We decided to take the week off from our sketching, so I took advantage of the extra time to try a few more "What If's." My list of possibilities is growing a lot faster than I can make them. It seems that one little change opens the door to many new ideas.
I wanted to do more with the textural pieces. Some of my "What If's" probably look repetitive, but I'm often experimenting with different constructions. In this one, I asked, What if I started with crazy quilt piecing, then cut layers of fabric in the shape of each background patch? What if I anchored everything with black machine embroidery in the middle of the patch? What if I used more layers this time (sometimes 4 or 5)?
And what if I ran it through the washing machine:
I love the wild unravelling, but I need to soften the hard diagonal seam that showed up after the wash.In this second piece, I asked, What If I tried to capture the look of telephone poles after the flyers are burnt off? I don 't know if this is just a Portland thing, but the fire dept. burns off flyers from telephone poles once they have built up too thick. It leaves this great bit of texture, mainly white with staples in the middle and hits of color coming through.
I started with a brown felt background to get the dark underlay of the telephone pole. I layered 3 or 4 layers and machine embroidered them in the middle. Pre-wash:
And post-wash:
I like the crispness of the pre-wash version , but I think I'm more partial to the ravelled one.
And post-wash:
I like the crispness of the pre-wash version , but I think I'm more partial to the ravelled one.
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5 comments:
To me they don´t look repetitive at all - I definitely like the whole series and the way you´re exploring the facets it has to offer - especially capturing images from everyday life (no such telephone poles here in Berlin, Germany, by the way...)
I love how these are coming along. They are very exciting. Can't wait to see some of them at the show.
Wow, Robin!! I love what you're doing with the fibers/fabric. Such wonderful texture, color, and designs. Can't wait to see your booth at the show. :D
suzanne
The wild unravelled one is my favorite, but the are all pretty cool!
it is hard to define repetitive. if you are really digging into the process, you work with details and there are millions of them to explore. all of this looks great!
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