QuArtz Canada Art Quilting: May 2020

May 2020

We are all spending a most of our time at home, staying safe during a very different winter and spring. It can be very difficult to keep our spirits up these days.

Our first Zoom meeting was this week and it was so nice to see most of your smiling faces again! And to be able to share what we have been doing to keep busy and sane. The little peek into your sewing rooms was a treat as well.

We will post pictures of your work here on the blog, not just Quartz projects but general show and share as well.

Remember - We are not in Quarantine, We are Artists in Residence!

Starting with Sandie

These two pieces are the result of the paper bag challenge. The yo yo piece did not use all three fabrics, the wallet did use all three fabrics. Still have a few bits and pieces left over from the bag that I know will find their way into future pieces!

Christine

The hexagon design was taken from our last actual meeting and I cut up the fabric to make these. I then attached them to the background using thread painting stitches which made them look more circular. Beads were added here and there to create more movement swirling around the circles. I also used a piece of texture magic for the background left over from a previous project. Incidentally I also used some thread I won as a door prize when I attended Catherine Nicholl's workshop back in Feb. This project turned out to be quite useful in using up stuff!

Brown bag challenge

Judith

Hidin’ with Hayden

I decided to go with the Covid 19 theme, given that both the fabric and the virus are quite ugly! The musician I received was Hayden, so the name of my piece is Hidin’ with Hayden. The virus’ are to the left, the isolation squares are to the right and Hayden is in between playing sweet music to stave off the virus and keep the isolated people calm.

Cath

Mozart and the Sound of Symmetry

Most of us are attracted to symmetry spiced with some element of surprise.

That combo is the essence of Mozart’s music.

He was fascinated by mathematics as well as music and used symmetry in various ways in his compositions, transposition, translation and rotation.

“When I listen to Mozart, I hear the language of symmetry.”

Mario Livio, Astrophysicist and author of The Equation that Couldn’t be Solved.

Mozart early composition, he was 8 years old, ca 1764 - Molto Allegro, Concerto in G

Photo transfer to fabric, fusing, beading by machine and asymmetrical finish.

Cathy

Who has been very busy!

Brown bag challenge

Symmetry

Art Journal

Postcard for Journal

Reverse side of postcard

Brigitte

They were all created using paper piecing. There are 16 units for each of the "blocks" for a total of 96 units (16 x 6)

Individual units: The one on the left is the original; the one on the right the mirror.

P1 uses the original unit in a standard "quilting block" setting

P2 uses the original unit but each second row is rotated 180 degrees

P4 uses the original unit where each unit is rotated 90 degrees

PM introduces the mirror unit to the equation where each row is arranged Original, Mirror, Original, Mirror

P2MM arranges the units in groupings of 4 where you can see the mirror effect running vertically as well has horizontally.

CM although similar to PM, the mirroring of the units is staggered from row to row.

Okay this is all very theoretical, but the object of this exercise for me was to discover how many different patterns could I create with my simple little original and mirror units. I hope to be able to work with a different shape to see what can develop if I use a diamond or an equilateral triangle. I suspect there will be some very interesting patterns.

Individual units

P2MM

Jeanette

Memories of Birmingham:

This is my tea bag project. I find gathering the materials to make the piece is almost more fun than actually putting it together and I had a lot of fun with this quilt. The inspiration came from the photo at the top left corner (see close-up) with the metal grate. The grate had round holes in it and I just thought of round holes and round tea bags. I was going for an industrial look with this quilt and found the perfect fabric for the border at Fabricland. The binding is made from fabric with a leather look that I picked up at the Birmingham Quilt Show. The embellishments are various industrial-looking items I found in my wanderings: metal buttons, mini keys from an antique store, washers from my tool box and various items found on the streets of Birmingham.

Memories of Birmingham

Close up

Fantasy Garden

Again I had a lot of fun preparing the materials for this quilt. I started off being quite anal about making it symmetrical during the entire process until all the appliqué pieces were down.That was such tedious work that eventually I'd had enough and just started eyeballing the placement of pieces. At that point I hoped that the symmetry police wouldn't be measuring the work. To start the process I went through my fabric stash looking for fun fabric to use. I decided to step out of my comfort zone and use colourful fabric. I settled on purple because I hate purple but love purple, yellow and green together. A fun new technique I used on the pieces was bubbling, whereby you wet a piece of fabric, puts the fabric through a grid(like a metal basket), let it dry, iron a piece of fusible interfacing to the back and then pop the fabric CAREFULLY out of the grid. See the Closeup.

A fun find I used on this piece was the circle to the left of the bubbled fabric which was a wooden earring from Value Village that I painted purple.

Fantasy Garden

Close up

Liz

Liz continues to use mixed media to express her creativity. Two lovely pieces to enjoy.

Junk Journal

Made with 4 envelopes and added embellishments of paper and fabric. The embellishments were made by myself.