Cadmium, Titanium, and Cobalt Forever
I've spent the summer playing with paint and haven't picked up a needle in ages (except for knitting). It's been a much needed break from hand sewing which was leaving me with sore wrists, arms and fingers. I've really had a ball with the challenging media of acrylic and watercolor. In fact, if you haven't been following me on Instagram or Facebook, you may not know that I have changed my Etsy shop to sell only the painted artworks. If you are interested in some happy, colorful, affordable art check out my Etsy shop. It's stocked with lots of great pieces suitable for the upcoming gift giving season. In order to do that I had to move all the textile art to this website. You can see all my textile art for sale here. I admit it's been discouraging to create so much work, but not have anywhere to store it. I really need to clear some of the cupboards if I want to make way for future textile art.
How does all this relate to this post? Well, when I was considering what to do for my guild's challenge for this year I started thinking like an artist. The challenge theme was the Periodic Table of the Elements. If you use pigments in any way you probably know that many of them are made with these elements. I decided to paint a color card with cadmium red, titanium white, and cobalt blue which I then used to choose fabrics for this quilt.
It measures 43 x 47 inches with the intention that it could be given away as a child's quilt eventually. I used improvisational techniques to create a rhythm with red, white, and blue. This is inspired by Maria's Shell's class that I took this spring. By the way, the class piece is one that I haven't finished yet, but I plan to get back to this fall.
The challenge quilts debuted at our guild meeting in July where members could vote on their favorite. You can see the other challenge quilts here. They were intended to be shown to the public at our August quilt show. Unfortunately, our show was scheduled right before the eclipse and it was decided with all the hype about traffic and communication problems that we would cancel the show. So, the first public showing of these quilts is now set for October at the QuiltWorks gallery in Bend. It'll be a good one, there were so many wonderful ideas! It is also possible that these quilts will show at the Sisters Outdoor Quilt Show next year.
After piecing I was planning to do a bit of simple channel quilting which is my go to thing now, but in the end I decided to do a one inch grid.
I pieced in some small bits of color in the binding which is something I haven't done much, but I like it and will try it again.
The backing is one of my favorite denim chambrays. I also created a label that mimics the look of the color card that I painted. This was a fun project for me. I did it pretty quickly with only a couple of weeks before the deadline. I love this style of piecing even though it was actually less random that I usually work. I really love the vertical format and I'm sure you'll see that again someday.
