Chocolate Wrappers

Vinyl and Lindt chocolate truffle wrappers.  Size 16" x 15".  Completed February 13, 2019, for Quilt Lab Experiment: Unconventional Materials


The Quilt Lab group at Gotham Quilts in Manhattan has monthly 'experiments'.  Some are more successful than others for me, and I don't always complete a project.  This month was inspired by the Project Runway Unconventional Materials challenges.  Of course, I picked chocolate wrappers. 

A Lindt Chocolates shop opened on 34th Street; I pass by twice a day.    The truffles are arranged in bins by color and flavor.   I bought a bag of truffles,  and did the 'hard work' of eating the chocolates, saving all the colorful wrappers. 

I tried various methods of attaching the wrappers to a background.  Sewing wrinkled it, Ironing melted it, so I decided to glue the wrappers to vinyl.   I wanted to recreate a quilt block called "Candy Twist", so I carefully cut and

folded the wrappers to fit into a gridwork, I could see by placing the vinyl on my cutting mat. 

Since the wrappers aren't covered, they remain shiny, metallic.  

I'm completely charmed by this.

Peace. 

Implied Peace

Fabric collage, machine quilted.  Completed December 2018. Size 13" x 13" 

This is my response to a Quilt Lab (Gotham Quilts) experiment about LINE.  As a basic element of visual art, line can be defined as: "the use of various marks, outlines, or implied lines."  A line has "width, direction and length".  Lines can be straight or curved, thick or thin, short or long, horizontal, vertical, or diagonal or implied?.  Of all the definitions,  "implied" was the concept that intrigued me.  So I created this piece in which the lines of the peace symbol are negative space.  All the work is on the edges of those lines, to create the recognizable image. 

I started with a piece of hand dyed fabric by my pal Sam at Hunters Design Studio.  Then selected some bright multi-colored prints that had good contrast with the background piece.  I drew the peace symbol on the fabric, first tracing around a large plate, then carefully measuring and drawing the internal circle and lines. 





Next I planned which colors would go in each section, and started cutting out images from the fabric and placing them more or less where they would go.  




Some of the fabric has wonderunder fused to the back, which made it easier to work with.  Later as I was filling in, I didn't always fuse the back, sometimes I used a spot of regular glue stick (no, it didn't gunk up the needle when machine quilting!) 




To get the really sharp edges, I created these templates using cardboard to match the convex and concave curves, then precisely cut the pieces going on the edges using this line: 

Once everything was where I wanted, I ironed the whole piece, to set the bits that could be fused. I wasn't sure what heat setting the glue-stick would do,  but it didn't cause a problem. 

I considered quilting a piece of tulle over the top of the whole thing, as I had seen recommended by other fabric collage artists, but the tulle I had at home changed the color too much, so I just quilted directly over the fabric pieces, first narrow zig-zagging the edge, then looping over everything with a variegated thread.



 (notice what a difference lighting makes when photographing a quilt!)

       I faced the quilt, because I didn't want any sort of frame a binding would create.  Here is a photo of the back, so you can see the facing and quilting:



I've been meaning to try fabric collage (following the amazing work of Susan Carlson and others) so this was a little toe in the water of collage.  I'll do more to be sure.  This was very fun.

--- 

I'm not sure I explored LINE very much.  This does have a line (curved and straight)  and its implied which fits my original intrigue.  Mostly this piece is in response to someone who misunderstood my intent in an email.  She thought I was implying something I most certainly did not.  I learned that people see/read/understand what they want, so this message of 'peace', which is the way I've been ending all my blog posts for these 2 years and all my quilt related emails, is no longer 'implied' - I'm stating it here for the record. 

Peace. 

For you, for me, for our noisy neighbors upstairs, for the tormented souls sleeping on the subways, for the refugees, for the caravaners, for the politicians trying to make it work, for the marchers in pink knit hats, for those long marginalized in our nation,  for the men and women in uniform, for our fellow citizens who have gotten themselves riled up by fake news, for people I don't know who have their own everyday struggles.  

Peace.

Untethered to Truth

Hand Applique and embroidered images, with machine quilted text in background.  Completed May 9, 2018.  Size 9" x 13" 

I'm a founding member of a new quilt group at Gotham Quilts in Manhattan, called Quilt Lab.  We will meet monthly and respond to challenges (experiments!)  to try a new technique or art concept.  This first challenge was "Make Gray Stand Out".  The problem with the color gray is that it is a neutral that recedes in most art.  

While considering this theme, James Comey, the fired FBI director, just published his book, and was speaking on every talk show and political pod cast, and I heard this phrase which intrigued me:  "Untethered to truth."  The phrase and the challenge collided in that I wanted GRAY to stand out,  and I also want TRUTH to stand out. 

I wanted to use the gray fabric to create stone-like, weighty letters and found an image online of the word LOVE, in this arrangement.  

This is when its handy to have an artistic family member, so THANKS to Anna for this great starting drawing: 







Next I selected fabric,  and purposely wanted to use red to prove that I could make gray stand out, even with red  (because I saw some quilts which were mostly gray and white, with the smallest addition of red, and that red hogged all the attention!)   I have a collection of amazing hand dyed fabric from my pal Sam Hunter at Hunters Design Studioso I selected this gray and this deep red. 

I checked the VALUE contrast by using the black and white feature of my camera, to make sure that the gray really was a lighter value than the red (because that's the only way this would work) 

And in typical "Paula" fashion, I only had this small piece of fabric on hand. So I was going to have to use those lighter spots strategically. 







I traced the letters, and assigned value to each piece (light, medium, dark) to retain the 3-dimensional quality of the drawing.  Then I traced off the pattern pieces onto fusible web,  which has to happen backwards for the whole thing to work out.   Here are some in progress photos:

 I wasn't happy with the value difference of each piece of this T,  so I replaced a few of the pieces as I moved forward.  Again, it was tricky because I knew I had such a small piece of gray fabric to work with. 













I traced the whole image again onto tracing paper to use as a guide,  so I could make sure the letters were placed properly. 

The tracing paper is pinned to the fabric, so I could lift it up, place letters and lay back down to check. 

 Once at the letters were created, I didn't like the lack of contrast between letters, so I decided to embroider a black outline around each piece: 

Then I asked Neil to draw one of his 'famous' balloon heads, to which I added the caricature yellow hair, which identifies the #45.  I embroidered that, with a trailing balloon string above TRUTH




Finally,  the piece is background quilted with this phrase from Comey's book: 
"our country is paying a high price for the election.  This president is unethical, and untethered to the truth and institutional values."

When presented at our meeting, I think I was successful in making GRAY stand out,  because I do think one sees the word TRUTH when looking at the piece.  

Here is a picture of all the pieces we discussed at the Quilt Lab meeting: 

Philosophically,  I'm not sure I actually believe in Capital-T Truth, as so much of our personal perspective drives what we see and believe we are looking at.  But the distance this administration has traveled from any sort of truth based in any sort of legitimate policy (even if I don't agree) is beyond troubling.

Peace, 
Paula