Flying geese revisited

Priority #1: Be creative. For me, fabric selection, cutting and reassembling the pieces all contribute to the backstory of an art quilt. Precision piecing harks back to traditional skills - perfect points can also be used to tell part of the story. I'm trying a few different arrangements using my hand dyed indigo blue paired with white, commercially produced fabric. On their own they do make a gorgeous quilt top - but hardly art. I've been researching the impact of climate change on migration patterns and particularly migratory birds. Exploring things like how temperature changes impact the environment, the winds, storms and the signals that trigger annual migration. I've changed direction with the traditional flying geese block - not quite confused and not quite lost, but certainly no clear direction. I've added some visual pop with the things that don't quite belong - the russet / warm flying geese sections joining the flock.

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Making progress Trees #2

It's all in the background - designing substrate

Scaling up an image of the Brisbane River to develop the substrate for a new art quilt. Each square needs to be 6cm x 6cm to make a finished size of 5 cm square. I created a "to scale" model of the finished quilt on drafting paper. I printed an image of the river (attribution below) and then scaled it up to get a fairly accurate flow across the quilt. The substrate rightly tells the background story. It is the foundation on which the main elements or features reside. So it isn't the "hero" of the piece - it needs to be recognised and visible without overwhelming the piece. I can now easily identify which squares hold a section of the river and start to experiment on piecing, applique, fusing, printing, and painting to learn which gives the best outcome for the substrate. (Brisbane River original image: Magpie Shooter; edited version Paulguard at en.wikipedia https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/indix.php?curid=9724127) My foundation piece might well end u...

The mess before the beauty

The excavator's words have stuck in my head, rent free. ' I have to make one hell of a mess before it can become beautiful. There is no beautiful end without the mess '. Or words to that effect. The retaining walls at the back of the house have to be finished before anything else can happen in the yard - and in between downpours, a few expletives and more rain, it has beena testing time for all involved in the construction. I thought about his words - and the effort of making a quilt from scratch. The planning, drawing, testing, dyeing, playing, creating, starting again, creating and the final 'ah ha'. There is so much 'mess' before a quilt is resolved becomes a thing of meaning and beautiful in its own way. Blessed are the excavators.

Ali George Artist

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