52 weeks of surface design: weeks 8 and 9: relief printing and embroidery
the last few weeks have been very busy for me, and i have not have much time for printing or painting. boo! hiss!
i’ve been working very, very hard, finishing up a series of memory quilts dedicated to my father, who passed away due to pancreatic cancer in 2015. i plan to gift them to my brothers, mother, and another family member for xmas, and the holidays are fast approaching…
however, i did sneak in a tiny bit of work on things relating to the 52 weeks project, before i got in over my head with the memory quilts (i’ll blog about them very soon!)…!
i took an evening and hand quilted the striped mini quilt seen at the top of this post, adding contrasting and complimentary colors to the printed lines. this mini was an experiment; i wanted to see what kind of effect i would get if i added another element of surface play to my printed motifs. i want to make a series of larger quilts with this added stitching, perhaps leaving some motifs unstitched and/or only stitching some motifs and see what overall effect it produces.
on that note: i recently took a few days on the early end of the last two weeks and printed the half oval striped motifs seen above. it’s more relief printing, a foam image on a scrap of wood, and a variety of fabric screenprinting inks, half of which are neons. i’m printing the motif on three sides of a 6” block and i plan to tesselate them in an attractive way, and hand quilt only some of them. i want to make a mini version first to work out my idea.
do you ever make mini quilts or pieces in order to work out larger ideas before jumping into large, complex quilts or works? i don’t always take the time, but do i find the process making small quilts to be helpful when i do. plus, there’s the added bonus of much more instant gratification… :)