Shades of BLUE - eventually!

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Well.......eventually I have finished the challenge Sue & I started last January.

I have kept the same thought process for all of the pieces in this challenge, that was to experiment with various media; for the four Blue months I have used ‘weave’ as my background.  I have always liked to weave with fibres and fabric, but this time I wanted to try different styles too, although looking at all 12 together they do seem to hava a similarity running through them.  

I thought that ‘Blue was going to be an easy choice, but again I have favourites and some that I would not do again.  I chose the ‘sky’ as the theme for these pieces which has predictably developed into the weather too.

September - Storm Clouds

September - Storm Clouds

For this piece I used threads for my warps and a variety of weights fabrics for the weft.  The fabric (Weft) is a selection of free cut, hand-dyed cotton and satin; and purchased felt, wool and the warp is a variety of wool and embroidery threads, both of which were bonded to a background fabric.  I love the juxtaposition of the thin and thick, rough and smooth.  I decided to keep the quilting to a minimum so just used large seed stitches to depict the rain drops.

October - Iso-Blue

October - Iso-Blue

The background for this piece is just 3 fabrics, again bonded to a background fabric.  In this case the weft is hand-dyed felt and the warp is purchased cotton and satin.  I covered the piece with blue organza which I burnt away in a few places to reveal the weave below.  The echo quilting was done on the machine and represents the ‘Isobars’ on the weather charts.  I have furrowed the organza and added silk tops for areas of ‘depression’.  Large seed beads and hand quilting have been added also.

November - Rainy Days

November - Rainy Days

I used a piece of calico covered with Gesso and scrim which was then painted with Inktense and spray painted, this became the free cut warp.  The weft is a piece of purchase satin that was also free cut.

The quilting mirrors the pattern of the weave with the addition of smaller felt, fabric paper and thread weaves.  I called it ‘Rainy Days’ because it reminds me of looking out through a window at the rain pouring down. 

December - Torquay Skies

December - Torquay Skies

My final piece is possibly my favourite piece, possibly because of the colour.  I was going to call it ‘Turquoise Skies’, but changed that to ‘Torquay Skies’ because as a child I spent every summer in Torquay at my Granddad’s and as we all know it was always perfect sunshine when we were children!  

I used a technique that I found in Gwen Hedley’s ‘Drawn to Stitch’ book, which is a variation on weave.   

Again all the pieces where bonded to a background fabric, and I used paper, cotton and satin.  All the pieces were torn and the rough edges left.  The machine quilting is simple lines and couched threads.

Now I can get busy with all the new things that are buzzing around my head.

Carolyn