Field Trips in Fiber - Adventures in quilting, hand dyed fabric and fiber art.

Fiberactions Challenge - Departure

Departure

16 x 20

When the theme word was published 2 months ago, my first inclination was to "depart" from my symmetry theme. I considered it but I just couldn't because I am enjoying working with symmetry and I don't want to depart it! So, I started reviewing some of the other techniques withing symmetry that I have been wanting to try.

For this challenge I chose to explore bilateral (horizontal and vertical) symmetry as a departure from the traditional kaleidoscopic approach that I have been taking. I added a twist by throwing in a limitation. Every peice of fabric is a 3" equilateral triangle. That made it difficult to find patterns on the fabrics that would blend into 2 neighboring fabrics, but using bilateral symmetry at least made one side easy!

I did some pretty heavy quilting on this one using metallic and rayon threads to help blend the transitions between fabrics.

Asthetically it's not one of my favorites in the series but from a skill development point of view, it's one of the best!

Check out all of the other Fiberactions emtries on the Fiberactions blog.

Fiberactions Challenge - Impression

Impression

16 x 20

This is the 7th in the Fiberactions Challenge series. This one really showed me how important it is to develop a series - whether it's series of art or just a series of lessons. Several ideas and techniques that I have been exploring came together on this one. Of course I had to keep with my underlying technique for the whole series, symmertry. But with this theme I wanted to see how subtle the symmetry could be. I thought about archaeology and how difficult it must be to find anything while sifting and digging through mounds of dirt. Everything must seem to look the same. I eventually settled on a fossil-like image.  I consider this one a "fix" of the Stretch Challenge because I used a similar technique....but in a better way.

Be sure to check out what everyone else did for this challenge at the Fiberactions blog.

Fiberactions Challenge - Transformation

We are offically half way through the Fiberactions challenge and I am still enjoying every minute of it. You wouldn't think that given that I wait until the last minute to do mine! But I have always worked best to a deadline. However, in this case, I did have another plan and I had to change it. A couple of weeks ago I had a big allergy incident at the dentist and that ruined my energy level since. I just couldn't get my original plan done so I did a simplified version.

With this challenge I wanted to revisit the techniques that I used in the Communication challenge. I did that and made some improvements. So I suppose you could say that the transformations is happening within me. I am becoming more confident with the symmetry technique and starting to make them unique to me.....a little anyway.

Transformation

16 x 20

I know. It's a Christmas piece. I know that it's not "art" to most people but I like it. Chris LOVES it.

I have a big collection of symmetrical fabrics and I had this one Christmas print that I have tried to use in almost every kaleidoscope quilt I have made. It has never fit. I made myself use it on this one. Fortunately it's mostly used up now!

On this piece I quilted the background first and then applied the "ornaments". The binding is from a coordinating striped fabric. I like the frame effect.

Here are a few detail shots.

Please check out all of the other Transformation pieces on the Fiberactions blog.

February Take It Further

I can't believe it, I finished my February Take It Further challenge one day early!

Sharon's challenges have 2 components. The theme component for February is "what are you old enough to remember?". I posted some thoughts on that here. The color palette is this group of blues and taupes.

As I looked at the colors it reminded me of going to the beach as a child. That was a time when people generally took one week of vacation - a pack-up-the-car-and-go-somewhere-else vacation. We went to Long Beach, NC for our vacations. At that time (late '60's/early '70's) that beach was desolate! As a child I hated it. The kids wanted to go to Myrtle Beach, SC where every kid in the Southeast went on vacation. Of course today I would only go to the deserted beach so I can only imagine what kind of nightmare Myrtle beach with 4 kids would have been for my parents! So I did my TIF piece about the beach using something close to the assigned color scheme.

For my technique I went back to the cavern interpretation that I did for one of my triptych challenges in January.  This is made from batting, yarn and MistyFuse and that's about it! I made the base with fused layers of yarns. The base is cut into the diamond shapes and reassembled. I tried to get a light effect in the center going but my sand layer just didn't cooperate.

My in-house critic and I agree that this isn't one of my big winners but I don't think I am done trying to make this technique work. It's too much fun to do! You are welcome to leave some honest critical feedback. I would really appreciate some honest opinions.

Now I get one day rest before I have to start thinking about the March challenge!

MQ Resource Triptych Challenge

I have been participating in a triptych challenge on the MQResource board. We were put into groups of three. Each person sent photos to the other two participants for interpretation. The finished pieces are 8.5" x 10.5". I'll be honest, I haven't even started my own piece but I will do it soon. I mailed both of my pieces today and I warned my partners that I was posting today so they wouldn't look if they wanted a surprise.

The first piece is based on this photo sent my Beth.

Here's my interpretation. Beth wanted the sailboat to be the focus. I used the same technique that I used for my Splash postcard. I had been wanting to do that technique again I knew it was perfect for this as soon as I saw the photo.

The sails are made of silk and they are padded with some batting to give them dimension and to keep the background from showing through.

Here's the photo that I received from Judy.

This one was more challenging for me. On my first attempt I tried to reproduce the photo. What a disaster - a funny disaster, but a complete and total disaster. Every time I showed it to Chris he just shook his head "no" and quietly went back to reading his book. I put that aside and slept on it. The next morning I had the solution and two nights later I had this.

It's the same yarn technique. The backgrounds of both pieces are made of layers of yarn arranged directly on batting. In this one I sliced the finished piece into diamonds, rearranged the pieces and zig-zagged them back together. the final step was couching black yarn over the seams.

In two days the next Take It Further Challenge will be posted. I will work on my own Triptych piece (my photos are doors) during February and it would be so nice if it fit the TIF theme or color palette! I'm also started the Art Quilt Workbook in February. I would say that I need to stop signing up for things but I  do learn a lot through these exercises and challenges.