Thursday, January 31, 2008

Chocolate Love

or "what happens to chocolate when it comes into my house!"



This little piece has given me so many fits and starts. The final work is nothing like my original plan. In fact, this is the second piece that I have made, but I won't show the first.

Here is what I did. I first scanned some indigo shibori and turned it to chocolate colors. This became my background. I then took photos of some Valentine candy. Me, being me, the candy did not stay uneaten for long. So, I decided to take photos of the aftermath. I then put on some nice red lipstick and kissed a piece of paper and scanned it. These photos and the lips were photoshopped to give them less of a "photo" look. I then collaged everything in Illustrator.

I ironed some silk charmeuse to freezer paper. The first piece printed quite well, but I didn't like the result. It was on a grid and the quilting just didn't work. So I set up the shibori background to be all linear and not in a grid and reprinted. I kept getting little bits of stray black ink on the fabric. After 3 tries, I gave up and went to bed last night feeling quite weary and upset.

As often happens to me, the problem became and epiphany. I knew why I was not liking the piece, and I knew that the solution would camouflage the ink stains. I made some thermofax screens of the words, chocolate, love, bittersweet and chocoholic. I printed lips in lots of different sizes on organza. Then I went to work adding lips and words, and I came up with a piece that makes me smile and that I am not embarrassed to share with everyone. It still has little bits of drips and doodles that I wish were not there, but the overall design seems to hide them.

14 comments:

Terry Grant said...

This looks so very Valentine-ish! Reminds me of old fashioned heart-shaped boxes of luscious chocolate. Mmmmmm.

Anonymous said...

REAL kisses! How perfect :)

Kristin L said...

The chocolate shibori reminds me of satin sheets which is just perfect for kisses and chocolate!!

Françoise said...

Your quilt looks great. I like these little pink kisses!

Terri Stegmiller said...

Oh this is a fun piece Gerrie! I agree with Terry, it has a Valeninte feel to it.

Karen said...

I like your thought process of sleeping on it. I do that all the time, and it seems to work quite well. The piece turned out great and the words really make it nice

Nikki said...

Definetly a quilt to be enjoyed in the privacy of one's own home!

I love the combination of the words and kisses over the chocolates.

Gerrie said...

I am intrigued by some of the comments. Maybe I have had a sublimanal fantasy playing out here. I should have added champagne!!

Diane Perin said...

Gerrie! I didn't realize you scanned blue shibori to turn it brown via computer -- what a smart idea! And it has that perfect chocolate/marble bark look on your background. I always love lettering on quilts, and the pink accents look great against the brown.

Unknown said...

YOu didit las night?! You fly close to the wind don't you?! This reminds me of those very trendy T-shirts you see beautiful young things wearing. May be you coudl seel it as a fabric design. I would not now a thermofax screen of I fell over one. Maybe you could post a mini-turorial sometime?

jpsam said...

You are such an inspiration! What a treasure trove of ideas. The kisses cracked me up. I'd love to come over to your house to play.
joan

Diane Perin said...

Gerrie, this one conjures up a funny memory for me. Back in my working woman days, I used to go often to a local restaurant for lunch, and as it was a sort of dark place with dark wood panelling, they had a lot of mirrors on the walls. I was often waited on by a very sweet but quite ditsy waitress. (Remember "Ursula" from Mad About You?") Anyway, she always wore super bright red or pink lipstick and she had rather large lips. Well, my friend Sue and I went in one time for lunch around Valentine's Day and all of the mirrors had big red and pink kissy lip marks all over them. Sue said wryly "I bet I know who did those." And just then, the waitress came over with a big smile and said, "Do you like our decorations? Guess who did the lip prints?! ME!" We couldn't stop giggling all through lunch, picturing her kissing all the mirrors.

Gerrie said...

Diane: That is so funny! I googled kissing lip images and many of them looked like actual lip prints so I thought, Why not? and decided to use my own.

Minka said...

Perhaps the stray black ink is really chocolate crumbles. It's a fun piece!