Monday, May 27, 2013

Art Quilt

I'm not sure how it happened. I think it began by pinning a couple art quilts which caught my eye on Pinterest. First they went on to my Quilting Board but I soon created an Art Quilts board as I found myself drawn to pin more and more art quilts. I had never seen quilts like these before; their colors, textures, and designs captivated my imagination and gave me courage that I could play with fabric and principles of design as I ventured into new creative avenues with recycled fabrics.

After a couple months of admiring and pinning, I decided to attempt my first art quilt. The boys bedroom was slowly morphing into a guest room and I needed a wall hanging to replace the baseball poster. The room already had some bold colors, including a dark red Bedouin rug with some orange and black accents. I wanted to make this art quilt entirely out of recycled fabrics and decided to begin with my felted wool, which I felt would give me the textures and colors I wanted to go with the bold, minimalist decor of the room.

I knew that I must be gentle with myself and begin simply, and so I chose to do uneven Log Cabin squares, imitating this scrap quilt design by textile artist Victoria Gertenbach. I used scraps and then pulled pieces from some other sweaters to achieve the color scheme I wanted.

It was very easy to cut the pieces for this 3 feet/1meter square quilt--I didn't measure as I used my rotary cutter and quilting ruler to cut a collection of strips of varying widths and trimmed these strips to their required length as I created my squares. The seams don't show here, but they are completely flat as I butted the edges of the wool together and zig-zagged them.

 I found a used denim curtain panel at the second-hand market, which I used for the back of the quilt. The middle layer is a cotton flannel sheet, also recycled, and the binding is fashioned from denim shirt scraps. I quilted all three layers as I zig-zagged the finished squares together, so it only has four actual quilting lines. I made a three inch sleeve that runs the length of the top of the quilt. Dear Husband engineered the rest of the hanging apparatus using a scrap piece of wood (from an old bookshelf) Much to his delight, was able to hang it on the nail/screw which held the baseball poster, as he doesn't like to put too many holes in the wall. Drilled concrete is not easily patched.

When Artist Son arrived, I enjoyed discussing the color and design principles of this quilt. I think there actually are some, though I don't know how to talk about them well--I'm learning. I've noticed that the "random" look is not randomly achieved and that I choose colors carefully, even for a design that sort of looks thrown together. I find one of the greatest satisfactions of finishing a project is, besides the finished project, the permission I give myself to begin dreaming of and plotting the next project...

8 comments:

Woman of the House said...

Wowee! This is terrific! You did a great job, and I love how everything is recycled. Beauty from scraps. Edith Schaeffer would be proud! :)

Lori said...

Heeyyyy, nice job! Something like that'd look great on my wall. ;)

Pictoria said...

Very nice. You are a natural! Now, let Arist Son help you with the right descriptive words...

Anonymous said...

I've enjoyed reading your recent posts and appreciate the idea of planting a Teucrium. Also, you might be interested in googling "quilts of Gees Bend."

JJ

Laura A said...

Melissa, I am a bit behind on my blog reading lately, so I'm just now seeing this, but this quilt is fantastic! I second the recommendation for Gee's Bend.

Quotidian Life said...

Thanks for all the encouragement. NPR recently had an interesting spot on the quilts of Gene's Bend. one of the commentators called them visual jazz. I
Iike that. Looking at more of the Gene's Bend quilts, I notice that many modern quilts imitate their patterns.

Mudarissa said...

wow! I love this. Beautiful and colourful. I'm really inspired to give it a go:)

Mudarissa said...

wow! I love this. Beautiful and colourful. I'm really inspired to give it a go:)