Tango Auditions

Reds and oranges do not feature very prominently in my stash or my quilts so it has been a challenge to work in this saturated palette for this theme. You can share my struggle over on my blog - it takes two to tango. Care to dance anyone?

All Fired Up

After some false starts, I think the passion thing is happening now. I've [almost?] given up on fire ideas. After all, I have made a 12inch x 12inch fire-themed quilt before as part of my earthwaterfire triptych:

Passion and colours...

This is the state of the question here today...

Don't ask me what I'll do with this, I don't know yet. I'm going to sleep on it, and then, maybe...

Feeling unpassionate, or maybe that's dispassionate...

but definitely not impassioned, about this challenge.

Aaaaaargh!

I simply cannot think of a thing that doesn't seem overwrought, cheesy, sleezy or X-rated. Rather than trying to depict the actual emotion I am now mulling over "things" or activities or people who represent passion in some way. Hmmmm. I copied a bunch of images of Flamenco dancers into a file. I think my viewing of "So You Think You Can Dance" (which, BTW, seems to be the ONLY decent thing on TV this summer) has me thinking along passionate dance lines. But 12" is awfully small for a whole Flamenco dancer, especially if she has her arm up over her head. I'm telling myself, "simplify, simplify" but passion does not seem easy to simplify.

I am imagining that you who are more abstract minded are probably well into this, flinging paint and sequins and angelina, passionately at your piece. I am stuck and haven't even started anything.

Dyeing for Passion

Here are the results from my dyeing session last week. Now to work out what to do with it!

Misfire

Hmm. One of these things does not look like the other. Back to the drawing board...

Getting Reddy for Passion

Passionate Word Play

For the last week, I have been sharing a joy for quiltmaking with other creators and enthusiasts at the Sydney Quilt Show. Now it's time to start thinking about the next challenge theme - Passion.

1. A powerful emotion, such as love, joy, hatred, or anger.
2. 1. Ardent love.
   2. Strong sexual desire; lust.
   3. The object of such love or desire.
3. 1. Boundless enthusiasm: His skills as a player don't quite match his passion for the game.
   2. The object of such enthusiasm: Soccer is her passion.
4. An abandoned display of emotion, especially of anger: He's been known to fly into a passion without warning.
5. Passion
   1. The sufferings of Jesus in the period following the Last Supper and including the Crucifixion, as related in the New Testament.
   2. A narrative, musical setting, or pictorial representation of Jesus's sufferings.
6. Archaic. Martyrdom.
7. Archaic. Passivity.

Synonyms include:

• strong emotion - affection, affectivity, agony, anger, animation, ardor, dedication, devotion, distress, dolor, eagerness, ecstasy, excitement, feeling, fervor, fire, fit, flare-up, frenzy, fury, heat, hurrah, indignation, intensity, ire, joy, misery, outbreak, outburst, paroxysm, rage, rapture, resentment, sentiment, spirit, storm, suffering, temper, transport, vehemence, warmth, wrath, zeal, zest
• adoration, love - affection, amorousness, amour, appetite, ardor, attachment, concupiscence, craving, crush, desire, emoting, eroticism, excitement, fondness, infatuation, keenness, lust, prurience, urge, weakness, yen
• strong interest - craving, craze, drive, enthusiasm, fad, fancy, fascination, idol, infatuation, mania, obsession
• powerful, intense emotion - ardor, fervency, fervor, fire

I can see that I may have to dye some more reds and oranges...

Lilikoi

Since moving to Hawai'i, the word passion makes me think of this:


Lilikoi is the Hawaiian word for passion fruit (apparently named for the first place where it was planted (it's an introduced plant). Passion fruit juices, jellies, teas, and more. It's possible that research for this theme could be as tasty as it was for our chocolate theme. There's apparently a lot of passion here.

Twelve by Twelve Website Update

The latest website update is complete:

Not only can you see all of our identity-themed art quilts, but look at how the individual artist galleries are shaping up too. Don't forget to come back and leave a comment on the blog!

The man from Afghanistan

People keep asking me what happened to the man who inspired my quilt so I thought I'd so a public response... only the answer is that I don't know! I didn't do all of his case, just sat in on the interview as agents for his solicitors who were elsewhere in the country so I never got to the end of the story. Sorry folks. I can tell you though that he didn't know the telephone code for Kabul because he didn't have a telephone or any need to ring Kabul.

I would not be surprised however if he was refused and had to go through the appeal stage. At the time I also acted for the Home Office in these cases and was dealing with an appeal where an MDC activist had left Zimbabwe and claimed asylum immediately she was through immigration having told the immigration officer, quite truthfully that she had been invited to a wedding. Despite the clear danger MDC activists were in at the time, she was refused and I had to put the Home Office case. Which would have been fine save the main reasons she was refused is that when she was searched she did not have with her a pair of shoes the staff deemed suitable for a wedding ( she agreed saying she was going to buy here) and also had a note in her bag about plumbers in Harare. I was instructed to say that this (old crumpled note) indicated she was not in fear because she was planning house renovation. I did my duty in putting this argument but decided not to press the matter when the immigration Judge said,
"Miss Conway, there is all kinds of rubbish at the bottom of my handbag. How about yours?"

Quite.

A little later the Home Secretary John Reid declared the Home Office "Unfit for purpose"

And the winner is...

Have you been wondering what's next?! Me too!
I have agonised over the choice of this theme. At the beginning of our journey together I imagined that I would choose a quote of some kind. Something pithy and clever and obscure that made me appear learned and well-read. But everyone else has provided one word and so now I feel some need to follow suit.

I decided a few weeks ago that my theme would be an abstract. I finally narrowed it to three. I won't tell you the other two, in case we end up doing one of those next time!

The one that I have chosen is Passion.

Go to it, chickadees! This should be a fun ride!

Scrambled Identity

Can you guess which Twelve made each of the following identity quilts? Read on and do leave a comment!

Face Value

This subject of Identity has hit a nerve with me. I suspect that I am currently experiencing a mid-life Identity Crisis. Or is it just another of those Identity Reassessments that I seem to experience from time to time? Either way, my quilt has inspired more questions in me than answers...

The original idea was to convey various "identities" by using textiles that conjure immediate images. It looked crap. Really, really crap. The only one I liked was the suit, shirt and tie. I liked that a lot. So I made more. And a few others.

When we first meet a person, we make immediate judgments about who they are based on their appearance.

Why do we trust a man in a suit? (DO we trust a man in a suit?!)Is it safer to trust an old lady than a soldier?

Is choosing a tie the only way a man in a suit can express his individuality?

Is a man in a uniform more or less trustworthy/authoritative than a man in a suit?

Is the Australian soldier more to be trusted than soldier of another country?

Why do most of us feel a need to acquiesce to conventions of 'good taste'?

Is adopting a uniform of jeans and safety pins any different from adopting a uniform of a suit?

How strongly do you identify with your country's flag?

At what point did the Australian psyche shift from allegiance to England to allegiance to Australia? Some Australians haven't. Is that why we aren't yet a Republic?

Shouldn't we always question judgments made at face value?

Will I ever work out who I am?

Latent Color

Well, after all of the talk about fingerprints, you'll not be surprised to see this. For the idea of "identity," I fiddled with a lot of different ideas -- identity documents, the aspects of our lives that help define who we are ... but I kept returning to the fingerprint. I liked the simple graphic aspect of doing it large, and I knew I'd have fun doing a reverse applique technique with it.

So, that's what I did. I layered a piece of multicolored, hand-dyed fabic over a piece of white cotton (I figured my hand-dyed fabric incorporated another aspect of my own identity), then I layered those over the batting and backing. I placed a drawing of a fingerprint on top, and sewed through all layers.

I love the cut-away part of reverse applique -- it's fussy work, but it's a good tv-listening chore, AND I love how the picture emerges. I finished this with a pillowcase finish.

I've called it Latent Color. We're all familiar with the phrase "latent fingerprints" (which describes how fingerprints are left behind invisibly everywhere) and I decided that love of color is a big piece of my identity.

Brenda, I was dismayed but loved to find those Barbara Watler quilts. Dismayed because her set of "painters prints" used this very same idea, with a multicolored print, even -- but I really enjoyed her quilts and hadn't seen them before. So thanks for posting them! I was glad I'd finished mine by then, or that would have thrown me into a "what do I do now?" tizzy!