The month of July flew by as summer months usually do, however, this one was one very hot laborious day after another as I completed a large quilt for entry into a call. Empress of the Pines finished out at 43" x 55". She was photographed on Thursday the 30th by Joe Ofria, a fantastic professional photographer in Groton, MA. Friday morning she was entered nervously into the Visions Art Museum Interpretations exhibition. As with most large shows, this one must remain unviewed unless rejected from the show.
A luna moth was an image unused on the Empress
So I decided to use it on a small piece using the leftovers from the large quilt to create a new piece.
One of the things I ended up doing for Empress was creating some designs on fabric with discharge fluid and a hand cut linoleum block using a frond of white pine cut off the tree out front. I drew in the discharged area with green marker and created the fabric I just could not find anywhere. You will see some of the leftover fabric pine on my small piece.
This detail shows the many colors in the fabrics used to create the tree trunk and my bubbles and strings stitching which holds all the fused pieces in place, but only loosely. Some of the edges of the fabrics are pulling up a bit giving the trunk "bark" texture.
Luna
11" x 14"
August, 2015
Commercial fabrics, batiks, hand-dyes, discharged fabric, and silk doupioni fused and machine stitched.
So that is my new small piece, inspired by Empress of the Pines.
I have come to the realization that even though I live in an area which is one of the most moderate temperatures in the country right now, I need air conditioning in the studio. My window filled, south exposure studio rises 10 degrees above the rest of the house on any given sunny day. I am now headlong, in the dog days of August, plunged into another large quilt for a call for entry deadline at the end of September. Wish me luck. I have a lot of tiny pieces on this one.
