New Art Quilt: Ommatidia

A few years ago when we were cleaning out some old labs in preparation for moving to some new ones, I brought home a bunch of lab consumables that were going to be tossed. A bunch of the 1ml serological pipettes made their way into this piece  but I still have a lot of would-have-been-trashed supplies.  This included three boxes of small (~5" long) glass test tubes I'd just been waiting for the perfect project.

When the SAQA call for pollinators came out, I decided I wanted to do something inspired by the compound eyes of bees.  Compound eyes feature thousands of little individual focusing units rather than a retina made up of millions of cells with a single cornea/lens in front of it.  Each of these individual focusing units is called an ommatidia.  

In the end, the piece didn't get into the Pollinators show, but it was so much fun to work on, I'm thrilled to have done it.

I got out all 750 test tubes, and covered them individually in a rainbow of fabrics from my stash.  Each one is like a little sleeve (or test tube condom).  I used silks, hand-dyes, polyesters, prints, lots and lots of mens ties, and other random shiny scraps I had sitting around.  Getting them all sewn and turn and stuffed with a test tube was a good mindless task and I only broke a few.

They're all the same size, they just look different because of the panorama picture.

I decided to sew them on two different pieces of quilt sandwich (with fosshape instead of bating) in the shape of an oval eye, with the test tubes sewn on in rows.  Each little sleeve had a couple of inches of extra fabric below the glass, so I just snugged my free motion foot up as close to the glass as possible to sew them down in rows.

They were pretty floppy- this was one of the "eyes" after I'd sewn down all the test tubes, and it was pretty fun to flop them back and forth.

To make the eyes protrude a little, I put a bundle of chicken wire behind each eye and then stiffened the fossshape around it.

Then to make the test tubes flop a little bit less, I stitched down this flexible edging stuff I bought at lowes a long time ago and figured I'd use for something sometime.

I mounted each of the eyes to a piece of plywood to have shape and then connected them with a hinge, so it would look like eyes looking out of the side of a face.

To start shaping the face around the eyes and cover up the silly navy blue floral print, I quilted a large piece of foss shape and draped it over the whole sculpture.  By cutting out eye holes, stuffing paper under the fabric, trimming the plywood a bit, and then stiffening the fosshape I sculpted the bee head shape.

This was a super fun project, delightful to work on and fun to problem solve on.  I love the kind of project where you have an idea and have to make up how to accomplish it as you go along!  It's so fun to use unconventional and "rescued" materials.  I still have a bunch of test tubes left (they're a different size) so I'm sure they'll appear in another project going forward!

Come back on Wednesday to see the final piece.

 

Knitting Updates- Purple Poncho and Rainbow Sweater

 I've had very little time for quilting the last few months, it requires being home and having enough mental fortitude to be creative, but I have done a fair amount of knitting.  

After finishing my dinosaur cardigan, I decided to cast on another sweater using the same top-down sweater book.  I'm still in a stash-yarn phase, so I pulled out some rainbow bamboo pop yarn I inherited from Trish and added some leftover green from some socks and a little bit of teal.  The rainbow was busy enough I just wanted a little pattern up top so I used the DNA from the science doodle pack.  

I wanted a short sleeve slouchy fit shirt, so I added a bunch of increases going down the body to have a loose comfy fit.  The pattern was for full-length sleeves, and for some reason I was paranoid that the sleeves were going to angle up weirdly on the outer part of the arm so I added a bunch of short rows to that part of the sleeves. I made it as long as I had yarn since it was a yarn using up project and did a 3 stitch I-cord bind off which I really like for sweaters.

In the end there was no need for the sleeve short rows and now it looks like the sleeves have funny little tabs on the outside edges, but that's ok.  It's super comfy and light weight for summer, and I love the bright colors. 

I also recently finished this purple poncho made from some wonderful Mothy & the Squid hand-dye I picked up on a trip to Scotland a few years ago.  I had originally intended to make it for me, but I received a purple poncho from a friend not too long ago, so I decided to knit it for my sister who loves purple.  It's super light-weight and lacy, so a great overlay layer for air conditioned rooms.

Definitely one size fits most,  you can see it below on me and on my sister.  The pattern is the Irish Sea Shawl on Ravelry and it was a quick, one skein knit. I really like the over-the-head shawl style,  so often my other shawls fall off, so I might knit another one of these for me in a different color.

I hope you have all been able to do some fun fiber activities lately!