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… the mystery post. Here is the complete image of the teaser image posted below. To read the whole story behind this piece please go over to Use Your Eyes and follow the challenge there.  Unravelling, 23cm x 30 cm, hand dyed cotton fabric, cotton thread May 1st, 2010 |
 Ruth | Category: Textile art | Comments are closed Yesterday Frankfurt put on a really neat event for Sqeze’s birthday We only visited 3 of the museums before getting tired feet and exhibit overload. We went to the museum of applied art where we saw some amazingly old and beautiful wooden cupboards and chests of drawers, including this 18th century example, where the tumbling blocks marquetry caught my eye. Next stop was the museum of world cultures which is quite small, but also has an impressive collection of objects including some wonderful textiles. Unfortunately it was too dark to get any good photos of those, but these neat masks in the education department did photograph well. And in case you were wondering what they are made of, here’s the answer: Kitchen sieves! Final stop was the museum of communication where there was a live band playing with people dancing. There was an interesting exhibition of faked digital images, some of which were really very good. It was very popular though and quite crowded. In fact we even had to queue up to leave the museum! We’ve had the first warm weekend of the year, so it was quite pleasant walking around Frankfurt at night. Considering that fact that we had frost 3 nights in a row in the week it was quite a change. It’s been quite a week of culture, because on Wednesday evening we went on a guided tour around the Uwe Lausen exhibition too. You can’t help wondering whether he would be much better known if he had lived a bit longer than 31 years. Of course I did know what I had to do with my free time. I was seriously behind on my Age challenge on Use Your Eyes. When I saw that the end was in sight for my C&Gs piece I had to keep at it. That left me with 3 weeks to produce my challenge piece. Not that I’ve been completely idle. I’ve been doing a lot of thinking. I came up with quite a few different ideas. Even Sqeze was helping – googling for images and showing them to me. I think it was these that triggered my final line of thought, which I have turned into a mini quilt today. Here’s a little teaser for you. The complete quilt will be published on Use Your Eyes on May 1st.
I’ve added another gallery with images of Colour Vortex. There are more and larger images there than in my previous post. What will I do now with all my free time? Well a 2 1/2 year journey has come to an end. I finished my final assessment piece for my C&G Certificate last weekend. We had to wait until this weekend to get some decent light for photographing as I only sewed the last stitch in the evening of Easter Monday. I have to admit that when the quilt top was finished I didn’t feel as happy about the outcome as with my Reflections piece. Although I had done what I set out to do, I felt a slight sense of disappointment. I think the Reflections quilt is a very powerful design and making a direct comparison is probably unfair. Reflections has a direct visual impact, but there are not so many details to surprise and delight when you get in close.  Colour Vortex Colour vortex has a visual impact that is perhaps not so instantly compelling, but I think the quilt has more details to discover when you move in closer. You only discover then that the piecing comprises hexagons and triangles (albeit not straight-edged) and that these piece together to form stars. The quilting is discernible as writing from a distance, but to read all the text you need to get in closer, because the colour of the threads is chosen to fade into either the light or dark fabric.
I could still improve on the quality of my quilted writing, but my piecing is very accurate, my hand sewing is tidy and hardly visible. I achieved the effects I wanted in the composition – the colours increase in saturation as they move in towards the focal point. The rings of colour are well matched so that the shades of colour do form cohesive rings. I enjoy the slight imperfections around the black circle as I believe this adds some tension to the design without which it would be too bland and predictable.
I gave myself a challenge with this piece. I attempted things I hadn’t done before – like the quilted writing – instead of staying within my comfort zone. I think I have shown that I understand the use of colour and can accurately evaluate the values of colours. I could have taken an easier option and produced a quilt that was of a higher standard of workmanship in all areas, but I chose the learning experience over familiarity.
Summing up, this quilt is one that will stand up to closer scrutiny (despite having one error in the quotes, that I noticed too late and chose to leave in, as attempting to remedy it would have left lasting marks on the quilt top) and can stand on its own merits next to Reflections. Within the next few days I shall be adding a gallery of photos for this quilt. Come back later a take a closer look! Wangechi Mutu has been named the Deutsche Bank’s Artist of the Year for 2010. She is Kenyan born, but now lives and works in New York. Her work is mostly collages made from a variety of media, including conventional fashion and lifestyle glossies, pornography, and automobile and motorcycle magazines. Her main motif revolves around the female body. The works draw a fine line between horror and fascination. I find them extremely interesting. There is an interesting article in the ArtMag from the Deutsche Bank. You can also see some of her artwork on the same page. You can listen to a short video of her talking about her work here. More of her work is shown on the Saatchi Gallery website. Included are some quite provoking collages on found medical illustration paper. And finally if that hasn’t been enough here is her homepage on ArtNet. Yesterday we visited the Seurat Exhibition at the Schirn Kunsthalle in Frankfurt. It must be the first time we’ve been to an exhibition not at the weekend or on a public holiday. It was still well visited, but was a more relaxed experience without the usual press of people all vying for room around the exhibits. It is the first time in 30 years that there has been a major exhibition devoted to Seurat in Germany. Seurat is considered to be the founder of the pointillism style of painting. As the introduction to the exhibition states:
In the exhibition you are able to get up close to the paintings, so that you can see the individual dots. They are really surprising small. It must have taken literally hours to produce even the small studies for one of his final works of art. The exhibition shows various studies either in conté pencil on paper or oil on canvas for both A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte and Bathers at Asnières. The interesting thing about all these studies and paintings is that there are almost no lines drawn on them. All the shapes and forms as produced either with blocks of shading or colour.  RECLINING MAN: STUDY FOR BATHERS AT ASNIÈRES  RAINBOW: STUDY FOR BATHERS AT ASNIÈRES  FINAL STUDY FOR BATHERS AT ASNIÈRES I was quite fascinated by this painting – the anchors only delineated by the changing colour of the dots of colour; the many different colours used in the water; the colours of the sky. I could have spent ages looking at it.  THE CHANNEL AT GRAVELINES: EVENING All images are press images from the Städel Museum, Frankfurt March 31st, 2010 |
Ruth | Category: Exhibitions | Comments are closed I have decided what to do about the quilting on my hexagon spiral. I’ve collected lots of neat quotes about colours and am going to quilt them onto the quilt. It’s not something that I’ve done before so I thought I’d better get some practice in first. This was my first attempt – a bit wobbly. The second attempt was better. I fished out my quilting gloves and reread the advice in Heirloom Machine Quilting by Harriet Hargrave. She recommends trying quilting barefoot. It was a bit cold for that, so I left my socks on I wasn’t very happy with the Rs though, especially at the end of words. I couldn’t figure a neat way of joining up to the next word without having great loops in between. Back to the internet and more research on handwriting styles. I changed to using cursive script because it always takes the letters back down to the baseline (with a few exceptions such as v and w). After a bit of practice with pencil and paper and tracing over the letters on school worksheets (!) I did some more practice quilting. This time on curved guidelines because I want to quilt along the spirals on the quilt. You can see I wasn’t as focussed today – I got some of the quotes wrong. I’ve been feeling a bit spaced out all day. I did remember to cross all the Ts though, which I didn’t on the previous samples. I think the Rs are a big improvement. I changed to using cursive Ss too. You can see on the last image I’ve changed how I am marking the guidelines too. I didn’t want to have to wash the quilt after I’ve finished all the quilting so using pencil lines or some other kind of marker pen wasn’t an option. I’ve used my dressmaker’s tracing wheel to imprint the guidelines onto the quilt sandwich. I don’t possess a Hera marker, which is the official way of doing it. I think you could use the blunt side of a knife too. I wouldn’t recommend marking up too much at once though, since I don’t think the lines would remain visible for too long if you have to scrunch the quilt up to get it under the harp of your machine. I thought I had the quilt top for my final assessment piece finished. I had sewn all the spirals together and filled in the hole with the black circle. It was all pressed and ready to be admired on the design wall, but my eyes kept sliding off the black focal point to an annoying dark purple triangle just below. Grrrr!!  Finished once  The offending piece This morning my eyes were still misbehaving, so I had to bite the bullet and take out the offending piece and add a new one that was less distracting. I can’t understand why I didn’t spot it before, but I suppose the white gaps didn’t help and also, of course, the black was missing. Although the original piece did have some texture to it, it didn’t show up from afar and the colour was too flat as well as too dark. This shows the new improved quilt top. I know that there are bits around the black, which are a bit jaggedy too, but I didn’t want a completely prefect blend. I felt that would be a bit too bland. I like the slight imperfections. Around the black they are not too distracting and do not draw the eye too far away from the focal point. As they are balanced on each side the eye tends to flit backwards and forwards and so remains in the right area. That’s my theory anyway and I’m sticking to it (for now!).  Finished twice  Problem solved To attach the black circle I first drew a circle the correct size on some freezer paper and then ironed the cut out template onto the black fabric and cut around with a generous seam allowance. After clipping out little triangles all around the circle in the seam allowance, I pressed the allowance back over the paper template. With the template still attached I centred the circle from the wrong side of the quilt top, with the circle underneath, and pinned it in place. From the right side I hand sewed it in place using stab stitch like in needle-turn appliqué, adjusting where necessary to get the best placement. (Another good reason not to start faffing about getting fussy about the colours near the focal point here is another link to an article about the Quilts 1700-2010 exhibition at the V&A. This time the article appeared on the Daily Mail website. The quilt referred to was made by a group of Girl Guides at the Changi prisoner of war camp in Singapore. One of the girls involved in the making, Olga Henderson, went to see the quilt at the exhibition.
Today, when we have access to so many products to use for quilting and quilting has become a huge industry pandering to our wishes for more, more, more, it is sobering to read such stories. We should probably all think twice before we spend ever more money on ever more stuff. Many times I have found the same thing cheaper at a non-quilting supplier. I also try to use what I have before buying new. With a bit of imagination things can be transformed and utilised. If, like me, you are probably not going to make it to the exhibition the catalogue would seem to be the next best thing. This review on Whipup makes a convincing case for buying it, should you need one:
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Copyright © Ruth Keys 2006 - 2010, all rights reserved. |
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It started at 7 p.m. and went on until 2 a.m. In fact it is an annual event and just happened to fall on the 24th April this year. 47 museums in and around Frankfurt open up their doors and put on special events all for the price of 13€ a nose. As we had never been before and have been meaning to visit some of the other museums in Frankfurt before we move on to warmer climes, we decided to go. Apart from being able to visit the museums themselves, some of the museums had live bands and music and dancing.
It does seem to make a difference though. I also upped the machine speed a bit.
