Positive feedback

I got great feedback from EB on my blocked wind turbine quilt. Here is the quilt  (which is small at 12 in by 19 in) and what she said.

“It's a great design - I like the way you've totally pared it down to the strongest shapes..I really like the way you've given the impression of light on the edge of the main blade that we see - that's what makes the piece for me.

There are some really nice repetitions of angles that make it a satisfying design too: the slight diagonals at the top - echoed...and the verticals coming down...good one.  Also all your negative spaces are interesting...I don't see any problems!!  Except it's a pity it wasn't bigger!! you'll have to get into dyeing fabric!!  I know of a couple of good classes!!!”

I did take E’s fabric dyeing class, but still don’t have big pieces of fabric!

So now to get to work finishing this and coming up with a title. I have had several suggestions over on facebook. I also have made a few minor changes to the quilt. When I see it in a photo posted online I see things I cannot see while looking at it in person.

“Wind Power”

“Blowing in the Wind”

“Generating Wind”

“I’m Not a Plane”

“Harvesting the Wind”

“The Answer, My Friend, is Blowing in the Wind”

Any other ideas? Or do you like one of these?

Linking to Nina-Marie.

Thanks for taking the time to read my blog.

Chris

Final sketch edit and choosing fabrics

I decided to enlarge the one wind turbine and did another cut and paste. I wanted to make sure that I changed things up from the original photo.

This is what I came up with. I still have those kissing blades, but I will deal with that when I block out the quilt.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I have a ton of fabric, but have suffered from buying small pieces of fabric in the past. So the background pieces that I am debating about are only fat quarters which makes the quilt about 12 by 20. Here are the 2 different backgrounds I am debating about. The one is a batik and the other is a fossil fern. The fossil fern gives a background in motion (from the wind turbines?) more so than the batik does. I like both of them. One thing I can certainly do is cut out the turbines and see how they look against both backgrounds.

What do you think?

 

 

 

I paired some lighter fabrics with the fossil fern that I thought might work for the turbines and blades. I would need to use small amounts of some others to get the shading just right.

 

 

 

 

Linking to Off the Wall Fridays.

Thanks for reading.

Chris

Thinking….

Yes I do that once in a while. Now I am leaning toward doing the wind turbines and have been playing with it. Sometimes it helps to post it on my blog so I can see all the sketches lined up in a row. For some reason I can see issues more clearly on the computer screen.

My original crop and sketch.

  

My modified sketch after E’s comments.

Now those two blades that come together could be an issue.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I decided to crop the original photo to include the wind turbine with the blade that E did not like. Here is the new crop and I did a series of sketches with and without horizon lines. The first 2 are without an horizon. One has a light background and one has a dark one.

Now for different horizons…one low, one high.

So more to ponder. At least now I can see them all together to make a decision on where to go with this. Please chime in if you want.

Edit added:

I literally cut and pasted some of the sketches together to get this arrangement. I think this one might have potential with a little tweaking. I have to walk away from this for a few days.

Thanks for reading.

Chris

Environmental series continues

For our new lesson we get a chance to focus on color and the mood it sets in our quilt.

I did three environmental sketches to send off to EB.

The first are wind turbines seen from their perspective. I took this sketch from a photo, but E had issues with it. She did not like the horizon line or the blade that comes from the right to the left across the sketch. I would create this one in blues and greens to set the mood.

The second sketch was of corroded metal drums. The drums contain waste from fracking. The photo is one that I modified in Photoshop to create a color scheme of mainly purple with yellows, teals, browns thrown in. My idea here was to make it beautiful and jewel tone like from a distance and then when you get close you see that it is not good to have leaking drums of hazardous materials. I think this one would be fun to create all that texture in fabrics. E liked this sketch.

My third sketch is of a fracking well. I modified the photo in Photoshop to have a green sky. This then gave a rig of pinks, reds, and purples. My idea was to show with the weird sky color that fracking is not good for the environment. This was the sketch that E liked the best.

Here are her comments about this one:

“very interesting sketch with the human beings dwarfed by the machinery...good proposal for the color scheme..and with its bold diagonals would actually work well with all your turbine quilts....might be worth thinking about!!!  Of the three I find this one the most graphically interesting with the contrast of sharp diagonal lines and rounded humans.....and again a good thoughtful color scheme proposed...”

 

 

So now it is time to make a decision of which one I am going to do. I am leaning toward the 3rd one for now since she liked it the best, but someday I think I would like to make the other two. I will start to look at fabric today. Sometimes fabric dictates what to do.

What do you think?

Linking to Nina-Marie (a day late)

Thanks for stopping by.

Chris

“It’s Rigged” It’s done.

My lost and found edges quilt is done and I have received feedback from EB about it. I have to admit that I still need to face it, but will work on that later today.  This one turned out 15 in by 30 in.

I decided to quilt a lot more wind turbines in the background. It was one of those things that just sort of happened. I quilted 3 of them and that did not look right so I began to quilt more and more to fill the space. That is weird sometimes how the quilting just seems to happen. Here is E’s feedback:

“A great title!! I do love puns...especially political and environmental ones....and the quilt looks very good.  I like the idea of more turbines - as yet invisible but in our future. I know what you mean about the pin heads and  the French knots - those little dots were a little cute!! but fun, but we really don't want the oil rigs to be  cute and fun.  So absolutely you made the right decision.  When you look at an image though you do see Everything that's there, and sometimes it is hard to subtract something like pin heads...I've repeatedly asked at quilt shops for black headed pins, but they always seem to think I'm joking!!!  but i think they'd be really useful. I particularly like the fact that you're really working in a series with these assignment...I think you'll be able to make the next one work for you!!”

I was glad that she agreed with my decision to remove the dots. I certainly debated too long over the dots!

Now we have our next lesson and I could make another energy quilt. The lesson is about color setting the mood of a quilt. So now what? Fracking? I know what colors I could do in that to make it scary. I also thought about wind turbines close up and from the air (from their viewpoint). I know what colors I would use there as well. I guess I will make sketches of both ideas.

What to do you think?

I love comments, but I don’t usually don’t get too many. I am going to have to figure out why that is the case when I retire….only 10 more weeks of teaching to go and then retirement! Hard to believe. I do have some “interesting” (and not in a kind way) students this semester. Students that are showing up for the first time during the 4th or 5th week of the semester. I have never seen so much of that as I have this semester. Also a lot of class skipping from other students. You tell them that the lab we are doing this week is critical and 5 students decide to skip it. I don’t know what is going on since I have never seen this before. Maybe this is a new trend? Makes me glad I am at the end of my career. I have seen a lot of intellectual and motivational decline in the 40 years that I have been teaching. These days I also see a lot students that think they are entitled. Signing up for a class means they are entitled to an A even for doing nothing.  I wonder what the future holds. Well enough of my rant about students. When I retire I can concentrate on my art and writing great blogs!

Hop over to Off the Wall Fridays.

Thanks for reading.

Chris