The Edge of the Pond – 2016.03.31

For the last few days, I’ve been working on the art quilt that I started designing in February.  The online submission deadline is tomorrow, and today I finished it, took photos, wrote my artist’s statement, decided on a title, and submitted it.

I called it ‘The Edge of the Pond’.  It measures 18 x 41 inches.

This art quilt is for a Fibre Art Network (FAN) exhibition called ‘Ekphrastic’.

The word ‘Ekphrasis’ means a rhetorical device whereby one medium of art is created to relate to another medium of art.  Usually Ekphrastic poetry is created to respond to a piece of art.  FAN put a distinctive spin on this process by inviting twelve well known Canadian poets to each contribute a poem of their choosing.  Each of the twelve poems will be interpreted by four FAN members in a wide range of styles.  In total FAN members will create 48 pieces of fibre art, both two-dimensional and three-dimensional pieces.  The two-dimensional works will all be 18 inches wide and will vary in length.  The only restriction for the 3-D pieces is that they have to fit into a medium-sized Canada Post box for shipping.

The exhibit will debut at the La Conner Quilt and Textile Museum in La Conner, Washington in October 2016, and then will travel to other locations until the end of 2019.

The poem I am responding to was written by Lorna Crozier, who lives on Vancouver Island.  It will be very interesting to see how three other FAN members interpret Lorna’s poem, and to hear what she thinks of our artworks.

To create the illusion that the fish are underwater, I constructed the quilt in the following order:

• fuse the fish and reflections to the background fabric
• quilt the water ripples
• fuse the lily pads slightly overlapping the fish and reflections
• quilt the lily pads
• fuse the foreground irises and calla lily, then quilt them.

Of course, it wasn’t quite that simple, as I needed to figure where the lily pads would be before fusing the fish and the reflections – so there was a lot of temporary positioning, removing some elements, fusing others, quilting, adding more elements, positioning, fusing, quilting, and so on.  I started at the top of the quilt and worked my way down, finishing with the irises and calla lily in the foreground.

Here are some of my in-progress photos from the last 10 days.

The background fabric is a tonal, almost-solid fabric in a dark green – the exact color of many Koi ponds.  I wanted some reflections on the water, and I had a small piece of this beautiful watery fabric.  I applied fusible web to the back and drew wavy lines, then cut the fabric apart and strategically positioned my ‘reflections’.

I quilted the ripple lines with variegated rayon thread.  It makes it look like the sun is sparkling on the water.  At the top of the quilt I used a teal variegated thread, and at the bottom I added some blue variegated.

I kept most of the quilting quite simple – just outline-stitched most elements – and let the fabrics do the work.

I’m very happy with the calla lily.  I used a light green pencil crayon to draw the elegant curved edges of the petal and the slightly darker throat of the flower.

Thanks for stopping by.  Today, I’m linking up with these blogs – click on the links below, where you’ll find many other creative and inspirational projects.