New Quilts: Origami 1

 I'm still so far behind on blogging, but I am committed to catching up.  Today I'm sharing some pieces I finished last spring for our most recent past show at the New Mexico State Capitol.

I've always loved origami and in in December of 2023 I signed up to learn how to do origami tesselations with Madonna Yoder at Gathering Folds.  If you have any interest in origami tesselations I strongly recommend her site.  

I decided to see if I could make some origami tesselation quilts.  The hardest part of any origami with fabric is the difficulty with holding crisp folds but I wanted to give it a try! I started with some very lightweight semi-sheer swiss dot fabric and painted it with a light wash of paint.  I quilted two layers together, but did not include batting since I knew the batting would make it even harder for the pieces to hold folds during the origami process. 

I marked the fold patterns with washable marker and began folding.

My tiny binder clips were essential during the folding process.  After I was done with folding, I stitched down all the folds with hand stitching, but during the folding process I couldn't have done it without the binder clips.  The folding process was definitely challenging,  when you do these with paper you make a ton of pre-creases for the fold lines which really helps with the folding.  I ironed in the precreases but every time I ironed one crossing over a different one, it flattened the first one!!

This is my first finished quilted star, and I love how different it looks from the front vs. the back.

One of my favorite things about these folded stars is how you get a very different effect when light shines through.  That's why I selected a semi-sheer fabric to begin with, but the piece has to be back lit to see this.

I decided to mount the piece to a fabric covered light box so it could be displayed with our without back lighting.  Unfortunately I couldn't find any light boxes to buy, so I made them.  It turned out to be kind of a fun project!  A little bit like building cool things as a kid with my electricity set (thanks dad!).

Here is the final piece with and without the back lighting (and after getting rid of all the dreadful marking lines).  I think it came out really fun and I enjoy having them hang in my office now that the show is done.  I really love the effect of the quilting stitches and how you see them as part of the design when it's backlit.

Origami 1, Shannon Conley, c. 2024, 26 x 26 x 2

I actually worked on two of these pieces in parallel, come back next week to see the other one!