100 Days of Dice Compositions: Week 8 - Twist and Sprout

 

Another exciting week of creating a Dice Composition...read on to learn more about each day's progress and process...

50/100: Dice Roll, Initial Fabric Pull and Sketch

Super excited to play with the color green and jumpstart this week's Dice Composition with one amazing line! This initial fabric pull should make for an energizing week ahead...💚

In fact, I was soo excited by these fabrics that I sketched a potential design below....

51/100: Fuse Fabrics with a Very Rough Layout

One Amazing Line...✅

Green prints...✅

Fused...✅

Excited to start cutting into these fabrics!

52/100: Translate Sketch Into Fabric + Embellish with Mark Making

My rough sketch looks way better translated into fabric! Since most of these fabrics were made using 10" squares, the fauxbori fabric was used as side border to build it up to a 12" composition. While the seed pods were simplified in the fabric version, I added a bit of mark-making sparkle with Sakura Gelli Roll Stardust pens! I tested it on one seed pod first with single lines and then filled in every other section for more impact. 

Right now all the fabrics are simply overlapping...will refine the background before fusing it all down tomorrow!

53/100: Refine Layout

"There's a little bit of magic in every box!"

--Adam Rex, American illustrator and author of children's books

I absolutely love the green boxes. Originally I had sketched them in their original grid formation but the scale didn't quite work with the amazing line. After cutting out several boxes, I moved them around into different placements, configurations, and groupings. Here are just a few of the layouts considered...

As I am still unsure about the placement of the dancing green boxes, I postponed fusing anything down for another day...

54/100: Finalize Layout, Fuse, and Outline Stitch

Thanks for all the thoughtful comments about the placement of the boxes. For now, the boxes along the left column have been set aside. Everything you see here has been fused and stitched into place with free-motion quilting and Aurifil 40wt threads. Now that all the major elements are outline stitched, I am excited to embellish with some hand-stitched embroidery next...

55/100: Embellish with Hand Embroidery

"Your true colors

True colors are beautiful

Like a rainbow"

-Performed by Cyndi Lauper, Written by Billy Steinberg / Tom Kelly

Such fun transforming those wavy lines into a sttiched rainbow using Wonderfil 8wt Eleganza threads. Additional details were stitched into the tumbling blocks including rainbow holographic sequins! 

56/100: Free-Motion Quilting, Trim, Face, and Label

Free-motion quilting...✅

Facing...✅

Finishing with a title and label...✅

Introducing "Twist and Sprout."

"Twist and Sprout" Finishes 12" x 12"

Allergies were in overdrive so I took an extra day to write my blog post and personal critique...

Personal Critique:

This is the first Dice Composition design that is constructed using only fabrics created during my 100 Days of Mark Making. Commercial fabrics from my stash were only used for the backing and facing. 

As the fabrics selected already included an exciting variety of patterns, shapes, and textures (waves, dots, dashes, squares, and mottled), I kept the stitching fairly minimal to outline stitching, the running stitch rainbow, and a simply meander along the left border.

Green is definitely showcased with these fabrics with a variety of light to dark values included.

There were several comments about the movement included within this piece from the wavy lines, dancing blocks, and even the gestures of the sprouts reaching up to the sky. There is a definite triangular visual pathway flowing down the wavy lines, across the seed pods along the ground, and then back up along the sprouts and left border.

All in all, I am really pleased with this week's Dice Composition. It's hard to believe I am past the halfway point in this 100 Days of Dice Composition!! I am excited to start the process again with a new dice roll...