Out of Season

It feels strange to be working on fall leaves when pink blossoms are everywhere, but this background was a leftover from Jude's Crazy Quilt Revisited "What If" challenge, and I wanted to make a fall piece with it. I had cut printed leaves out of a fabric I liked and planned on adding them to the background, but they resisted. I finally gave up on them and then the piece went in its own direction. Maybe this light, joyful version of fall has a little springtime in it.

What If? Neutrals

What if I started with a brown crazy graffiti background and did all embellishments, stitching and adding bits of fibers, in neutral colors?  The result was too bland for my taste, so I decided to add the faces to give it a little punch.  It's hard to tell from the scan, but each face is stuffed and puffed up.  My son called this one "marshmallows in hot chocolate."

What If? Kantha stitch

What if I used a chunky kantha stitch to outline all the white areas?  This did make the white pop in some areas that had bolder designs, such as the black, white and red section on the bottom, but became a little too random in the busier areas.  I think smaller, finer stitches might have worked better in the busy areas.   I have a few more of these little experiments to try, then I think I want to start applying some of the bits I like to a series of hearts.  (This photo makes the fabric look grubby.  Maybe I need to clean my scanner.)

Back to What If

I'm continuing with the "What If's" I put on hold a while back.    I did several of the crazy graffiti backgrounds at once and now want to experiment with different ways of embellishing them.  For this one, What if I did all embellishment with needle felting?  I think the needle felting would be a nice embellishment on simpler fabrics.  I didn't want to cover all the great line in the fabric with solid chunks of felt, so the result is pretty busy.

A Little "What If" break

I needed a little stitching break, so I did another one of the "What If's" on my list.  This time I made new marked graffiti fabrics in shades of brown instead of the black and whites I was using earlier.  I wanted to see how the sheers worked on a background fabric with less contrast, although I didn't use the sheers much on this piece.    Besides changing the background, I asked, What If I use silks, velvets and chiffons for embellishments, but attach them all with heavy cotton crochet thread.  I like the texture of the thread and will use it again.  I especially like the french knots it made.

Fabric Pellets

It's been a crazy week trying to get ready for Mexico, finishing up PR for our show, and catching one day of my art group's art retreat.  Some of my fabric birds went into a shop this week, so I have been making more to replace them for our show.  I did squeeze in one "What If."  This time I asked, what if I add color to the background to make some of the graffiti pop?  I wanted to add one color per patch to keep the patches evident.  I made little fabric pellets and sewed them on.  I don't think they make the graffiti pop at all, but I like it anyway.  I think they would be fun to combine with other techniques.

I am leaving first thing in the morning for a couple weeks in Oaxaca and Mexico City, so I won't be posting until I get back.  I'm leaving my family behind and traveling with two of my sketching friends for a couple of art-filled weeks.  Adios for now.

In Lieu of Sketching

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.

More Crazy Graffiti

It looks like I'm going to be staying with these graffiti backgrounds for a while.  I really like the interplay of their busyness with whatever goes on top of them, especially with sheers so you can peek through the layers.  I keep getting new ideas for variations and am starting to think about how this might work in a large piece.

This first "What If?" was "What if I layer sheers on top of each other to get more gradations of color?"  I also asked, What if I include burned out velvets (I think that's what they are called) to have the contrast of their fuzzy and sheer parts.  

In this one I asked, "What if I layer and wash various fabrics, like I did in the white-on-white textural piece earlier, but this time use lots of color?"  I like the unpredictable quality of these. Some pieces almost disappear in the wash and others become more prominent.

I'm really bothered by the diagonal line across the bottom third and will go back and soften it a bit.

What If? Layers of Texture

What if I layered each patch with multiple fabrics, tacked them down in the middle, then ran them through the wash to create texture?  They came out all nice and wrinkly.  Some shrunk and frayed, others didn't.  I embellished to emphasize the forms that came out of the wash, sometimes unfolding and stitching pieces down to the background, other times letting them stay curled up and adding detail to the curls.

To keep the emphasis on texture, I  limited color in this piece.  I used sheers, cottons, burlap, upholstery fabric, and silks to get a variety of textures.

Graffiti with Tufts

Another "What If."  This time I stayed with the same graffiti crazy piecing for the background, but asked, What if I make tufts of layered fabrics for the embellishments?  I layered different silks, cottons and sheers and freeform machine stitched them together to form separate units.   I then handstitched these to the background.

Painting with Sheers

I am having so much fun with these Crazy Quilt Revisted challenges.  This time I used the graffiti fabric I made for the background, but asked "What If all my embellishments were out of sheer fabrics?"  I'm excited about the results of putting sheers on top of the black and whites.  I love the interplay of the foreground and background, with the sheers disappearing in places and looking like washes of color in others.   This experiment has caused a few more "What If's" to pop in my mind.

What If?

One of my favorite blogs to follow is Jude Hill's Spirit Cloth.  Jude does the most amazing work, every bit of it by hand.  She develops rich, textured quilts that tell stories, and every stitch seems to come from her soul.  Her involved pieces take over a year to complete and contain a myriad of experiments along the way.   She refers to them as "Slow Cloth."

Part of Jude's process involves asking "What If."  What if she changed  a piece in some small way to take it in a new direction?  She keeps a separate blog that records each of these "What If" experiments.  When she invited readers to participate in a "What If" challenge, I couldn't resist joining.  Using the Crazy Quilt as a starting place, Jude asked readers to reimagine it in their own style or techniques they are currently exploring.

To me the two main components of a crazy quilt are the irregularly pieced background and the rich, often elaborately detailed, embellishments.   I asked, What If I used a variety of marks for my pieced area, all in black and white.   And following my latest interest in couching fabric,  What If the only embellishments were couched fabric with raw edges?

Here's my first "What If" piece:

I ended up adding a bit of fine line embroidery for an accent.

The great thing is that piece led to more "What Ifs."  The first being, what if I work bigger than a 6" square, so I can try more on one piece.    I've been experimenting with making black and white marks on fabric to prepare for the next "What If".

I love the finer marks on the left.  They were made with Sharpie Poster Paint and are lightly gray like chalk on a chalkboard.  The marks on the right were Jacquard fabric paint, which turn out a rich white.

I tried a variety of inks which weren't strong enough and evaporated into the cloth.  I got this fabulous orange color below from discharging with a bleach pen.  The fabric was a cotton blend:

But when I tried the same discharge method on a piece of 100% cotton, the result was very different.  The bleach spread and I ended up with gray ghost images.

I can see lots of potential to add embroidery on top of them.

You can see other examples of the Crazy Quilt Revisited What If's here.