Holiday Fiber Postcards - 2007

Another round of holiday fabric postcards just made it out at the 11th hour for greetings to special friends and family. Here is a sample of my 'bird of Christmas'. Antique laces and crocheted designs were used. The background branches were done with paintstiks. Fabrics include silk, lame, cotton, and velvet. Tails are made from wired ribbons and odd trims.

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You Are 87% Creative

You are an incredibly creative person. For you, there are no bounds or limits to your creativity. Your next creation could be something very great... Or at least very cool!

How Creative Are You?

Finishing those UFOs

Well I got inspired to finish some of my UFOs. I've actually decided to have these pieces framed. The first is my landscape quilt that I created in Michael James master class last summer. A mockup of the layout planned for this piece is shown here. In the final framing there will actually be more openings in the mat. I really think that calling it 'Broken Ground' makes even more sense now.

The second piece was also done in Michael's class. Here I have done hand embroidery/quilting on the piece.

I'm a canna lily

"You stand up for what you believe in, even if it gets in the way of what other people think. You are proud of yourself and your accomplishments and you enjoy letting people know that."

I am a Canna What Flower Are You?

Night Layers

I recently interloped on a creative writing class with my friend Gloria the week that they were exploring poetry. An exercise from the class inspired me to write a poem that in turn has inspired me to design a quilt based on it. The exercise was to research an activity (of course I chose quilting) and document a language for that activity and then write a poem using the language about a completely different subject. Here's my poem. Stay tuned for the quilt design.

Quilted Night

Flying geese dart across stippled light

Lone star rises over log cabin

creating shadow appliques.

Borderless, boundless background reveals

Night layers unfolding

Dual Tessellations

Dual tessellations depicts the mathematical concept of tessellation – the regular tiling of polygons across a two dimensional plane. This quilt considers the more advanced concept of dual tessellations where one polygon type (an equilateral triangle) is the dual of another (a hexagon). (see figure). The major triangles are constructed from either three equal triangles or three kites that also form the structure of the hexagon, allowing the bridging between triangles and hexagons while still tiling the surface. The quilt design proceeds top to bottom beginning with triangles and morphing into hexagons. Different values of purple in the dual-colored taffetas further reinforce the duality of the design. Finally, the quilt was not squared off as is typically done to further emphasize the fundamental tiling units. For more information on tessellations, and dual tessellations in particular, see http://mathworld.wolfram.com/DualTessellation.html .

Ode to Joy

At a recent dinner party I described this quilt to several individuals who were interested in seeing it. Therefore, I've posted it here along with an explanation of its design concept.

This quilt depicts the musical composition Ode to Joy by mapping the musical notation to a color-based representation. Each vocal part (S,A,T,B) is shown on a separate line with multiple stanzas on the quilt. Each note on the scale is given a color. The value of the color indicates its octave within the piece with lower octaves having a darker value. The length of the note determines the length of the associated color of fabric. So a whole note is given a base unit of 1 with half notes represented by 1/2 the length , quarter notes by 1/4 etc. Flats are shaded with black tulle and sharps are highlighted with bright stitching. Finally a random free-form quilting of the word Joy is done across the surface of the quilt.

If you can read music and understand the mapping you should be able to play the composition by 'reading' my quilt!

Enjoy the Ode to Joy.