Saturday, March 10, 2018

Re-purposing

In my recent studio purge, there were two large hangings that I decided to re-purpose rather than discarding.  This is a fairly new activity to me, so I took one of them to my fibre art group, the Fibre Art Divas, for ideas.  One lady suggested table runners, and generously gave me a some technical hints.  Thank you Cathy Ugrin.

Here are the two pieces that have evolved from one of the hangings. The original piece was a large hanging comprised of commercial and hand-dyed fabric, discharged and raw edge appliqued into a representation of water flowing over rocks, heavily machine quilted.  In the final analysis it just didn't work.  This opinion was expressed by a few artist friends, who saw it in an exhibition.  I had already decided when I first saw it hanging, after being away from it for a couple of weeks.

The first piece is on white cotton sateen, and measures 36" by 16".  It is matchstick machine quilted horizontally.



The second is on creamy coloured white quilting grade cotton, and measures 14" by 32".  This is also match stick machine quilted horizontally.

This has been quite a learning experience for me.  I have frequently used matchstick machine quilting, done free motion, in smaller irregularly shaped areas.  This is the first time I've tried it this way.  It is much harder than it looks.

I plan to link this with The Needle and Thread Network.

1 comment:

Jocelyn is Canadian Needle Nana said...

Hi Pat, I discovered matchstick quilting last fall and used it successfully on a small table runner. I used my walking foot for the first time so it was all new to me. I'm new to quilting and still figuring things out. I love to read about other people's process. Meanwhile we just got another snowfall so still wintry here outside Ottawa.