Buttons&Beads&Quilts!

Soon after my husband left, I decided to take an on-line computer course to learn more about using those that were at the time, quite confusing machines. All of the work had to be sent to the professor via File Transfer Protocol (FTP), and my assignments kept disappearing. I would send off my hard work, and poof! Gone! I began to wonder where exactly out there in the ether those bits and bytes were landing. I imagined a scene of a cross-section of a field with layers of data laid down like layers of sedimentary rock. This concept was the beginning of this art quilt, “In the Field of Lost Bytes”.

I think that technically, “bits” would have been the more accurate term, but I liked the sound of “bytes” better. I was not in the best of spirits at the time, given the state of my marriage, and color, which is one of my favorite design elements, just didn’t feel right at the time. I had also never done a totally black and white piece of any kind except for pencil and charcoal work back in art school. So, giving myself the challenge of sticking to the tonal theme of black, white, and comparable shades, I began making my choices.

 Since computer languages boil down to binary code, all “0s” and “1s”, I decided to have my computer stitch out lines of those numbers to make the layers. My Bernina has that capability to stitch out numbers, so I kept changing between those two symbols, having no idea what kind of message I was creating, if any, since I don’t know any form of code. I than chose a variety of black and white striped ribbons to alternate between my stitched layers. There are always lots of choices of black and white buttons, although there is an antique black and cream incised “flower” you can see in the upper middle of the photo above.

I had a hard time sticking to the black and white scheme that I had chosen, because, as I said above, I adore color. However, I had set out a challenge for myself, and tried as best as possible to stick to it.

Since the background fabric was white, I also stuck to black thread for the hand and machine quilting. Running across the upper third of the detail shot at the left is a row of silver snaps on a black, industrial fabric. (I figured that silver was close enough to white to be included). You can see more of the diversity of button choices in this pic, from bubbles and stripes, to checkerboard patterns. I also made some ribbon flower rosettes out of white and black grosgrain. I decided that when I’m making the piece, I can have flowers in the middle of layers of earth, if I choose to do so.

So, from a rather frustrating time in my life, I created a work of art. Why not tell us how you’ve turned adversity into something positive. We’d love to hear what you did to turn something around, for we all grow by learning from each other.

You can see more of my art work at my web site at www.fiberfantasies.com