly, going with the impressionist ideas, I chose the red poppies, which often spill at field edges - again a reference to Monet's poppies at Argenteuil.

I played with some more realistic sketches, before settling, as I usually do, on a simple graphic design. Size is 24 by 19.

Green

In a few days is Christmas and though we think it should be white, here in Bavaria it is warm, the sun is shining and the first spring plants are coming. Yesterday I went for a long walk with my camera. The main colour I saw was green, in many different variations.

If there is some red in the picture, the green will sparkle.

Here is old colour from graffitis mixed with moss, it looks fantastic.

In the end I arranged all my green fotos in one big picture. Now I can look for all my green fabric scraps and a little bit red and arrange them in the same way.

I wish you a merry Christmas and a happy new Year!

Gabriele