"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!

Hello from overseas !

Hi everybody! I'm very happy Madalene asked me to become a part of this group - I'm looking forward to an excitingchallenge-year! As I am the only one who never met any of the other 5 participants in real life, I'll do my best to introduce me and my work a bit.

I am mid-forty and live in the southern part of Germany. I got married in the last century ... Jens and me share our home with two wonderful cats, unfortunately, we could not have kids of our own. After I finished school I did an apprenticeship as a bookseller for two years, than I started university. Graduated with an MA in political and educational sciences, and started working in the advertising industry ... which was a not-so-good-idea. Now I'm working in the publishing industry, and I like my job!
I started quilting about 15 years ago. As many quilters I started with traditional quilting, but more and more I became fascinated with art quilts. There's a page on my blog that shows most of my quilts from the last years (here's the link!).
And this is the first quilt in a series I started last year: "And the occasional glimpse of orange" I'm still very happy with this one ...

OK - any questions? Just ask - I will answer most questions ;-))

OK, Ready

Here's a non-very interesting photo of me, but it's allowing me to practice posting one. I am 63 years old, married for 33 years to an airline pilot. That has equated to fabulous/adventurous though broke early years, living in 10 states, and delaying having children. So we have a 20 year old adopted daughter from Chile and a 24 year old biological son. We have all livd in TX for the past 13 years, but I am originally from Iowa. Laina and we are on a large lake 40 miles north of Houston. Son is 15 miles away. I turned into super mom when it finally happened, so though I began traditional quilting 15 or so years ago and made my share of Log Cabins and bargellos I never went into production mode. Too many hours on Girl Scouts, Boy Scouts, PTA boards, sports parent duties, traveling, and some more moves. Came down with the art quilt bug 3 years ago, but couldn't fit in finding any local non-traditional quilters to spend time with then. Have taken 5 day workshops from Carol Taylor and Katie Pasquini Masopust and a one day from Jean Wells. I have driven down to the Houston IQF every year for past 13 years. Looking forward to "Connections" with you.