Wednesday, October 1, 2014

Monochromatic - A Study in Red

The latest challenge from Art Quilts Around the World was titled "Monochromatic". 

I had so many thoughts that I wanted to do, but they were all in blacks and grays and I really felt that I needed to do something with color. My normal go to color is blue or blues and greens or purple...all nice cool colors. 

So then I had to start thinking about what I wanted to depict. About this time my mom gave me a book about different art quilt techniques and different ideas for fabric manipulation. As I looked through this book I came across the instructions for weaving and I knew that is what I wanted to do, which just left my color choice. 

I knew that I had a little bit of red mottled yarn left from scarf I knitted last winter and knew that is what I wanted to be my base....so now I needed to figure out the weft (or the warp, I can't remember which is which and in my world that is okay). I ended up going to Etsy and purchasing a bunch of recycled sari silk ribbons. Once those arrived it was a matter of just doing it. 

In the end, I decided to leave the extra ribbon hanging and just did a satin stitch around the edges with the same variegated red thread that I quilted with. Here is the finished product: 



Here is a close up of the quilting. I started with the Sanskrit "Om" and then shadow quilted around. 


And, just to give you an idea of what I started with, here is a shot of my "loom" with the first couple of rows of woven ribbon. 



Now, on to the next challenge... 

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