Thursday, July 1, 2010

Don't Step On The Cracks


A couple of months ago I ran across a blog called Art With a Needle by Kathleen Loomis. I have no memory of what the catalyst was that took me to this blog, but I’m glad I found my way there.

Kathleen generously shares some of her quilting techniques and her Quilt Date for April post was very intriguing. I knew at some point I wanted to give the technique a try. And at some point it dawned on me that I should try this technique on my purple-yellow quilt.

I started my experiment by piecing together several different yellow fabrics. The resulting yellow base was approximately 24 inches square. I started big because I knew it would shrink with each purple strip added. By the time I deemed there were enough thin purple strips criss-crossing over the piece, it was down to around 15 to 17 inches square.

I then took several purple fabrics and cut varying widths of strips and pieced them together. Next I placed the purple strip piece on top of the yellow piece and started slicing randomly through both with my rotary cutter.

I rearranged the slices, pieced them together and then quilted it. The edge is finished with couched eyelash yarns.

8 comments:

JB said...

Wow!! I like it. So simple, yet so complex.

Karen said...

I started reading Kathleen's blog a few months ago also, we probably followed the same thread. Your experiment is very successful, the purple strips are really interesting to look at.

Gerrie said...

Love the title! I love how the purple skinny bits add so much movement to this piece. I may have been the one who turned you on to Kathleen's blog. I think I mentioned it in mine some time ago.

Terry Grant said...

Terri, was so surprised to see that this was your piece! It is all about line, which I love. The purples with those warm yellows seem like rich, velvety night time with fractured beams of light shining upward. This gives me a real feeling of light and darkness. And I think I need to check out the blog you referenced. The skinny strips are so expressive!

Diane Perin said...

What a great, strong linear design and a fun technique. The "cracks" show up really beautifully. I also like that we have seen you used pieced fields of fabrics in different ways -- this feels like another step in that process.

Françoise said...

Lovely! Very different from what you usually do, but it's nice.

Kristin L said...

I like the contrast between teh skinny cracks and the large background strips. It's a nice color study too. Kudos for trying new techniques -- it will be interesting to see if this pops up in your future work (maybe with the collage technique you've been working with lately).

Deborah Boschert said...

Those teeny tiny strips are so interesting. I love how they really do look like cracks. The quilting emphasizes them really well, too.