“Going Around the Curves on an Art Quilt”

In a previous posting, I talked about how the wheel of spokes on this  fabric motif was the major design element common in a series of art quilts, “Circles of Black, Circles of White”. In this blog, I’m going to talk about how I cut the circles into arcs, and used them throughout the quilts. Many of the edges of the compositions seemed to call for half circles, as the background fabric was too bare to my eye. (Granted, my eye likes a LOT of embellishment!) In other places, the interior of the piece needed some accents, but not a full beaded circle. So, here are some photos of how I used the curves to accentuate the full circles.

Here is an example of the outer edge of the circle having been cut away from the wheel fabric motif seen above. It and the next photo are from the third in the series which was finished this year (2012). This arc was then cut into smaller pieces to make a bigger curve and the middle of the circle was beaded separately.(You can see that smaller black and white circle to the left of the green rimmed button and above the butterfly. It used to be in the middle of the big circle.) I used small orange buttons sewn on with contrasting aqua embroidery floss to draw the eye around the striped curve. That orange picked up the commercial orange organdy flower in the upper right of this pic, and the orange button in the lower left. I like to repeat colors in different sizes, shapes, and textures.

Here is another detail shot of this same third piece in this series of art quilts. The outer edge of the striped arc has been accentuated with those white shell rings that I’ve written about before. Here, they’re stitched down with a dark magenta embroidery floss. The centers have been filled in with those little black and white buttons that I order from Hong Kong. Their middles were stitched with yellow thread to pick up the color of the nearby larger beads and the asymmetrical flower button in the center of this photo. The interior of where the rest of the fabric circle would have been, has been beaded in with the shades of lavender and gold seed beads that were used in the background. (Those small size 10 seed beads are what make these quilts so long to finish as 1 sq. in or 2.5 cm sq. of that size bead takes 1 hour’s work.)

This photo is from the sixth in the series and was actually completed before the third above. (The quilts are named for the order in which they were cut out, but they were completed as I felt they would fit into various exhibition schedules.) Here is another example of where the smaller middle circle was cut away and surrounded by the larger, outer curve of the fabric motif, and the space in between was filled in with seed beads to match the background. Here, the same white shell rings have been attached with red embroidery floss, but the centers have been filled in with gold miracle beads. I love their luminous glow from the layers of coloring material in those beads. Their shine is quite shiny, and I add them on to surfaces whenever I can.

In this last example from the sixth art quilt, you can see how most of the main circle was used in the center of the photo, and then accentuated by a band of that striped arc. On the curve, the small black and white buttons have been replaced by red and white versions, and small red and gold buttons go around the center of the big circle. The gold dots in those central buttons pick up the gold seed beads sewn around the grommet holes in the brocade ribbon the left and the gold beads and flat rondelles on the white industrial zipper on the right of the photo.

No detail is too small for me to take advantage of as I compose my pieces as I repeat colors and shapes down to the smallest elements. Most people’s eyes naturally follow a curve, and so I’ve added things of interest at the ends to give their eyes something to focus on and pause before moving on tot he next feature. I hope that you can see how much fun I have making these art quilts, and can appreciate the love that I put into them.

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

To find out how to buy my art work, please check out “How to Buy my Art Work” in the “Pages” section to the right of this blog.

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