A new week = A new dice roll!
8/100: Dice Roll + Fabric Pull
I woke up early and rolled the dice before heading out for my morning walk. My pace around the neighborhood was faster than usual as I was so eager to return back to my studio to start pulling orange fabrics to create a Third Plus composition this week.
9/100: Draft Layouts
This Dice Composition is starting to germinate with design possibilities. I edited out a few of the orange prints and added in a few pops of blue. A small swatch of light blue was marked with a variety of gardening terms and translations for flower. More finetuning and pruning is required before I am ready to fuse into place and start stitching.
10/100: Finetuning the Layout
"Let the rain kiss you. Let the rain beat upon your head with silver liquid drops. Let the rain sing you a lullaby."-Langston Hughes, American Poet
Quite a bit of progress on this week's dice composition. An heirloom hanky, backed with Pellon Shapeflex SF101, made for the perfect backdrop for my daisy. A new print featuring loop de loop hearts was layered along with a stem and heart-shaped leaves. I played with the idea of adding a few raindrops but still percolating over their placement. Everything else has been fused down and I'm ready to start adding stitched texture!
11/100: Outline Stitching
Despite a busy day of teaching and lecturing, I managed to make some progress with a little outline stitching with free-motion quilting and some hand embroidery.
12/100: More Outline Stitching
Wrapping up the day with some more meditative outline stitching: hand embroidery and free-motion.
13/100: Hand-Embroidered Details
Celebrating a fun week of teaching with a refreshing margarita followed by adding a few more hand-stitched details. I figured this was a safer option than trying to operate a sewing machine.
14/100:
While I absolutely loved adding all the stitched details, I confess it was a bit of a stall tactic while trying to figure out whether and where to add raindrops along with how to quilt the orange and blue background areas. Here are all the threads used throughout this project: A combination of 8wt Wonderfil Eleganza Perle Cotton threads and Aurifil in both 50wt and 40wt.
Nothing like a looming deadline to provide a bit of motivation to tackle these final design decisions.
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| Daisy Dance & Delight, Finishes 12" x 12" |
Ooopsy Daisy: I completely forgot to add my personal critique before publishing this post! So I am going back and adding it now.
The inspiration for this piece was all the various elements required for flowers to grow and thrive: sun, rain, soil, seeds, and love. Here in California, we are experiencing another significant drought which poses a significant threat to our natural and developed landscape. You can see these elements incorporated into the layout with the daisy's gesture welcoming all and any rain. I am especially proud of the various textures that are incorporated throughout the piece: scalloped edges of the hankie, french knots, gridded plaids, stripes, mottled blue, in addition to all the embroidery and quilting. There are a variety of details and patterns to help move the viewer's eyes, along with some spaces to rest their eyes.
A whimsical orange floral print from my stash made for the perfect quilt back and facing.
Looking forward to seeing what the next dice rolls inspires me to create!
I love everything about this little work. I love the way the blue hand dyed plays with the more vertical patterning on the orange. I love the whimsical flower which feels like it is jumping for joy. I love the thoughtful placement of your quilting, in particular the little hearts in the two areas. I've had so much fun following this series of yours. Thanks for your creativity and energy and your generous sharing.
ReplyDeleteAwww...thank you Laura for your lovely comments. I am so glad you enjoyed this piece and appreciated many of the quilted details that were added thoughout. I had a lot of fun creating and that joy is certainly captured in this piece.
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