100 Days of Dice Compositions: Week 11 - Arch U Plaid?!?

 

It's hard to believe that this is Week 11!! Each Monday brings a little bit of apprehension as I wonder how to keep building onto this streak of awesome Dice Compositions? However, each day brings new discoveries that combine to form into another finished 12" composition. Read on as I share more about this week's Dice Composition...

71/100: Dice Roll + Initial Fabric Pull

Orange you glad I rolled twos for an orange dancing grid composition this week?!?

Here is an initial fabric pull with absolutely no ideas as to what will come next. Fingers crossed for divine design inspiration before tomorrow's play session!

72/100: Mark-making, Back with Fusible, and Cut out Shapes

Arch ya plaid you paused to check out tonight's progress on this week's Dice Composition?

I really liked the plaid in my initial fabric pull and marked some more using Ecoline and Tombow brush pens. 

Once both swatches were fused with Pellon 805 Wonder Under, I started to cut out shapes. Initially I started thought about sticks and stones, and started to cut out the rocks which looked more like eggs. 

The eggs weren't working so I set them aside and started to cut out little domes into arches. As I cut each pair of shapes, I laid them out into vertical rows. As I was taking pictures, I rotated the tray to see what they look like in horizontal rows. I saw tents and/or camper RVs, while others commented that they saw igloos and elephants. Looks like this grid layout will need some dancing added to the mix next. 

73/100: Play with Dancing Grid Layouts

Dancing the night away with these arch shapes. Below is the progression of design ideas from a 3x3 layout, to a stacked curve, into vertical-ish columns of domes. Once I started to line dance, new design possibilities started to flow...top left clockwise into bottom left.

"When you dance, your purpose is not to get to a certain place on the floor. It's to enjoy each step along the way."

-- Wayne Dyer, American self-help author and motivational speaker

74/100: Refine Layout, Fuse, and Topstitch

Rolling out the 1/4" blue painters tape for no-mark marking! Arches were aligned along the tape lines and fused into place. Half of the fused elements have been topstitched but I have to save some of the free-motion quilting fun for tomorrow!

75/100: Complete Topstitching and Audition Quilting Ideas

Topstitching complete!

It was a late night so I started to audition ideas for embellishing with more free-motion quilting, sequins, sheers, and hand embroidery!!

Will contemplate my options and brainstorm more ideas for tomorrow...

76/100: Background Quilting

9+ hours of online Zooming today inspired Zig Zag stitching. The back and forth zig zags made for meditative Zen and offered a nice angular contrast to the curves of the arches!

Once the background quilting was complete, I explored the idea of embellishing wih a few buttons. Not quite sure I love it yet. Time to sleep on it as I catch some much needed Zzzzs for the night so I can zip this up tomorrow!

77/100: Hand Embroidery, Finish, and Photograph

This week's Dice Composition totally stumped me on how best to embellish with embroidery. A few of the arches were accented with small row of stitches, before adding floating stitched grids into the background.

Here are all the threads used for the topstitching, quilting, hand-embroidery, and facing: 8wt Eleganza Perle Cotton by Wonderfil, Aurifil 40 and 50wt, and Isocord 40wt.

Thankfully I brainstormed a quilt title early ino the week which was refined a bit for the final quilt title: Arch U Plaid?!?  I cut out a few small arches to embellish the quilt label.

And here is the finished "Arch U Plaid?!?" composition, which was finished and photographed on Sunday, but the final blog post took an extra day to complete.

"Arch U Plaid?!?" Finishes 12" x 12"

Personal Critique:

• A complementary orange/blue color palette was used, featuring a range of vibrant yellow-orange, orange, and red-oranges used in the plaids and embroidery, set against a dark navy (with slight purple mottling) background. 
• Contrast was achieved through the complementary color palette, light colored shapes against a dark background, curvilinear shapes vs. linear/angular stitching, and different scales used (scales/density of the plaid patterning, large arcs vs. smaller half circles, and large/small zig zag stitching).
• Negative space was introduced through the half-circle cutouts, unquilted central lines and echoes, as well as the dark background. 
• A variety of texures were incorporated throughout the composition from the marked plaids, zig zag quilting, and hand embroidered accents.
• Movement was achieved through the use of asymmetrical arcs of varying shapes and sizes, alternating the repeat pattern of large vs. small arcs, and the diagonal lines  that radiate out from the bottom center. The stitched plaid patches float around the background like little bits of confetti.

It was one big plaid party, which of course made for a really fun week! Just a few more Dice Compositions left to create...time sure flies when you are having fun!!