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

Off the Wall

Like some others here, I had a couple of false starts.  One idea I really liked was way too complex for such a small scale textile piece, and another, ultimately, didn't seem enough of a challenge and I became bored of it.


Shadows on the Wall

Fortunately, inspiration struck via my blog reader.  A virtual friend had posted a photograph on her blog, which fascinated me.  She had photographed the shadows of leaves on her garden wall, and I was intrigued how the texture of the wall interacted with the shadows, being more or less visible according to the depth of the darkness. Meanwhile the angle of the sun and the wind playing with the leaves rather abstracted from their actual flat shape, which was also interesting.

Wall Shadows

I decided this was something I wanted to explore in my challenge piece, and here it is, worked on quilters' calico overlaid with black twinkle organza and black chiffon, stitched in shades of grey and cream by machine.  It's about 30 x 30cm or 12" square: I squared down a piece of A3 paper to get this size and was happy working to these dimensions.

At present the edges are raw and I'm not sure how or if to finish them.  The little quilt looks quite well in the mount I found which fits exactly (good old IKEA) so it may live in the frame for a while, until we determine some sort of common practice.

I enjoyed this challenge very much, however much panic and self-doubt it induced - and, as you see, these I overcame to meet the deadline (just)

5 comments:

Annabel said...

Well done that woman! It's a lovely idea and works really well Sue. Glad you found the challenge challenging (!) Everyone has interpreted it differently so far, and there's still more to come. Exciting stuff.

I haven't finished my edges either, as the idea (in the beginning) was to just do tops - not necessarily even quilted, - but perhaps that needs to change depending on exhibiting etc.

I must say, after this first challenge, that I just like the fun of it, and if I was to put them forward for exhibiting, it would mean a vastly different approach from me. I'd start worrying about getting things beautiful rather than just letting it pour out. I'll wait to hear what others think though.

Sandra Wyman said...

I really enjoyed this!

Great minds eh? Interesting how we had similar starting points and used similar materials and ended up with quite different pieces.

And I love your method for displaying it!

Elma in Lochwinnoch said...

This is fascinating! I could look at it all day and see different shapes and stories in it :)

Esther Aliu said...

Ooh! I really like this play on leaves. They do look like leaves straight away, but with more intereest. Good shading!

Yes, I need a deadline too or I'd still be nit picking over thread colours. Deadlines get me done. Unfortunately.

liz said...

I really like the way you've approached this, Sue. I think making it in monochrome (if that's the right word) is brilliant. I've often looked at similar shadows on the wall and wondered how to interpret them. Lovely texture too that really enhances it