Art Quilt Challenge

For our upcoming guild show, there's a challenge to design an original work inspired by a piece in an art museum at a size of 24x28 (+/- 2 inches).  My art quilt group visited the Andy Warhol exhibit at the Milwaukee Art Museum and decided that we'd choose one of Warhol's works as our inspiration.

I decided that I wanted to choose some of his work that probably isn't as well known (i.e. not his pop art).  I liked the oxidation paintings that were included in the exhibit, which Warhol created using metallic paint (which oxidized when urine was applied).  Now I have no plans to use any of the latter substance in my quilting, but I did really like the effect.

Here's an example of one of Warhol's works (Oxidation, 1978, Urine on copper metallic painted canvas):

I wasn't quite sure how to approach this type of work, but the Warhol Museum had a great resource for teachers to use in discussing these particular works of art and the science behind them.  The activity sheet suggested using Modern Masters Copper paint on a canvas and then applying a variety of acids and bases to see how they might react.  I thought this seemed like a reasonable enough place to begin, although I wasn't certain how I might quilt through fabric that had thick paint applied.

Local art supply store Artist & Display unfortunately does not keep the paint in stock and the very helpful salesman was worried that the oxidation process would not stop and that my quilted piece would simply fall apart.  He's still trying to talk to the vendor for me to see if they know of any uses of the paint on regular cotton fabric.  So I had to abandon that avenue for the time being.

One of my art quilt books had some information on gold leafing, and I discovered that Artist & Display sold copper leaf.  I purchased a packet of this and sprayed some lemon juice on it, just to see whether it would have any effect and whether any oxidation might occur.  Unfortunately, the lemon juice dried and one really could not see any effect, although if you did get up really close to the sheet of copper leaf, you could see tiny bits of color change in a few places.  But you'd never notice unless you practically studied it under a microscope.  I was also uncertain how this would look once I'd actually ironed it on to fabric - would the wonder-under or adhesive product eventually show through the copper leaf?  That couldn't possibly be appealing.

So on to another plan.  Could I get some sort of similar effect by bleaching some black fabric, recognizing that you don't know what color might be revealed in the process?  I'd not done any bleaching before, so decided to opt for Soft Scrub with Bleach and a bleach pen as two alternatives.  I wasn't certain how best to apply the bleach, but played around and in the end I don't think this process will work either. Unless I use straight bleach (diluted, of course), I don't really know how I'll get the splatter/spray/random effect I'm looking for.  I was also shocked at how long I had to leave these products on the fabric to achieve much of any effect - close to 5 hours or so, I think. Of course this fabric discharged to a ever lovely brown color.

All but the one on the right were done with Soft Scrub with Bleach; the one at right in the photo was done with the bleach pen.

 

It also occurred to me that maybe I could get a decent effect by simply dying my own fabric.  About a year ago, I purchased supplies to dye some fabric in the microwave using RIT, based on an article in Quilting Arts magazine.  So I figured, what the heck.  I ended up trying a few different color combinations and while I have some nice fabrics, they're still not quite what I was hoping for.

Here are photos of the fabric I did dye.

Color combo #1 (violets, blues, teals; the third from left is a combo of the two to its left):

Color combo #2 (green and red on either end with a combo in the middle):

Color combo #3 (orange and blue with the combo in the middle):

My art group met last week and Karen suggested that it might be worth an attempt at rusting one or more of the pieces. I think this has promise, but I need to dig up the articles I've seen on rusting to refresh my memory on the process.  And I'm not certain what I'll actually use for the oxidation process.  If I lived closer to my parents, I'm sure there would be all kinds of wonderful things I could steal from the barn.  But I don't really keep around a stash of random metal objects.  I think steel wool might work...

Hopefully all of this experimentation leads somewhere.  I'm running out of time and ideas, however.  And I don't know if I have the energy to resort to a completely different project.  I probably could do something inspired by his Pop Art works, but most others in the group are doing the same, and I'm not sure what every day item I'd want to elevate to quilt status.  Anyone have any brilliant insights into how I might achieve the effect I'm looking for?

Allium

My small art quilt group met late last month and I'm just posting now because finishing up my small project took a wee bit longer than expected. Go figure.

We didn't really have a theme this time around, but the chapter in the book was on embellishments, which fit in really well with the recent workshop I took with Mary Stori through my guild. However, because we didn't have a theme, I really struggled to figure out what it was that I wanted to make this month. In the end, I settled on attempting to create an allium out of fabric, as I was seeing them in a number of gardens throughout the neighborhood and the flowers very much intrigue me. In fact, I think I may have to plant some bulbs and include a few of these lovely plants in my garden next year.

My original plan was to feature the allium plant in three different stages of growth in my small quilt, but things rarely go according to plan, do they? I began by thread painting the base of the allium that would still be in "bloom." And here's where I went wrong. I guess I really DO need to hoop up my fabric for threadpainting, as the central portion of the project got incredibly warped. Check out this picture showing just how "unflat" the piece was. Clearly, time for a Plan B.

I cut out the central square of the threadpainted piece and then ironed and starched the heck out of it. In the end, I was able to get it relatively flat, and when quilting it, I did have to leave just a couple of puckers/tucks along the outer edges. I probably should have started over, but by that time, I felt like I'd invested enough time that I was going to make it work, as Tim Gunn might say.


After playing around a bit, I came up with the final composition above, which I'm okay with, although I don't feel like it was terribly inspired or creative. I'd hoped to figure out something to put in the small squares at the bottom, and I do think I'll take it with me to look for some beads or other embellishments that might work; the closest buttons I had on hand were designated too blue by the art quilt group. The bugle beads were added as a final step, as I didn't want to deal with them on top of the other issues I was encountering as I quilted down the central portion of the quilt.

Not sure what I'll tackle next, but I'm leaning toward tackling one of the varieties of hostas we saw at the Boerner Botanical Gardens when we visited with my MIL last Tuesday. Perhaps this one:

Raspberry

If you know me well, you already know that raspberries are my absolute favorite fruit. If something has raspberries in it, I am extremely likely to order it. We had a pretty large patch of them when I was growing up and I used to love to go out to pick the raspberries, probably eating close to as many as ended up in the bucket (sorry, Mom!). While I don't have space for my own patch right now, I've found an absolute heaven about an hour's drive away, where I can pick loads of raspberries each September, freezing baggies and baggies, and making many batches of jam. Ben will testify that getting me out of the raspberry patch can be something of a challenge.

So it only seemed fitting that at some point I make a quilt in honor of my favorite fruit. Here's my raspberry quilt, made for my art quilt group's meeting last week. We were working on Chapter 7: Thread Work of the Art Quilt Workbook, by Jane Davila and Elin Waterston, with a theme of "food."

The raspberry includes two different colors of reddish thread, plus a bit of white on top. I created one row of "seeds" using a straight stitch on my machine, dropping the feed dogs, and moving the fabric around under the machine. This worked well, but I ended up with some puffiness from going around and around in a semi-circular fashion that I didn't really like. I remembered that Ann Fahl had mentioned in a workshop I took last spring that she free-motioned with a zigzag stitch, so I decided to do that throughout the rest of the project, and it worked really well, filling the areas a bit better and eliminating the ridges/puffiness.

The most difficult part of the task for me was figuring out where to put the darker and lighter colors and to make the highlights. I worked from a photograph I found online and used Photoshop to convert the image to grayscale, which allowed me to see some of the contrast a bit better. I also played with adjusting the contrast of the photo so I could gain a better sense of where I needed to use the lighter and darker threads. After some study, I realized that the object was lit from both sides, which had created part of my confusion.

While it's not perfect, I think this turned out "berry" well!

Going Bananas

Last month, after I finished my hummingbird quilt, I wrote that my small art group would be switching themes from birds to food. We're working through the Art Quilt Workbook, by Jane Davila and Elin Waterston and this month's assignment was to make a project based on chapter 6 - paint effects.

I did a pretty good job of obtaining the supplies relatively early on. After some difficulty in figuring out where to obtain fabric paints (I wasn't sure about RIT, which was all I could seem to see at Jo-Ann's that didn't look like puffy paint for other kinds of artistry), I discovered that Artist and Display carries Dye-na-Flow paints, and I also purchased some Polished Pigments by LuminArte (ground pigments mixed with micas, which give it some shimmer) from Quilting Arts magazine's web store, and I purchased some plain white fabric (I forget which brand) from the LQS.

But then it the supplies just sat there. Because I was afraid to start. I knew what I wanted to paint - I had to have an idea so I knew what colors of paints to purchase. I'd settled on bananas from the time of our last meeting. But I waited until the night before our meeting to actually attempt painting as I suspected I'd do something remarkably horrible. Painting's similar to drawing, right? And I can't draw ...

While I have not yet turned these into completed projects, here are my results.

First, the Dye-na-flow paints:


And the Polished Pigments, for comparison:


As you can see, I'm not great with control; I don't know if I needed a thinner brush (I was using a "1") or if I used too much paint, or what. The paints were quite thin, so the paint definitely "wicked" across the fabric. Thank goodness I had thought to purchase some resist! I do think that I can turn these into something interesting with a bit of thread-painting, and I'm glad I tried both brands of paints because I think I could use each of them in different kinds of ways (the Dye-na-Flow colors are stronger, but the others have a very nice shimmer to them).

Earlier in the post I mentioned that I wasn't certain about RIT. One of the others in the group followed an article in the December/January issue of Quilting Arts to dye fabrics with the RIT dyes, and it looked pretty good. So I purchase a few packets at Jo-Ann's yesterday and look forward to giving those a shot as I hadn't yet had a chance to peruse the article (and I 've been carrying it around in my "Mary Poppins" bag). I'll definitely post results!

Hummingbird #2

Last night before our regular quilt guild meeting, my little art quilt group met again over dinner. It has been a long time since we got together, and I've been rather delinquent in general, as I didn't really do anything for the group since I made my first hummingbird quilt in September. Blame it on that class it took at MATC and the holidays and all!

If you remember, we're working through the Art Quilt Workbook, by Jane Davila and Elin Waterston. I knew that we were still working in the "birds" series as a group, but had no idea what chapter or technique we were doing, and seeing as I started it Monday evening (for a Wednesday meeting...), I just decided to do whatever I wanted.

Here's my quilt:


When doing research late last summer, I had found a photo on iStockphoto that I knew I wanted to use as the inspiration for a quilt at some point, so I decided to have a go at it. I first reversed it in Photoshop, as there was something that I just liked more about having the bird oriented to the right. I printed out the image at approximately the size that I wanted the quilt to be (remember, our projects are literally the size of a piece of paper), and then rough cut pieces of fabric using the printout to help me with scale. I threadpainted a bit on top of the fabric to tone down some of the colors (like the green on the hummingbird's back as well as to make the white on the throat and belly less bright). As for the flowers... well, I have to admit that I cheated a bit on them and used the leaf shapes that are in Edyta Sitar's pattern "Geraniums," which I finished ages ago, but still need to quilt. In some ways, quilting these was a good test case for how I will quilt them in that project.

At first, I wasn't sure about this project, as the wings aren't quite placed properly, and I don't think the striping across them looks real. But in the end, I am rather happy with how it turned out and am very glad that I had the group to challenge myself to even start such a thing.

Next month, we're switching themes. The new one: food! The technique: painting. I may be in over my head (but at least I could use food to paint!).