Connected to the Moon is finished

I just sewed the binding on it this morning and another challenge is done! The size of the quilt is 15 in by 15 in. Now I have to think about the next challenge theme which is RHYTHM. So far I am leaning toward another astronomy idea. This one could turn out to be more abstract.

Here is my statement about the quilt:

Immediately after hearing the connected theme I thought about our connection the Moon.  Without our Moon life on planet Earth probably would not exist. The moon formed billions of years ago when the Earth was hit by an object about the size of Mars. In this collision a huge chunk of the Earth was torn off and and this debris from the collision formed the Moon. The collision stabilized our axis and created the familiar tilt, seasons, and eclipses. Without the Moon our axis would swing wildly creating chaos in terms of climate which would have made it difficult for life to have developed on our planet. The Moon’s gravitational pull on our planet which most know causes the tides also slowed down the rotation rate of the Earth to the current spin of 24 hours. Initially we spun in only 10 hours. So you can see that we are very connected to the Moon and at times that connection had been rather violent.  Just ask the victims of Hurricane Sandy in 2012 what role high tides contributed to the storm surge, flooding, and destruction of that storm.

The fabric for the Moon and the sky was created in a workshop that I took last summer with Cathy Taylor called Pigments of Your Imagination. In this workshop you spray pages of National Geographic magazines with Citrasolv to get the inks to run and create interesting paper. After creating the pages we then made art from them. One of my pages had something that looked like a moon on it which I cut out.  I also had many pages that were shades of black and gray. I tore the sky papers  to make a collage with a sky and the moon. I mainly took the class to create images that I could scan and digitally print onto fabric or have printed for me. I had the image from the collage printed onto cotton fabric at Spoonflower.

The Moon is such a familiar object in our skies and we have many sayings about it. I chose 4 different expressions for my quilt. I found letters from magazines, cut them out, scanned the letters, printed them onto organza, and then fused them onto the quilt. I chose organza so the letters would blend into the background more and be more subtle than if I had just printed them on regular fabric. I also want the letters so be very irregular in size and color to show our  chaotic connection to the Moon.

The quilt is completely quilted with invisible thread. I chose invisible thread to not distract from the fabric or the letters. The concentric circles around the moon represent the gravitational potential energy lines radiating out from the Moon. This shows that we are still very much gravitationally connected to the Moon. I quilted circles of different sizes onto the Moon itself to represent the craters on the Moon.



Thanks for all your input on this one and once again thanks for reading.
Chris

Quilting suggestions?

I don’t know why I am struggling with this challenge so much…. I have the letters fused and stitched in place and now have to figure out how to quilt it. Do I go with invisible thread or use actual thread…I do have some bottom line threads that are gray and are very thin.

Usually I don’t have too much trouble figuring out how to quilt a quilt. I have this one on my design wall and plan on looking at it for a while to decide what to do.

Here are my thoughts and options so far.

1. Stitch around the letters. Stitch around the outside of the moon. Continue to stitch circles around the moon maybe 1/2 inch or 1 inch apart in the sky area being careful not to stitch through the letters. Then how to stitch the area of the moon? Circles?
2. Stitch vertical and horizontal lines running right through the piece with invisible thread or bottom line. This pays no attention to what’s on the quilt at all.
3. Stitch nothing but concentric circles centered on the moon. Small circle at the center of the moon and getting larger and larger stitching right over the letters. Or not stitching over the letters and outlining them?
4. Stitch around the letters, stitch around the moon, stitch the patterns that look like craters on the moon, stitch around what seem to be individual pieces in the sky. Not my top choice.
5. Stitch around the letters, stitch around the moon, stitch circles on the moon, and stitch rays coming out of the moon rather than circles.
6. Stitch rays starting at the center of the moon and come out from there and stitch around the letters or run the stitching right though the letters.
7. YIKES!

What would you do?  Maybe you thought of something that has not come to me.

Chris

This is what you do after you eat a fly

Chowder was chasing a fly around the house this morning and managed to catch and eat it. Most of the time he cannot get them because they are too fast. This time of year they are really slow.

Of course after you catch and eat a fly you have to take a nap on a quilt!

Oh  to be a cat…

Thanks for reading. Back to working on “Connected to the Moon.”

Chris

Organza letters

I printed out the letters on organza. Before printing them I faded them a bit and lowered the contrast.
I am still not sure if this is what I need to do. I still wonder from the comments that Sheila made if I should make the letters more regular. Or maybe I should just go with this? What do you think?

Thanks for your input.
Chris

Another Idea

Boy the brain does not want to shut down at night after a nice glass of cabernet.

Here is my latest idea on how to do the subtle quilting. Rays coming out of the moon representing our gravitational tie to the moon, craters on the moon, and words quilted to interrupt the rays. I drew in green so you could see what I mean. I would probably quilt the craters on the moon in either invisible thread or thread that really matches the color of the moon. The words and rays would probably be done in a medium gray.

So now I am torn between this and the one with the really obvious words.

If I go with this one I think I will print the letters onto silk organza so they are more subtle and somewhat see through so they are not so much in your face. Of course the next decision about that will be whether they look better in color or in grayscale. Will have to scan the letters and print out in grayscale to see how that looks.

What do you think? Or does another idea come to mind?

Thanks for reading.

Chris

3 blogs in one day!

Still playing and trying to decide what to do.
Quilt rays coming out of the center of the Moon and sayings in between the rays. This was my original idea.

Quilt phrases all over the quilt. This was suggested by Sheila. One shows the words over the moon as well as the rest of the quilt. The second one has no words quilted over the moon.

  Make the words more obvious
I don’t know where to go with this. I could easily be convinced to do either the more subtle things or go with the words that are in your face.
What do you think?
Chris

New Idea

I am taking a workshop with Susie Monday on using text on quilts and thought of another idea for the moon quilt.

Last week we cut out text and letters from magazines. I have arranged some of the paper letters on the fabric. I would have to scan the letters and print on fabric and then sew onto the quilt. What do you think of this idea?

Thanks again for reading.

Chris

Need Help

I am making a challenge quilt for the 15 by 15 group that I belong to. The theme is CONNECTED. I have a digital fabric that I created last summer with an "image" of the moon on it. My quilt will be called "Connected to the Moon." I thought about quilting moon phrases on the quilt. Things like once in a blue moon, over the moon, shoot for the moon, crying for the moon, to the moon, Alice, etc.

Here is a photo of the fabric. 

Do you have any suggestions on how I should do this? I would think that I want the sayings to be subtle so to not distract from the fabric and the image which is why I thought of stitching them as quilting.

Or do you think I should cut the fabric up in some way and incorporate other fabric with the sayings on them...either stamped or printed to make the quilt? The size of the moon on the original fabric is 8.5 in in diameter. The fabric itself is 15 in by 19.5 in and must be trimmed to 15 by 15 so the final quilt is square.

Or should I just quilt it as is and get rid of the notion of using words?

Thanks for reading and your suggestions.

Chris