Buttons&Beads&Quilts!

Usually, when I start a new piece, I pin up the background piece and start cutting out shapes and motifs from a large stack of fabrics, laces, and ribbons that I’ve piled up. The stash reaches a critical mass and then demands that it be created. First, there’s an itchiness or squiminess inside of me as I keep looking at that stack, as if it’s staring back, saying “Well, when ya gonna get started? We’re waiting over here!”. Sometimes, the heap spills over on to the floor to command my attention. This piece is different. In “Japanese Irises” whose detail is shown above, I used a photograph of my beloved Japanese irises, or Iris ensata, that flouirsh in the grotto garden between mine and my neighbor’s houses as the inspiration for the piece rather than a mass of compatible fabrics.

My house sits in between two drainage easements, somy yard is often flooded. My former neighbor had been trained in Korea as a landscape architect and designed the garden between ur two houses for me. I did a lot of research to find what would grow well in that area, and I look forward every year to the few short weeks when the various varieteies are in bloom. At dusk, the paler flowers of the Japanese irises hover in the dying light as you can’t see the stems. They look for all the world as if they’re huge butterflies. Here is the photo that I used for this quilt…

 Unlike most of my other art quilts, each petal for each flower had a separate paper pattern used to cut out the fabric, as I really wanted to simulate the beautiful drooping quality of these flowers. The material that I had chosen for the petals was a dreamy varigated batik that ended up being covered up mostly with the bead work, but the fabric’s changing hues gave me a great surface on which to vary the colors. Probably five to six different colors and shapes of beads went on to each petal, including some wonderful Swarovski crystals, which while quite expensive, really add to the sheen of the petals.

Folded antique green ribbon with a picot edge was used to create the rush like leaves. Lush, olive green beads addded to the texture on the leaves and down at the bottom of the piece.There are also a lot of butterflies in this beaded art quilt, as there are in the actual gardens when these flowers are in bloom. Butterflies, for me, appear to be some of the happiest creatures there are on the planet, so I use a lot of them in my work. Some crested fabric that I bought when I was in Japan, (upper right and lower left of photo to the left) also duplicates the shape of the iris petals.

Much of this piece’s background is intensely beaded with size 10 seed beads. (I can no longer see the holes in the needles that are needed for the smaller size 15 beads). This intense beading takes quite a while to do – 1 sq in or 2.54cm sq is one hour’s worth of work. This much beading can seem intensive to some, but for me has become one of the trademarks of my work. Why would you want to rush through a piece when the journey of the sewing gives me so much pleasure?

Have you ever interpreted something from nature into another art form? Why not tell us about your process?

To see more of my art work, please visit my web site at www.fiberfantasies.com .