A few blogs back I showed some batik pre-cut squares and fabric that I had forgotten what I was going to do with. Cutting and putting the squares turned into this:
I wasn't satisfied. I wanted to make an art quilt. My plan was to make two diagonal cuts but how could I take a perfectly good quilt top and slash it? Several days passed but I knew I wasn't going to leave it like it was. Closing my eyes a little I took the first snip and off I cut. There was no going back. I only had the courage to make one cut.
My idea was to insert hand-dyed purple spikes so it would kind of look like, I don't know, an exploding star or something. What it looked like was a BUG, a walking stick. Somehow my spikes didn't make it into a nice circle like I had planned. Maybe wedges would have been better. Luckily I could print out a picture of the top and play around with the cut up paper to see what it might look like before cutting the real thing again.
Does that say walking stick to you?
I've been holding on to this material for at least a year and didn't want to let it go. Inspiration needed to come, and come soon. Since I had cut a perfectly good quilt before I bravely held my rotary cutter in one hand and made strips.
The cut up paper didn't work this time but it gave me the idea to to make different sized strips in a row across the middle of the quilt. While I was joining the strips good old inspiration took hold and said "why not make a butterfly?"
For now, it's going on the back burner. I'm headed to Penland School of Arts and Crafts for summer camp.
I look forward to blogging about waxed canvas, leather, and the new techniques I'll be applying to some accessories I'll be making.
