Buttons&Beads&Quilts!

To start off these blogs on the creation of the art quilt series, “Circles of Black, Circles of White”, I thought I’d talk about the fabric itself that was the inspiration for the quilts. I don’t know why I was so taken with this motif that I was drawn to create seven works based on it. Perhaps, it’s the fact that I’m attracted to round shapes anyway, as I use so many buttons in my art and most of them are round. I just began to see lots of these striped circles appearing all over the other fabrics I was buying at the time, and thus, the main image for the quilts was decided upon.

Little did I know how tired I’d get over sewing on the black beads to fill in the lines between the white spokes. The particular shiny black, size 10 seed beads that I found, have rather small holes, and threading black thread onto thin needles at night, when I do most of my sewing, can get to be hard on these aging eyes. Bead accidents also seem to occur a lot with these tiny black ones, and I’m sure that when my cut pile carpet finally gets replaced, there will be several pounds of beds around the chair where I usually sew that have sifted down to the backing of the rug.

Here’s one of those beaded circles from the first in the series. I like the way that I broke up the interior and made it look as if some of the background were coming through. I also like to repeat around the circumference of the circle various other round shapes. In the interior line, I used some small .5″ or 1.4 cm yellow buttons that ended with some of the last ones being similar in color, but about 1″ or 2.5cm across. I imagine that the size difference was due to the fact that I didn’t have enough of the smaller ones to make the it all the way around. Along the outer edge, I fastened green shell circles down with a contrasting magenta embroidery floss. The hole in the middle of those shell circles was big enough to be covered with small white buttons with black edges that I order from Hong Kong. They were also sewn down with a contrasting thread to add a little color interest to the middle of those buttons.

 Here’s how I treated another of those black and white circle motifs in this close-up of the third in the series. This time, the entire center is filled in with a blue glass button. The interior ring was encircled with white shell rings, and fastened down with lots of stitches made with aqua embroidery floss. Small yellow buttons filled in the holes in those white shell rings. Again, repeating the concept of circles within circles, I used lavender, domed shaped buttons with a thin white rim to go around the outer edge of the big black and white circle. You can also see, in the upper right, two kinds of other black and white buttons that carry on the theme.

The main black and white circle motif was cut in half for this section of the fifth in this art quilt series. I used yellow and orange lamp-work beads along the outer edge of the circle. I love these beads, which remind me of Halloween candy corn, which I don’t like to eat, but love these beads on quilts. Unfortunately, the store where I bought them doesn’t think that they’ll get anymore in stock, so here’s yet another example where I can’t get too tied into always having a certain art material at my disposal. Some more of those little white buttons with the black center and rim were sewn outside of the circle to emphasize its curve. There’s also a large greenish yellow, glass pansy button at the bottom of the curve that picks up the nearby beading of leaves.

In this detail of the sixth in the series, you can see how I used red, plastic crow beads sewn down with yellow thread near the outside edge. Out past them, I used smaller yellow buttons fastened down with black thread to complement the ring of yellow pearl beads further in towards the middle. The outside red halo, where I didn’t bead, has black and white striped buttons to repeat the lines in the big circle. There’s also a metal stamping, whose rays just appear at the bottom of this photo, to simulate the rays made by the black and white beaded lines of the big circle.

I think that you can see some of how my mind intuitively works now, having been an art quilter for so long. I pick a major motif and repeat it in varying sizes, colors, and placement to subtly carry out the theme and to draw your eye all round the surface of the quilt. I hope that you enjoy this little insight into how I think when I’m working, However, to be honest, when the work is really going well, I’m not consciously thinking. I’m letting the quilt tell me how it wants to appear and I just join in the dance of thread, beads, and buttons.

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

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