This is week 4 and it is still blue. This week I did a piece inspired by Susan Rienzo's work. She often uses colorful, whimsical strips of fabric cut with pinking shears and sews them onto another piece of fabric. You can see her work at www.susanrienzodesigns.com She and I were together in several groups when I lived in Florida, and her work has always inspired me, so this week I pay homage to her sense of color and design.
I had to really dig through my fabrics to come up with colorful blues, but I managed to find a few that kinda work. I tend to buy more tone on tone fabrics, like batiks so my stash is certainly not as colorful as Susan's. Her style is a fun way to incorporate colorful prints, and something I always enjoy playing with.
I have been very busy this week creating a piece for my regional SAQA call to entry. However, I made some time today, Saturday, to create my week 3 blue piece.
I used a white with blue polka dots as the background, but the white was a bit too stark, so I placed a dark blue fabric underneath it. That managed to soften the white of the background fabric. I then tore strips of blue fabrics, and when I was ironing them I pulled them into a curve and sewed them down. I plan on using all blue fabrics for my 9 blue pieces, from true blue to more of a turquoise shade; it's amazing how many blue fabrics I have in my stash. Now I get a chance to use some of them! Yea!
My second week blue piece is also an abstract, this time using squares and rectangles. I may add some additional hand stitching on top of the piece, but I've not decided on that just yet.
You can see a red line at the top and bottom, that is the 6 inch line which leaves me some leeway for putting the pieces together. Two of the strips in this piece are my hand dyed pieces, done many years ago!
Onward to week number three....
I have finished the first piece in my BLUE series, there will be 8 more after this one. I used torn strips of fabric going from dark to light and inserted bits of dyed cheesecloth and silk sari ribbon into the strips.
I have already sandwiched the piece with batting and backing and done free motion stitching on it. The right and left sides are cut to size, but because I am planning on joining the pieces together at the tops and bottoms, I have left a 1/2 inch leeway there. Week 1 is completed!
It's 2019 and I am going back to a challenge I made myself a couple of years ago. At that time I made a 7 inch piece each week of the year. My only goal was to get into the studio on a weekly basis and do some playing. I liked some of the pieces, some others not so much, but it made me play each week and I completed the year with 52 pieces! A success. This year I am challenging myself to do something similar. I will make a piece each week, 6 inches square, but I am going to make them in certain colorways. I want to make 9 pieces each of the 3 primary colors (red, blue, yellow) and the 3 secondary colors (orange, purple and green). That will come to 9 x 6, or 54 finished pieces, so I'll have to extend the year by two more weeks. I hope to have each week done by Saturday, and will post my work as I go along. I have an idea of how I want to put this all together and I'll see how it works out when they are all completed!
