New Quilt: Fierce Planets

 SAQA recently had a call for entry in collaboration with John's Hopkins University and planetary scientist Dr. Sabine Stanley called Fierce Planets.  I was super excited by the call, after all I love nerdy sciency things, but was fairly late getting my piece started. 

My central idea was to do something inspired by the strange magnetic fields of uranus.   Normally, the magnetic axis of a planet is fairly close to the rotational axis, and the rotational axis is approximately perpindicular to the plane of the solar system (i.e. the plane the planet orbits the sun).  However, Uranus is doubly weird- it's rotational axis is pretty close to parallel to the plane of the solar system, and it's magnetic axis is really off from the rotational axis.  As a result, the magnetic fields of Uranus are really weird and different from other planets that have been studied.  Scientists don't really know why it's like that and whether that reflects something different about how it got it's magnetic fields.

Anyway, I envisioned a planet like shape covered with lines going in weird directions reflecting the magnetic fields of Uranus floating in a field of space with large lines denoting the magnetic pole, rotational axis, and the plane of the solar system.

I started as always by painting fabric.  This piece was for my space background,  it started as a medium purple stretch velvet and I added on some grey silver splotches and additional dark blue paint to give a dark starry night sky vibe.

I painted this piece of pink velvet to use in my magnetic field structures.

For the background of the planet I used this piece of fabric I had tried flour paste printing on while at my mom's last summer.  I'd wanted to do a handwritten prayer inside the cross but I'd never tried flour paste printing. That first picture is after I'd put on the flour paste, written my words in the wet paste, and then let it dry and painted.  Unfortuantely, when I removed all the flour paste, there were cool crackly lines and color (the next picture) but no words.  So I decided to use the piece for the base of my planet.

I didn't take nearly as many pictures as usual while I was building the planet.  Each of the magnetic field lines (below) were made by sewing strips of fabric into long triangular tubes and then stuffing them with thick cording that was destashed into my studio by my friend Gale (thanks Gale!).  I stitched the triangular chunks down onto the background fabric in patterns I thought were interesting.  Each triangular tube is about 1-1.25 inches high, just to give an idea of scale.

On the background fabric I couched a bunch of heavy weight variegated orange and yellow yarn to be my axis lines.

Here's the background piece during the quilting process.

Here it is after I finished quilting and added some more radiating lines (they're all couched yarn).  The planet is mounted in a hole cut un the purple background with purple trim stitched down on top over the seam.

I was really struggling with the overall composition, come back later this week to see the craziness my brain went through.