Monday, November 1, 2010

Rusty Square Dance


This piece was fun and a lot of work. I started by rusting the turquoise silk and I discharged and added turquoise Dynaflow paint to the rust colored silk. I sandwiched each of the fabrics with a thin batting and backing and quilted them.

I played around with some scraps of fabric to figure out what size squares would fit into a twelve in square piece. I ended up cutting 1 and 3/4 inch squares. Stitching these is not as simple as it looks. You can read more about it on my blog.

Here is a detail shot. I found a 12 inch copper rod at the hardware store which I sanded with steel wool. I then soaked it overnight in Windex with ammonia to get the patina.



7 comments:

Diane Perin said...

I just read your blog to read the details on how you did this -- definitely a lot of figuring and planning! This result has a fun energy -- the colors look great against each other and the rusty/patina effects of each color are really shown effectively here! I'm impressed that you patina'd a hanging pole, too!

Terry Grant said...

As always, beautiful fabrics. I like the rustic feel of unfinished edges and informal placement of the elements of a very formal grid design.

Terri Stegmiller said...

This gives the impression of being cut pieces of metal that are hanging to create a wind chime or an outdoor hanging art piece. It turned out great Gerrie.

Kristin L said...

I was going to write that it reminds me of a copper wind chime and then I read Terri's comment and see that she got the same vibe from it. I like the way that the little squares highlight the interesting areas on your fabrics (I could not foresee how you were going to use them when you first showed you fabric, though I thought they had wonderful patterns and colors). This one just feels right.

kirsten said...

Ha! I thought copper wind chime too!!
I expect this quilt to make little tinkly noises :)
The flashes of turquoise on the copper squares are delicious.
Love the little stitches attaching the quilt to the copper rod.

Karen said...

This is very clever Gerrie, and really effective. It reminds me of an old piece of fencing or gate hanging loose. I really like the stitching and the little bits holding it all together.

Unknown said...

I like how the diagagonal stitching seems to go one way on the turquoise and another on the rust but then in places that pattern breaks down. That 'breaking down' seems to reflect the rust process itself and also remidns me of how the pattern deteriorates in kuba cloth. And anything that reminds me of kuba cloth is A OK with me :)