Only You: Finished

Earlier this week I talked about auditioning various 3D forms for my latest art quilt.  I finally settled on this intersecting fan pattern.   One of my goals for this piece was to have it collapsible so it wouldn't have to ship oversize  (more on how that happens is below).  That meant that the whole thing had to be able to maintain its shape without the help of fabric stiffener.  One way I did that was to stitch a straight stitchin monofilament along the edge of every single fold.  This helps the pleats and folds hold their shape a little bit.

Originally the piece was inspired by sunset colors but upon finishing, it reminds me more of forest fire colors, an ever increasing problem in the mountain west.  I decided to name it "Only You" after Smokey Bear's motto, "Only you can prevent wildfires".  BTW Smokey Bear is pretty much the most awesome mascot ever.

Only You, c. 2023 Shannon Conley, 59" x 42" x 4"

I spent two weekends working out how to hang/support it from the back so that you couldn't see the frame but so that it wouldn't flop or require fabric stiffener.  I wound up with thiss assembly of seven partial yardsticks that bolt together and then are held onto the quilt via a combination of loops and velcro.   It hangs from a picture wire suspended between two of the yard sticks.

Excitingly, the whole thing easily disassembles and collapses down into this small compact area, which will be a great boon for shipping.  I wrote pretty detailed instructions for re-assembly, so I hope whoever winds up having to put it together on the other end (at shows for example) will not have too much trouble.  In the meanwhile it's just hanging in my living room to make sure that no unanticipated things occur (with regard to hanging) over the next few months.  So far it's been just fine for the last few weeks.

I'm pleased with how this turned out, especially the hanging and collapsing.  That was a big puzzle and I was so happy to solve it!  A fun challenge!  

 

Only You: Auditioning Forms

 Last Friday I shared the first steps for my newest piece and talked about painting and quilting the fabric.  I got it pleasted and pinned to my design wall (I do soooo love the quilting texture) and then it pretty much sat there for all of Advent and Christmas while I was busy with holiday stuff.  But then after our 12th Night feast was over, I was back at it, auditioning sculptural forms.

I quickly realized that my vague idea of doing something sculptural related to onion quilting patterns wouldn't work, so I started playing with other ideas.

I liked this round shape, but it was prety small for such a giant piece of fabric (about 40 inches square).

I decided to cut the piece in half lengthwise (to give two pieces about 11 feet long by 22 inches) to give a little more flexibility.  I played around with some sort of weird layered things but nothing was feeling quite right.

I was amused by this heart form but couldn't think of a good way to stabilize it properly.

I liked this idea of two sort of intersecting fan shapes so decided to work in this general direction.

I decided I wanted some more fold geometry, so I added these roof-like folds at the end of each pleat.

Come back on Wednesday to see the final piece!

New Quilt: Only You

Last fall I started a new fairly large art quilt.  My goal was to create a 3D piece using a form I hadn't tried before.  I wasn't sure what that was going to be exactly, but in my brain I was thinking about a 3D interpretation of an onion quilting pattern.  I knew I'd need a big piece of fabric, so I pulled out this 8 yard cut I found in one of my Georgia boxes (thanks Georgia!).  It was some sort of synthetic, I can't remember exactly what color it started out, but fairly pale, and with a tiny amount of texture.  I folded it in half to paint like I normally do, but even so it was too big to fit on my worktable so I painted it all scrunched up.  I was going for late sunset-into-night colors.

My trusty studio helpers were along for the ride as usual.

 

After the paint dried, I quilted it.  I used the ceiling mounted clamp system I rigged up last year; it was especially useful for this piece because the piece was so large and heavy.

Sorry, but here's Spooky helping again.  He's not very good at quilting though.

You can see in this post-quilting close up the really cool pooling paint and vertical line patterns that came from the wrinkles in the fabric while painting.  I love the extra texture they give the surface.  As usual, I quilted in every color of the rainbow.

Here you can see the final piece all quilted.  After squaring up it was eleven feet long by 44" tall. 

I finished the edges by couching this delightful dark purple fuzzy yarn that some other friends destashed to me, it was such a pretty color and texture but there wasn't enough to knit with so I was glad to use it for this.  It was a lot of edge, especially on my regular sewing machine.

After finishing the edges, it was time to start the sculpting process.  I started by pleating, and will leave you with this until next time!