Six Ways to Blue, a Four-in-Art quilt for November 2016

November 1, 2016November 1, 2016 Elizabeth E.14 Comments

Six Ways to Blue
Quilt #169, November 2016
19 1/2″ high by 21″ wide
#4 in the Color Series: I’ve Got the Blues

Blues can mean too many things, all at once. Peacefulness, depression, sadness, the thrill of a line of music (a wailing saxophone), my favorite crayon in the box and the color of my husband’s eyes. I could think of references to blues six ways to Sunday and never run out of things to link that color to: ocean, sky, geysers, crystals, ice, flowers.

Blue also has a powerful connotation to mood. The other day when I was feeling a bit blue, my blue-eyed son surprised me with a FaceTime call from London, just before he was calling it a day (having traveled through the blue skies and over the big blue ocean to get there). We chatted about his recent travels to Madrid, our travels to Lisbon last year, where we together with my blue-eyed husband saw the azulejos (blue and white tiles) of that country. It lifted my spirits, and I was thankful for his true-blue devotion and caring.

The only ancient people who had the word blue in their vocabulary were the Egyptians, largely because they had developed a blue dye. In 1858 a scholar named William Gladstone, who later became the prime minister of Great Britain studied Icelandic sagas, the Koran, ancient Chinese stories, and an ancient Hebrew version of the Bible. Of Hindu Vedic hymns, he wrote: “These hymns, of more than ten thousand lines, are brimming with descriptions of the heavens. Scarcely any subject is evoked more frequently. The sun and reddening dawn’s play of color, day and night, cloud and lightning, the air and ether, all these are unfolded before us, again and again … but there is one thing no one would ever learn from these ancient songs … and that is that the sky is blue.” (from here)

Wikipedia notes that the clear sky and the deep sea appear blue because of an optical effect known as Rayleigh scattering. When sunlight passes through the atmosphere, the blue wavelengths are scattered more widely by the oxygen and nitrogen molecules, and more blue comes to our eyes. Rayleigh scattering also explains blue eyes; there is no blue pigment in blue eyes.

We’re not the only artists inspired by the blues.

Yves Klein (1928-1962) was a French artist who worked with a chemist to create a startling Ultramarine Blue when he mixed powder with synthetic resin. He patented this as IKB: International Klein Blue, and became known for his use of this color.

When Klein came to California to work as a visiting artist, Edward Kienholz “gave him this kit as a welcome gift, providing Klein with tools to create…while away from his home studio.” The valise, which has a tag that reads “resident of the universe,” includes “such things as a spray can of IKB paint, a page of instructions, [and] a jar labeled GRIT” (text taken from National Gallery of Art label next to painting).

“Klein’s attraction to blue was rooted in his belief that it was the least material color: ‘All colors bring forth associations of concrete ideas, while blue evokes all the more the sea and the sky, which are what is most abstract in tangible and visible nature.”

I love blue in all its variants, and enjoyed bringing the abstract to the tangible in cloth and thread.

We will begin again next year with a new challenge, going on our fifth year. We have people who join us, leave us, but a few of us keep going on. Please visit the other members of our group and see how they interpreted this challenge:

Betty on Flickr

Camilla faffling.blogspot.co.nz

Catherine www.knottedcotton.com

Janine www.rainbowhare.com

Nancy patchworkbreeze.blogspot.com

Rachel rachel-thelifeofriley.blogspot.com

Simone quiltalicious.blogspot.com

Susan patchworknplay.blogspot.com

We also have a blog, Four-in-Art Quilts, where you can find us all.

FYI: The next post talks about the construction, the pattern I used, and the next challenges,
and why I want to make this all over again (because some parts really bug me).

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My blogging software puts ads here so I can use their site for free.
I do not know about, nor choose, the content, nor do I receive any money from these ads.
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200 Quilts · Four-in-Art · Quilts

Jill in the Pulpit: Four-in-Art Challenge • Aug 2016

August 1, 2016January 14, 2017 Elizabeth E.12 Comments

Jill in the Pulpit
Quilt No. 166, August 2016
#3 in the Color Series: Purple Passion

I have no serious thoughts about the color purple even though there’s a novel with that title, and even though it has so many interesting connections (which were explored in my last post and which seems like it was written about a year ago, but really it’s only been several days). Where do summer days go to? To family picnics, visiting relatives, long interstate drives, trips, ~~lounging around in hot weather~~ cleaning house. . . the usual. And then I had to ponder what I’m passionate about? Quilting, for sure, so in the end, the reality is to Get The Thing Done, diving into my passion of quilting, but hampered by. . .

. . . my shoulder going rogue, rendering me only a bit less helpless than the Black Knight in Monty Python, which is the standard by which we judged all injuries when raising the children. Yes, “tis only a flesh wound,” became our rallying cry for getting up and going, and so I did, and got the quilt done. Cause? Pretty sure it was the cheap-o yoga class I signed up for early this spring, and couldn’t finish because of the pain. I’m sticking to walking. Or sword-fighting.

All the purples in my stash (with the exception of the Kaffes) were purchased about the time of the Knights of the Round Table — all plummy and grayish and dated — so while in Utah, I visited *this* shop and *this* shop, acquiring a few new fat quarters.

Just before sleep one night, I sketched out an idea (top). The next day I proceeded to massacre my idea (the rest of the photos). Finally I decided that I should just slash it where it had problems and insert other fabrics, so I did, using *this video* for help in sewing curves.

I line up fabric underneath the slash, position it, then move it about 1/4″ back from my imaginary positioning line, then rotary cut along the shape. Stitch a 1/4″ seam. Press.

Repeat with other side.

Keeping the bag of frozen peas balanced on my “flesh wound,” I quilted this, stopping often to rest and ponder the state of the universe. . . or what I was doing. I hate that I have a new quilting machine, and haven’t really been able to use it much. “Soon,” my husband says, as he rubs my shoulder nightly and soothes my worries. “Soon.”

I whacked it here a little, there a little, turned it and whacked it again, until I got this ~~ungainly flower-like thing~~ quilt in a sort-of balance.

Now you know why I named it Jill in the Pulpit. It’s irrelevant whether you like the candidate or not, as the Big Deal is that we have come far enough to nominate a woman, and I thought that deserved some recognition.

So there you go–my Purple Passion Challenge.

Please visit the rest of our group, to see how they interpreted Color: Purple Passion. We also have a blog, Four-in-Art Quilts, where you can find us all.

Betty https://www.flickr.com/photos/toot2

Camilla http://faffling.blogspot.co.nz/

Catherine http://www.knottedcotton.com

Janine http://www.rainbowhare.com

Nancy http://www.patchworkbreeze.blogspot.com

Rachel http://www.rachel-thelifeofriley.blogspot.com

Simon http://quiltalicious.blogspot.com

Susan http://patchworknplay.blogspot.com

Four-in-Art

Purple Passion

July 22, 2016July 19, 2016 Elizabeth E.10 Comments

(Please note the updated directions on the final Oh Christmas Tree post (highlighted in pink). Thanks. Okay back to our regularly scheduled programming.)

What is Purple Passion?

A drink from the 1980s?

A variety of potato?

Asparagus?

Hair color?

Muppet’s Collection Nail Polish?

Floral Arrangement?

Eulogy for Prince?

A purple-clad seductress? (FYI: I always hang out in feathers and beads when I’m not quilting.)

Worshippers in Peru during the month of October? (called Mes Morado, and yes, they really do wear a lot of purple)

A unique flower?

A quilt made from the image of that flower? (I think it was the pipe cleaners that sent me over the edge.)

Nope, none of those, at least not this time.

It’s the theme of this quarter’s Four-in-Art Challenge. This will really be a challenge, for unlike some people, I don’t tend to use purple in my quilts.

Well, maybe here and there.

Okay. . .at least twice.

Purple embodies the balance of red’s stimulation and blue’s calm. This dichotomy can cause unrest or uneasiness unless the undertone is clearly defined, at which point the purple takes on the characteristics of its undertone. With a sense of mystic and royal qualities, purple is a color often well liked by very creative or eccentric types and is the favorite color of adolescent girls. (from here)

I laser-beamed in on the words “well liked by. . creative. . types.” Couple that with the image of the purple chick above, and I’m totally down with this theme. It’s due in about a week, on August 1st. Guess I’d better get going (as the voice in her head starts shrieking, It’s August already???!!!??).

According to the leaders of IDEO, a design and innovation firm, one way to become more creative is to practice being creative. They often use creative exercises to push into new ways of thinking about a task, or an idea. They note that “exercising your mind can sometimes feel more daunting than exercising your muscles.” So they’ve “developed ten creativity challenges to jump-start your practice.” Note the word “challenge.” That’s one reason why joining a group with challenges can help you practice your creativity.

David Brooks, in an article titled “The Creative Climate” says that creativity is “the joining of the unlike to create harmony. Creativity rarely flows out of an act of complete originality. It is rarely a virgin birth. It is usually the clash of two value systems or traditions, which, in collision, create a transcendent third thing.”

I’m definitely working on clashing here, having culled a few photos from my photo stash for inspiration (you don’t have a photo stash? I recommend it), and working towards that transcendent third thing.

That transcendent third thing. In purple.

Reveal date: August 1, 2016

Four-in-Art

Good Friday: Four-in-Art Challenge • May 2016

May 1, 2016April 28, 2016 Elizabeth E.19 Comments

Good Friday
Quilt No. 164, May 2016
#2 in the Color Series: Music

This quilt was inspired by time spent in Antonio Gaudi’s magnificent creation of La Sagrada Familia, a basilica in Barcelona, Spain. We visited there in March of 2016, on Good Friday of their Santa Semana (Holy Week). It was a fitting capstone to our visit to Spain, and to other of Gaudi’s architectural buildings, and from the moment we walked in, we were overwhelmed. Gaudi based a lot of his structures on natural elements, curves inherent in draped forms, local mountains, rock and nature. So I took my cue from the same, as well as trying to weave in a representation of my experience there with color, music and the Spirit.In most of the Catholic churches we visited on our trip, the center crucifix of Christ was based on what we perceived as physical pain: the suffering that Jesus as a mortal man endured on the cross for all those many hours of the crucifixion, his head bowed, the expression on his face, agony. Yet in Gaudi’s church, Christ was under a canopy that appeared almost like upside-down blossom of a trumpet flower, surrounded by a vine laden with clusters of grapes, the expression on his face transcendent, his eyes focused upward.And high above him, nearly 200 feet in the air, is a golden arrow or tree that points to a further high point, a representation of his ascension to heaven. The symbolism is rich and layered for those who are familiar with the story of Good Friday. I sat down in the chairs in the nave to think and to let myself fall into what I was seeing, and surprisingly, hearing. As I sat there I became aware of music, just below the level of hum of the crowd. It was hard to decide what the score was, whether it was some oratorio like the Messiah, or a choral rendition, such as Ave Maria (which was later played at noon). The beauty of the stained glass, the unique and thoughtful Christ in the unusual baldacchin, the representation of the Resurrection by this golden motif pointing upward and the music were a fitting celebration of the events of Good Friday.

On a more practical level, during our entire trip I had been puzzling what I would make for our May Four-in-Art art quilt, with its dual themes of color and music; I knew that day that I wanted to attempt to recreate some portion of what I had experienced, however puny my attempt might be.

This is my third try at this structure. I had started out with the swirly pink, yellow and blue batik, but first used a yellow solid. Then when we went to visit my son in San Diego, I found a fabric store that sold silk shantung, and a bit of the glistening crisp fabric came home with me.

I worked those diamonds multiple ways, but finally had to settle for a tepid reference to the intricacies of Gaudi’s design. I’m not too happy with the blue pieces, wishing I had instead something more grayed to bridge the swirling pastel batik to the outer gray, but again, I was aiming for a representation of the experience.
Because of the lattice shape, the dimensions of this quilt are quite different than the usual 12 inch square quilts I’ve been making in this series.

I backed it with more of the batik, quilted it up on my new quilting machine, and bound it in more batik, wishing to let the edges flow, not constrain, the design.
I was surprised when I laid it out on my flagstone for a photograph in the sun, how the sheen of the silk echoed the glinting bits in the rock underneath it. The label reads: “The intense spiritual experience of Good Friday in Barcelona, as I sat in the nave, with color, sound and Spirit blending around me, prompted this quilt: an attempt to recreate one of Gaudi’s motifs.”