Abode Aglow

Behold the green and the purple! If you read my blog, you know I am enamored with the combination green and purple. When Nikki picked "eggplant" as our new color palette, I was eager to work with my beloved green and purple. I feel like it is a bit hard to distinguish between various shades of red and purple, or in Nikki's definition "eggplant and wine," but I still loved playing with them.

Abode Aglow

I love working with these house and leaf shapes. I am working on setting them in interesting compositions that are not necessarily realistic. I began by putting the very basic elements together: the wine section at the bottom, the emerald section in the middle and the off white section at the top. Then I "slapped" on the leafy stalks and the eggplant house and began to add details.

I knew the white section at the top was too empty, so I created a freezer paper stencil and sponge painted the zig zag halo over the house. The free motion quilting at the base suggested wavy grass. I fused a piece of organza above the house and used a burning tool to echo those wavy lines. I wasn't pleased with it, so I began to tear off the organza. Of course, I'd perforated it by burning those lines and it peeled off in pieces, leaving the wispy shape at the top of the house. An interesting development; I didn't intend it to look like flames, but it does.

I love to use sheer fabrics in my fabric collages, but I am always trying to consider what is lying beneath the sheer. The cool thing about sheer fabrics is that they change the look of what is underneath. So, if the sheer doesn't really compliment or contrast or change another element in an interesting way, I think it's a bit pointless. I am not so sure I used the organza as effectively as I would have liked on this piece. It sits on top of the painted green halo and creates a new layer there, but I should have explored further.

Then the embroidery! I tied some lavender bits on the stalks. They hang off the quilt about an inch. I like this three-dimensional element. I echoed the zig-zag halo with wine-colored thread and added French knots and a stream of drifting green x's from the house to the edge of the quilt.

I fused a backing onto the quilt, marked the 12x12" square, sewed a straight stitch just inside my marking, then trimmed on the line using a deckle edge rotary cutter. Then I mixed some eggplant acrylic paint and used a sponge to daub paint along the edge. This will keep the edge from fraying. (Not that fraying is always undesirable.) It also added just a tiny line of purple that frames the piece and it colors the bit of batting/white felt that you could see peeking through the layers.

I think this piece is an interesting combination of elements from my shrine-like pieces and my house and leaf/tree pieces. I'll be exploring this more.