Saturday, August 1, 2009

Lilikoi

Despite the possibility of my Chocolate and Chair pieces hinting otherwise, I'm not a demonstratively passionate person in the sexual sense. I am, however, passionate in the enthusiastic sense, and I definitely have a passion for fabric.

Since moving to Hawai'i one year ago, I have been inspired to design some fabric patterns based on tropical flowers and plants. These designs remained mere sketches until Kirsty announced passion as our next theme. I considered a few other ideas, but the Passion flower is so graphically interesting that I kept coming back to it, and so used the opportunity to flesh out a few of my fabric designs "for real." 


I printed out samples of my fabric via the magic of Spoonflower and then continued my passion for fiber by adding additional appliqué, embroidery and beaded embellishment to the Passion flower fabric. I've titled it "Lilikoi" as that is the Hawaiian name for passion fruit and flowers.

12 comments:

Deborah Boschert said...

Love it! I am so happy to see many similarities to my piece. How funny and serendipitous. I've looked at tons of pictures of passion flowers and these are a lovely interpretation. Very dynamic!

I'd love to see your original fabric. I can't quite tell what is the fabric and what you added as applique and embellishment.

Terry Grant said...

Wonderful sense of movement. I love the very abstract quality of the combined flower forms. They become wheels or mandalas or gears. Such a graphic flower. I can see you taking this to more places. And the color choices are delicious.

Gerrie said...

I love the colors and textures. The closeup of this is wonderful. The repeating circles gives it such vitality.

kirsten said...

This is so rewarding of a close-up look! The background fabric is quiet and beautiful. I am amazed by how real those petals look - you have used a fabric that looks exactly like the texture of real passion flowers. And the edging is perfect! Just the right texture and colour.

Linda Robertus said...

I love this quilt - it's so vibrant!

Terri Stegmiller said...

Kristin, this is simply gorgeous! I really like how you have placed the flowers on the quilt and I totally love that background fabric. Wonderful!

Brenda said...

I'm so glad that passionfruit flowers feature in our passion mosaic as the flowers are truly exquisite. I love the delicacy of your flower petals - what material did you use? It looks like raffia. And what fun to incorporate your very own designed fabric in the background. This piece really complements your artist gallery 12x12 mosaic. Stay tuned for when the website is updated.

Diane Perin said...

Kristin! I could look at this for a long time, and I am just aching to see it in person. All of the elements work so stunningly together -- it is graphic and aimple and complex at the same time. You have a wonderful balance of elements here, too. WONderful.

Nikki said...

Beautiful! I love the colors and movement and wonderful texture to the flowers. Each time I look, I find something new. It definetly deserves a look in person!

Also,could you show us a picture of your original fabric design? If with Deborah, your embellishments fit so naturally I can't tell where the fabric design ends and the embellishments begin.

Karen said...

I've been comparing and contrasting your piece and Deborah's and they are both so different and so detailed and capture the passion flower so perfectly. As with Deborah's, I love the hand stitching.

Françoise said...

Nice! What did you use for the petals? It doesn't look like fabric. Is it paper?

Kristin L said...

Thank you everyone. The petals are a crinkly silk fabric that I stitched down only in the center. I'll have to remain coy about the original fabric as I have submitted a proposal containing it to a fabric company.