100 Days of Dice Compositions: Week 6 - A Rosy Composition

 

This concludes Week 6 of my 100 Days of Dice Compositions. While I returned to my floral themed designs, this week's composition challenged me in new ways...

36/100: Roll Dice + Initial Fabric Pull

It's a red-letter day as it marks the start of a new dice composition featuring the color red within a magic three design guide. Here's an initial fabric pull with a few ideas in mind but we'll see what tomorrow inspires!

37/100: Make Shapes

It's coming up roses this week...

After lots of brainstorming about red objects and memories, I opted to go with roses. A prototype rose was made before free-hand cutting more abstract roses from my mark-making fabrics. Will play more with background fabrics and layouts tomorrow...

38/100: Mark Making + Draft Layout

Spent some time cultivating new fabrics using White Uniball Signo pens and Red Flash Color Shift paint (with a foam stamp and tongue depressor). Tomorrow I hope to finetune the layout and fuse it all in place so I can start stitching!!

“It’s the time that you spent on your rose that makes your rose so important…People have forgotten this truth, but you mustn’t forget it. You become responsible forever for what you’ve tamed. You’re responsible for your rose.”

– Antoine de Saint-Exupéry in The Little Prince

39/100: Modify Roses, Create Background, Layout, and Fuse

A friend commented that my prototype roses were not necessarily rated PG...and so I made some modifications by using the top spiral only. A stem and leaves were added to create my three focal roses. My painted and newly pruned roses got a groovy new backdrop by weaving two green fabrics using Anna Faustino's Simply Stunning Woven Quilts technique. The stamped spirals made for a lovely rose bush to use in the foregound. Now that everything has been fused into place, let the stitching fun begin!

"Who's been painting my roses red? WHO'S BEEN PAINTING MY ROSES RED? /Who dares to taint / With vulgar paint / The royal flower bed? / For painting my roses red / Someone will lose his head."

-Queen of Hearts, Alice in Wonderland

40/100: Free-Motion Quilting

Lots of free-motion quilting fun tonight. I especially enjoyed meandering in and around the rosebush followed by zig zag backtracking to create thorns!

"Every rose has its thorn

Just like every night has its dawn

Just like every cowboy sings his sad, sad song

Every rose has its thorn"

-Poison (Bobby Dall / Bret Michaels / Bruce Anthony Johannesson / Rikki Rocket)

41/100: Add Hand-Embroidered Details, Trim, and Prepare Facing

Roses are red

Painters Tape is blue

Adding sequin bling

And basting with Elmer's school glue

Using two of my favorite quilting tools tonight:

• Painters tape, as a mark-free guide for a hand-embroidered arch, outline my boundaries, as well as to map out the placement for adding sequin leaves.
• Elmer's School Glue to glue baste my facing strips.  

Over the past week or so, my trusty iron of 7+ years started to act up. At first the light didn't turn on, but then it wouldn't heat up and required me to wake it up repeatedly. I was about to order a replacement, but then it sprang back to life, so I postponed my order. This return to life was brief as it died the next day. Luckily I had a small travel iron I could use and my neighbor loaned me his full-size iron until my new iron arrived in the mail.

42/100: Add Label, Take Photos, Personal Critique and Write Blog Post

This was a busy week, so most of my stitching was done on the machine using a combination of 40wt threads in both Aurifl and Superior King Tut. A few hand stitched accents were added using 8wt Perle Cotton threads from Wonderfil and Valdani. Some bling was added through the use of the sequin leaves as well as the newly marked rose bush fabric using Color Shift paints.

This week's composition was particularly challenging. Part of it was the color as I don't use a lot of red and didn't have a strong connection to the theme. 

But I persevered and kept "A Rosy Disposition" as I explored ways of adding interesting shapes and textures. 

"A Rosy Composition" Finishes 12" x 12"

Personal Critique: Roses & Thorns

As I mentioned earlier--working with the color red was a bit of a challenge for me. Part of it is the fact that I don't use a lot of red in my work. Red was introduced earlier into my mark-making series, well before I discovered many of my favorite techniques and mediums. So my options for red fabric that I was excited to use were a bit limited. Thankfully I was able to mark some more fabric for use in the rose bush and used a commercial batik from my stash to outline the rose bush. I opted to use the complementary color green for the background and accents, but the green definitely overpowers the red, especially that vibrant background. The shape and lines of the roses definitely add movement as they dance up from the rose bush, as well as the dancing roses within the rose bush. Again the roses were overpowered by the movement of the woven green backdrop. Additional textures were added through the fabrics (both the ones I made, as well as the commercial prints used from my stash), machine quilting, hand-embroidered details, and metallic sequin leaves. A variety of sizes and scales were included in the shapes and patterns used throughout the composition, which added visual interest and created a sense of depth and focus on the 3 large roses.

Lots to be learned from this week's composition...and tomorrow starts a new dice roll and dice composition!!