Friday, November 30, 2012

Reincarnation

Sounds like we all have been having a couple of busy months.  I almost forgot about the challenge, and then, when it finally appeared on my radar, planned for a while to make a monochromatic quilt, but I got to thinking about the meaning of "green" as in "good for the earth." Instead of creating an image that symbolized this, I finally settled on actually being green and reusing fabric.

Years ago I had bought pieces of old Japanese kimonos, mostly sleeves, carefully unstitched them, and put them away--somewhere. After a frantic search, I was actually able to find these pieces.  I had forgotten that one of them contained carefully handpainted leaves that were on the lining of a sleeve, a bit of beauty that only the wearer would know about. That fabric was, by fortunate coincidence, green--a multi-shaded green with embedded dots that show up in certain lights and tiny light green dashes that must have been applied after the painted leaves (not much of this shows up in a photograph).

To keep with the green theme, I used no fusible interfacing with all its chemicals, my preferred method of dealing with silk, and did all the piecing and quilting by hand, although I did cheat and attach the facing by machine.  And here is the "Reincarnation" of those kimono silks:

And now that mine is finished and posted, I can enjoy what all the rest of you have created this time. Good theme word, Penny!

Madalene


1 comment:

  1. Wow, Madelene. Now I will have to slap myself if I'm tempted, as your piece makes me, to add kimono fabric to my stash. No room! It is elegant. Appreciate your text as it's hard to see the fine details of all of our work on-line. Such a good interpretation and execution of green. Would also work for new word Transformation but, no, you have to give us another piece. Looking forward to it.

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