A group of internet artists from all over the place who have decided to give each other a challenge every few weeks, on a theme chosen by each in turn. We have different ideas and styles, but share a love of textiles, and want to have some fun.


Friday 23 September 2011

Light and Shadow - Indigo Hill Arches

Indigo Hill Arches
48 x 36 cm

Two black and white images  of  'Hill Arches' sculpture by Henry Moore combined in  Photoshop, printed on hand dyed indigo cotton and silk treated with 'BubbleJet Set'.  Machine quilted with variagated threads, hand stitched with 'House of Embroidery' cotton perle thread .  

There's nothing like a deadline to concentrate the mind! When the theme of 'Light and Shadow' was set  I had lots of grandious ideas of looking at some pewter vases from multiple viewpoints and on  large scale. Then with reveal date looming and nothing started I remembered a  top I'd put together for a demonstration on inkjet printing using 'poster printing' function to split an image over 4 A4 sheets.The Henry Moore sculpture that so inspired me was part of an exhibition at Kew Gardens in 2007. I loved having access to these sculptures for so many months, able to view them in different lights and viewpoints and  I made several journal quilts exploring ways of  intepreting  a 3D piece in 2D textiles. This piece expands on those ideas.


After I'd machine quilted it, it was looking rather drab and uninteresting so I decided to stitch more into by hand. I haven't done much hand stitching in a while and I'd forgotten how addictive it is , sewing away watching BBC4. Still a bit dull ( and perhaps I got carried away with the stitching....) but hugely enjoyable and it's got me thinking again about indigo.


This challenge has been such  a great motivator. Thanks very much to Annabel and Marion for setting up and running it. Looking forward to seeing what everybody else has come up with (and the next challenge!)

Mags

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Wow! This is absolutely fabulous Mags. Love all the stitching..colours...shapes...in fact everything about it. It has such fluidity.

Sandra Wyman said...

Colours, shape, texture - it has everything and I love it - it is so subtle.

Sue Krekorian said...

I adore indigo and you have done something quite amazing with this fabric. I love the combination of hand stitch and machine stitch, it's all very evocative and beautiful.

Featheronawire Sally Bramald said...

If there were a prize for the best, you have won!

Esther Aliu said...

Such great movement, I love this!