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... 

Mom Trip Days 4 and 5

We have been in "the studio" for two days now and have really been able to unleash the creativity and are learning a lot. It is all really great fun to learn a new way to express yourself using paint on fabric. It is also incredibly tiring. I can't express how tired I am by the end of the day, but I do want to try and get this down before I slip off to Never Never Land...

We start each day with what the instructor, Susan Shie, calls "Library Time". This is a time where we take 10 minutes and just draw or journal without talking just to clear our minds. Actually, let me back up a bit... Susan is an artist that does almost folk art pieces and they are all covered in writing and tells a story and journaling her life and/or what is happening in the world at the time that she is working on a particular piece. But, to unleash the creativity in us we all have to start off drawing as if we were 6 year olds without stopping and thinking whether it is realistic or what anybody eels thinks about it and just let the juices flow. 

So, we draw or journal for 10 minutes during Library Time. Then we decide what the theme for the day is going to be. Yesterday, we made a list of things from which to draw inspiration from and then we go from there. Yesterday, our theme was "Time". That is pretty broad and left everybody open to do whatever they felt like doing. I got to thinking about the passage of time and settled on the Riddle of the Sphinx. Here is my outline drawing that I started with before I started adding color: 

And here it is with color added:

Here is a picture of our instructor and my mom's piece on the table on the lower right:

Today's theme that we were to work on was "Family". This is what I drew thus far:

I've just started adding color to it and will work more on it tomorrow, along with our next theme. 

On top of the class during the day today, this evening we went and saw a lecture from Amy Tan, author of "The Joy Luck Club" among many other books. It was in interesting talk about the "Heart of a Writer". She talked about her family and where her writing comes from within her. All really neat stuff to hear. Now, however, if am struggling to keep my eyes open, so will wrap up for now. 

Mom Trip - Day 3

We arrived at the location for our art quilt workshop and are pretty beat, so this will be a short post. 

We drove pretty much all day from Bowling Green, KY to Wooster, OH. We got stuck in construction traffic in Louisville, KY and game traffic in Cincinnati and then accident traffic in Columbus. 

The folks that we are staying with and learning from are really interesting and I'm looking forward to unleashing the creativity, but first I need to get to sleep and get rested. 

A couple of high points for the day, though were 1. Neither the subject or I realized that we would be driving into a different time zone so imagine our confusion when I looked AT&T the clock in the car and noticed that we had lost an hour. And 2. My dog walker, house sitter extraordinaire may have acquired another stray dog for me....but we will just have to see if he is still around when I return....

In the meantime, off for some much needed shut eye.