It's still 29 February!

After having ruminated about the possible meanings and representations of "connection", I couldn't escape the realization that, ultimately, everything is connected. Hence, the familiar, perhaps overused, symbol. It is an expression of one aspect of myself that I continue to attempt to modify, and that is my literalness! Working with you all in this challenge group will afford the opportunity to continue to stretch my boundaries in that arena as well as in others!

I love the visual effect of satin stitching; that may be what I consider most successful here. Although, I struggled with thread breakage when using the purple thread. Despite a couple of needle changes and several tension changes, the breakage persisted. No problem with the green thread. Still not sure what the problem was.

The other nod to connection here involves my appreciation of my grandmother who was an amazing seamstress. She was sent away from her family home by her stepmother at age 13, this was in the mid 1800's, to learn this trade to help with financial support of her family. (She died when I was in high school; I didn't know her well.)The small purple circles are genuine 1930's fabric that she had cut into Sunbonnet Sue shapes in preparation for applique. She actually cut, turned and basted the 3 small circles. I've left the white basting thread intact. Alas, Sue's bonnet was sacrificed for the larger circle. I'm not sure whether Grandma would be proud or appalled!

I'll toss a new word out tomorrow!

"Connections"

Hi ladies, I'm truly sorry, but my entry will be a bit late ... I hope it will be finished this weekend. On a whim I decided to add hand-stitching, and THAT takes a awful lot of time !!
See you soon !

Metaphor

As I began to contemplate the word "connection," I had a great deal of trouble settling on an image but ultimately what kept coming up on my interior screen was a picture of two entities spiraling into each other, forming a growing and deep connection, and so that was what I set about to make, in between a whole lot of other commitments I had somehow made for January and February:

As the project progressed, I added some more symbols of connection--I had a lot of fun braiding the gold thread and, instead of quilting the interior areas of the two elements, making a pattern of woven pearl cotton.

And the grouping of six of the little asterisk shapes near the bottom of the quilt was not an accident.

I named it "Metaphor" because early on I thought of this as a kind of physical representation of metaphor, a deep connection between seemingly unconnected things.  The quilt is 10 x 16" (I like the shape!) and made from my hand-dyes.

And now I have finished my contribution, I can't wait to see what everyone else has come up with!  Thanks, Carol, for coming up with a great word for our first endeavor.

Penny's quilt

The quilt depicts an Aspen grove in Utah called Pando.  Somewhere I found out that all aspens are clones and each grove has a single root system. Pando is the heaviest living organism, something like 850,000 tons.  Being a clone and having a single root system can protect the grove in case of a forest fire for instance.  The trees may burn but since the roots remain the grove can grow back quickly.

What I found interesting about this challenge is that it took so much thought - I spent about 7 weeks thinking about it and a sewing marathon of three days putting it together.

All of the fabrics are from my stash.   The white and black fabric was a lucky find.  Can't imagine why I bought it but it worked very well.  It looks like someone went crazy with a bottle of india ink on a white and gray fabric.  The beige fabric was fused to the background and then I zigzagged it down.  I used Ruth McDowell's freezer paper technique to put it together and had a great time.

Connections

Hello everyone,

I'm going to attempt to post my finished peice early as we have to be away next week in IL helping my husband get his mom's house ready to sell as she passed on last year. It is an especially challenging time for us as our daughter's issues keep escalating. I actually started and finished this piece last month, have started another Connections but won't finish it quickly so may go ahead and make it larger eventually. Right now it is hard to know when I will next get time for art. When I do, though, it is very good therapy for me.

I began this challenge with many so ideas that kept morphing, which is good. The longer I thought about it and made lists of all the connections I could think of, I had a diarrhea of concepts. Not good. After realizing a small piece is different from a large, I decided to go for symbolism with happy colors (I need happy now) and basic shapes, and contrast. A haiku instead of a sonnet. I do love to look at the work of others and I have a nagging feeling this piece is an amalgam of things I have seen somewhere. I enjoy it hanging in my daughter's room while she is away. I photographed it on the floor on white paper towels and they show up, so I won't do that again! The edges are straight, but look skewed in the photo. the photo is horizontal, but I've hung it vertically with the 2 stripes at the bottom. The piece is fused with Misty Fuse, made with all commercial fabrics plus netting. I mounted it by making it larger and wrapping the edges around a wooden 1"x1" frame, made by my husband. So the fusing, netting and fabric wrapped frame were all new for me to do. Looking forward to seeing your work.

Connection challenge

I I I have a few pictures of a mostly finished CONNECTION project. Not TOO involved but I found some fabric I purchased from Spoonflower awhile ago and decided it fit into the "golden mean" ratio and worked with that.....and some gold thread, and some gold rings which I have connected to the quilt! As soon as I figure this all out again, I will post the pictures...........I am posting!