Four in Art: Illumination (Number 4 in the 'Light' series)

If you've been reading for a while, you'll know that for three years I've been a member of the quilt group 'Four in Art'.  We have been making a quilt every quarter to an annual theme and quarterly sub-theme.

Our annual theme for this year is 'Light', and this quarter's theme, chosen by Janine, is 'Illumination'.

I've absolutely loved this year's theme - so much to think about.  The particular nature of the subthemes this year also made it possible to return to some sources of inspiration and with each quarter I got more and more interested in the qualities of light and in light as a metaphor.  So my thought processes for the final quilt in this series turned towards these again and spun off something like this:

• Illumination as in lighting, light, sources of light
• Illumination as in illuminated manuscripts - where 'illuminated' comes from the Latin for 'lit up' or 'enlightened' and refers to gold or colourful decoration of important and precious texts ...

...which might be a source of

• illumination as a metaphor for intellectual or spiritual enlightenment

...which all sent me on a train of thought back to

•  the beauty and colour of cathedral windows...
• ...as a source of illumination which in turn made me think of motes of coloured light dancing on old stonework (a different quality of light to that in Stained Glass Shadows)
• and back to the idea of colour and gilding in illuminated manuscripts

I wanted to incorporate all these inter-related elements.  So this quilt has all the things!

Patchwork cathedral windows represent the real thing, casting dancing coloured lights on old stonework.

The quilting, a combination of straight line and stippling, reflects rays of light on weathered stone.

But you could also imagine illuminated texts, with gilding and beautiful colours on paper or velum, and these texts are themselves a source of 'illumination'.


The gold represents beams of light (illumination in the physical sense), or gilding, and also contributes towards the idea of illumination in the metaphorical sense.

Illumination
30" x 30"
Oakshott cottons and gold silk
Aurifil 50 and 28wt in two colours
Faced binding

Sadly, this will be our last Four in Art reveal!  Thank you fellow members for being a constant source of inspiration and enthusiasm, many thanks to Rachel, our current chairperson, for organising us, and, most especially, thank you Elizabeth for being the drive behind such a warm, supportive and thoughtful group.

Please check out the other Four-in Arters who also reveal their quilts today;

Betty, Elizabeth, Janine, Nancy, Rachel, Simone or on the group blog.

and stay tuned for The Endeavourers, as Janine, Nancy and I move forward with a new group next year.

Four in Art: Stained Glass Shadows

This quarter's theme for Four in Art was chosen by Elizabeth.  Our annual theme is Light, and the quarterly sub-theme is 'Stained Glass Shadows".  I found the shadows above in the National Portrait Gallery, but Elizabeth posted some very beautiful inspiration pictures on her blog here.

I don't have much to say about my contribution - there's not much to explain, except to say that I was fascinated by the way the shadows in Elizabeth's photos read as purple and made use of this colour in my quilt.  I thought for a long time about the challenge, but what I could not find a way to capture what I really liked - the quality of light which she neatly described as 'powdery' - in fabric.

In the end I decided just to try to reflect the saturated colour, and the way that the 'shadows' cast by stained glass lose the definition of the original and become blurred, with colours merging into one another.  I also like the sharp edges and gaps that you see when the 'shadows' fall on a shaped surface.

The beautiful colours of shot cotton are as close as I could get to the quality of the colour and light, and I tried to blur the lines of the shapes with heavy variegated Aurifil thread quilting.

I wouldn't say that this quilt uses any exciting or novel techniques but I have tried to express what I find beautiful in the light cast by stained glass and reflect my response to the theme.

The other Four in Art members can be found below - please do visit them to see how they were inspired by the theme.

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

Elizabeth     http://www.occasionalpiece.wordpress.com
Janine         http://www.rainbowhare.com
Nancy         http://www.patchworkbreeze.blogspot.com
Rachel         http://www.rachel-thelifeofriley.blogspot.com
Simone         http://quiltalicious.blogspot.com

Four in Art: Light - Light in the Darkness

As you may know, I belong to the quilt group Four in Art, and each quarter we reveal a quilt which we have made according to our annual theme (this year it's Light) and the current sub-theme.  The sub-theme for this quarter, which was chosen by Camilla, is "Light in the Darkness".

The thing that makes me most happy about belonging to this group, apart from the inspiration and encouragement from other members, is the sheer luxury and fun of thinking about the themes.  This theme was no different - there were so many ways to think about it.  

The first thing I thought about was light in the darkness of space - how we still receive it from stars which may be long dead, and how the colour of it carries information about their composition and temperature.

Light in the dark is a source of comfort and helps you to find your way - the 'light at the end of the tunnel', for example. It has an effect, both in practical terms or as a metaphor in a religious or spiritual context, on people who are imprisoned or lost.

The idea of light as something which adds clarity to our 'vision' is ingrained in our language when we talk about 'shedding light on a situation', so that we 'see the light', or 'see things in a different light'.   The opposition between dark and light is used for the difference between order and chaos, truth and falsehood, and between reason, or knowledge, and ignorance.

So there is a bit of all these things in this quilt. Seen from a distance the rays are just a comforting or guiding light in the dark, either in a physical or spiritual sense.  Closer up, they are pieced with a text print about astronomy and mathematics, so they could represent the light coming from the stars in our sky but also represent our attempts to shine a light on our experience using evidence-based thinking (which I don't believe is incompatible with religion).  Most of all I wanted it to be about the light of knowledge, truth and reason in the 'post-truth' era of 'alternative facts'.

You can find the other Four in Art members below, so please visit them to see how they have been inspired by this quarter's theme:

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

Camilla         http://faffling.blogspot.co.nz/
Elizabeth     http://www.occasionalpiece.wordpress.com
Janine         http://www.rainbowhare.com
Nancy         http://www.patchworkbreeze.blogspot.com
Rachel         http://www.rachel-thelifeofriley.blogspot.com
Simone         http://quiltalicious.blogspot.com


Light in the Darkness

22 x 22 inches
Black Oakshott cotton
Text print
Freemotion quilting in black thread
Hand quilting in two shades of perle cotton
Faced binding

Four in Art: Light - "Shimmer"

This year's Four-in-Art challenge theme is Light, which is really exciting and full of inspiration.  The sub-theme for this quarter is 'Shimmer' and this was my choice.

I chose 'Shimmer' because it's such an evocative and beautiful word, and while it's not onomatopoeic there's something about the word that really does sound like what it represents - to me at least.  I was curious about this so I went off and read up a bit on phonosemantics which is about the idea that there's a relationship between sounds and meaning - that particular sounds convey a particular idea by themselves; there's a connection between them. There are various ideas about what the connection is - you can read more here.

 'Shimmer' means 'shine with a soft, slightly wavering light'.    (Shine, soft, slightly - lots of sh and s sounds in that definition.)  Some of the shimmery things I thought of are moonlight on water, or silk or sequins (more s sounds) on a moving body.  It's a much softer effect and quieter than 'Glitter' - and does it fit halfway between that and a 'Glimmer'?  I wonder.

Anyway, enough rambling.   This is "Shimmer".

The inspiration behind this quilt was the facets of the cut glass doorknobs in my living room which fascinate me every time I go past them.  What I wanted to capture is the effect of the light bouncing off the individual facets - how when you look at them they keep the integrity of their individual shapes, but that these shapes are still broken up by reflections from within the room and also by reflections bouncing between them.

For something to shimmer, for it to have that wavering quality, there needs to be some movement involved.   Like the doorknobs, my quilt is static, and the reflected light doesn't softly waver as it does on water - unless it's hanging up in the breeze... The shimmering happens when the person looking at it moves, so although you can see some of the effect in a photograph you'll have to take my word for the rest.

Actually, it was fairly breezy, and I need to take some pictures on a less overcast and windy day - we ran out between showers.  Here's my lovely assistant, stopping the quilt from blowing away between shots.

I'll write about the practical details of the quilt in a separate post.

"Shimmer"

36" x 32"

Gold silk dupion, gold metallic silk, Oakshott and Kona cotton

Aurifil 50wt

Please do visit the other four-in-arters and see how they interpreted the theme.

Betty         https://www.flickr.com/photos/toot2
Camilla         http://faffling.blogspot.co.nz/
Elizabeth     http://www.occasionalpiece.wordpress.com
Janine         http://www.rainbowhare.com
Nancy         http://www.patchworkbreeze.blogspot.com
Rachel         http://www.rachel-thelifeofriley.blogspot.com
Simone         http://quiltalicious.blogspot.com

Instagram #fourinart

Four in Art: Colour - "I've Got the Blues"

Each year the quilters of Four in Art take a theme,  throw quarterly sub-themes into the mix and produce a series of quilts inspired by those themes.  Today we are revealing the quilts we have made for this year's annual theme "Colour", with the quarterly sub-theme "I've Got the Blues".

Please check out the reveal posts from the other FIA members - as always I'm excited to see what they do:

Betty         https://www.flickr.com/photos/toot2
Camilla         http://faffling.blogspot.co.nz/
Elizabeth     http://www.occasionalpiece.wordpress.com
Janine         http://www.rainbowhare.com
Nancy         http://www.patchworkbreeze.blogspot.com
Rachel         http://www.rachel-thelifeofriley.blogspot.com
Simone         http://quiltalicious.blogspot.com
Susan         http://patchworknplay.blogspot.com
Instagram #fourinart

This sub-theme idea is a lovely one and should have been perfect for me because blue is my favourite colour and it represents many things that I love including the sea, but I really struggled this quarter. Earlier this year I made a quilt for the "Colour"/"Music" challenge using fabrics in various blues and rather exhausted my blue fabric inspiration, so I spent a long time thinking about the theme - which is always my favourite part of the process - and trying to come up with an interesting idea.

In the end, I decided that I would go again with a musical connection and try and combine that with the sea - taking blues in sea colours and combining them with flashes of gold, which could represent flashes of light on the waves but would also be positioned in a way that could represent the notes in the chords of a twelve bar blues.

Art

So far so good, but when it came to implementing this plan I soon realised that it was not working as an art quilt.  This set me thinking about what art is - for me it does some of the following

provokes a reaction
makes you look at commonplace things in a new way
represents or encapsulates an idea
is aesthetically pleasing
or aesthetically challenging
employs new or unusual techniques in order to achieve these things

I wasn't happy that what I was making would meet any of these criteria and completely lost confidence.  There didn't seem to be anywhere to go from that point.  I So here is part of "Dead End 1: I've got the Blues".  It earned its title!

Failure and creative guilt

If you think of the creative process as involving starting with an Idea, going through a Creative Struggle and finally ending up with a Product you can beat yourself up at any stage!

So I feel bad that I couldn't take the idea and turn it in to the thing that I wanted, and I feel bad that I couldn't muster the enthusiasm to power on through, and I feel bad because I have not got a finished piece to show.   Maybe we can cut ourselves some slack sometimes and adopt the point of view that there are no failures in art because, as in science, each route you go down and discard as unproductive is actually enlightening in its own way.   Meanwhile I am very apologetic to the other Four in Art members!

"Dead End 1" - unfinished quilt detail

You can see other quilts I have made for FIA if you click Four in Art in the categories links in my sidebar.

Four in Art 3: Colour/Purple Passion - "Anemones"

This is the third quarter's Four-in-Art quilt reveal.  Themes for the year and for the particular quarter are suggested by members of the group and the theme for this year is "Colour" and the sub-theme for this quarter is "Purple Passion".

When I first read that this was the quarterly theme I was a bit stumped.  I wondered at first if this was because I didn't like the colour purple - I don't wear it, and I could only find one thing in my house that colour.   But the one thing I have is a little coloured drawing of flowers that my mother did for me. This made me remember that I do actually love purple - in nature, especially in flowers including hardy geraniums, perennial wallflowers and so on. I currently work as a gardener,  so flowers are a big part of my life; you could say, a passion.  With this in mind, I decided to do a flower-inspired quilt, using anemones as my flower.

Another picture highlighting the texture of the quilting and embroidery.

The rationale behind this quilt is that it follows on from my first two for this year's "colour" theme.   My first one was monochrome black and white.  The second quilt progressed to one colour and worked with several variations on that.  With this third quilt I thought I'd expand further on the theme by using purple, the primary colours it is made from (ie blue and red), together with its opposite on the colour wheel (yellow). Anemones were a great flower because the shades they come in made it possible to use several purples containing different amounts of blue and red.

My other FIA quilts have generally been abstract in design and I had been thinking about what an art quilt is, and worrying if I was being artistic enough for the group.  I looked on the Internet (as you do) to see if I could find a definition of "art quilts" which matched the way I think of them and needless to say there was a lot of variation in opinion.

Apart from the fact that it explores the colours in the way that I described this quilt actually has less 'meaning' than the more abstract quilts I have made.  I don't think an art quilt has to be pictorial, but one of the aims of Four in Art is to challenge ourselves and I really just wanted to use fabric and thread in a way that was a bit painterly and impressionistic, for example I tried to piece the background in a way that would be the fabric equivalent of broad, thick brushstrokes - it is made out of lots of scraps of 'low volume' fabrics fused to a backing fabric and quilted into place.  All the scraps have raw edges which I hoped would add to the textured effect.

I outlined stems and leaves with machine embroidery using colour in the same way as I would in a watercolour painting and I used shot cotton for the flowers, because it has a lovely sheen and catches the light beautifully although it is difficult to capture the full glory of it in a photograph.  The different colours in the warp and weft make it far less 'flat' than a standard coloured fabric.

"Anemones"
Fused applique
Raw-edge applique
Machine embroidery
Hand embroidery using French knots in Perle 8
Straight line quilting
Background: Quilting cotton
Flowers and jug: Oakshott shot cotton

I enjoyed thinking about and making this quilt so much and am always so happy to be part of this group.  I am looking forward to seeing how the others have treated the theme.

We have a blog, Four-in-Art Quilts, but you can find the other Four-in-Arters here!

Betty         https://www.flickr.com/photos/toot2
Camilla     http://faffling.blogspot.co.nz/
Catherine    http://www.knottedcotton.com
Elizabeth    https://occasionalpiece.wordpress.com/
Janine         http://www.rainbowhare.com
Nancy        http://www.patchworkbreeze.blogspot.co.uk/
Rachel        http://www.rachel-thelifeofriley.blogspot.com
Simone       http://quiltalicious.blogspot.com 
Susan         http://patchworknplay.blogspot.com

Four in Art: Colour & Music - Rhapsody in Blue

Welcome to the latest reveal for Four-in-Art.  We are a group of quiltmakers who take turns to choose an annual theme as inspiration for a quarterly quilt.  Our theme for this year's quilts is 'Colour', and we have added a quarterly sub-theme - this time it's 'Music'.

These were great themes to think about.  They make an interesting combination because there is one particular form of synaesthesia where music and colour are linked and particular keys or sounds are experienced in colour.  While I was thinking about this my daughter's piano teacher mentioned in passing that she associates keys with colours - for example C major is red and gold.  The colour/music relationship in synaesthesia would make a lovely theme for a quilt and I'm keeping that in the back of my mind!

However my first Four-in-Art quilt for the 'Colour' theme explored the possibilities of monochrome black and white and for the second quilt I was interested in then moving on to one colour and focussing on that. I thought I would choose a piece of music and try to express the mood of it in a quilt.  The obvious choice was Rhapsody in Blue by Gershwin which is one of my favourite pieces.   The choice of colour was already in the title, and so I just had to think about the images it evokes.

Gershwin described it as "a sort of musical kaleidoscope of America, of our vast melting pot, of our unduplicated national pep, of our metropolitan madness".   It's been used as soundtrack music in the films Manhattan and The Great Gatsby but even before I saw them it sounds to me as if it opens on a big city at night - it sounds decadent and seductive and busy.    In the first performance of Rhapsody in Blue Gershwin improvised some of his playing and so I decided to make an improvised quilt with the idea of a night-time cityscape in mind.

Here is Rhapsody in Blue.

I know there is a pictorial quilt in me but at the moment I'm quite interested in making quilts which could be abstract or have a meaning.  In this quilt the flying geese could represent roofs, the gold squares lit windows and the circle could be a moon. The odd shape is a motif from an art deco building contemporary with the music and I liked it because it could also represent a trumpet which plays one of the themes.

I used shot cottons in various colours but where the warp thread is always blue and supplemented it with all that was left of some treasured gold metallic silk for city sparkle.   The quilt is partly pieced with added fused applique.   

 I quilted in the ditch, and around the central panel.  I thought I should stop there but am tempted to go back in again and do some more quilting round the shapes - there is always the fear of making things worse though!

We have a blog, Four-in-Art Quilts, but please do visit the other Four-in-Arters here!

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

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

Catherine    http://www.knottedcotton.com

Elizabeth    https://occasionalpiece.wordpress.com/

Janine         http://www.rainbowhare.com

Nancy        http://www.patchworkbreeze.blogspot.co.uk/

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

Simone       http://quiltalicious.blogspot.com (not taking part this month)

Susan         http://patchworknplay.blogspot.com

Four in Art - "Colour: microscopic"

The theme chosen for this year's Four in Art quilts was Colour, and this quarter the sub-theme is 'Microscopic'.

'Colour' and 'Microscopic' are great themes - such a lot of food for thought!  I started by thinking about colour in connection with microscopy, microscopic specimens and so on, particularly the use of stains to highlight different parts of a specimen.

I considered making a quilt based on a coloured cross-section of a stem, which would have been nice as my dad is a botanist who spent his career looking at specimens down an electron microscope.  However, I really wanted to explore the implications and possibilities of the absence of colour - using black and white - in my first quilt in this series.

I had been thinking recently about the relationship between patchwork pieces and cells, the first making up a quilt, and the second being the building blocks of all living organisms.  It occurred to me that the seams between the patchwork pieces are like the cell walls which surround each cell - each piece or cell is then separate, yet connected to, other units around it to create a tissue.

Using traditional 'tumbling blocks',  I've tried to examine this idea in an abstract way, using the contrast of black and white to highlight the individual units.  The little black diamonds represent cell nuclei.

Building Blocks

I have probably said this before in connection with the quilts I've made with Four in Art, but I really admire art which is equally satisfying whether it can be 'read' or not.  Cells, or blocks?  - what I really wanted here is that if you had the opportunity to view (say) onion cells down a microscope during your school days you might look at this quilt in a particular way, but that if not, then the pattern would stand by itself.

Please do visit the other Four in Art members.  We have a group blog, and you can also view each member's work at the links below.   As usual each quilt is such a different response to the theme!

Betty  on flickr

Camilla at Faffling

Elizabeth at OP Quilt

Janine at Rainbow Hare

Nancy at Patchwork Breeze

Simone at Quiltalicious

Susan at Patchwork and Play

Four in Art 4: Birch

With many apologies again to my Four-in-Art friends for my lateness, I'm dropping in to share my quilt for this quarter, Birch. Our group has been working this year on the theme of Literature, and my fourth quilt is inspired by Anna Karenina by Tolstoy.  It's a really wonderful, atmospheric novel, full of the most human characters (and, bonus, its a whole lot easier to read than War and Peace).

I wanted to make a quilt about the power of a book to evoke a particular image or feeling.  I last read Anna Karenina quite a long time ago - on the Trans-Siberian railway, in midwinter - and the image in my mind has always been of snowy birch forests.  I had a look back at the text of the book when I started my quilt and could only find one reference to birches, so my memory of the book is probably all muddled up with memories of the journey, but never mind!  That's the image I had in my head.

I wanted to make each of my four quilts for this series progressively more abstract.  This quilt has turned out less abstract than I intended, but it's still ambiguous.  It could be a forest of birches,

or it could be the bark on one birch trunk.

It is heavily quilted to suggest more trees, or bark texture.

The 'coloured' strips are the same fabric as the body of the quilt - I cut a large section and ran backwards and forwards with variegated aurifil before cutting and piecing it.

To be honest, I'm not sure this quilt is really finished, but it completes my four on the theme of "Literature" with Four in Art.

The Moors: inspired by the works of the Bronte sisters, about the use of
weather and climate in literature to heighten mood

Haiku: inspired by a poem by Basho, about deceptive simplicity and
whether we have to 'get' all the references to enjoy a work

Mrs Midas: inspired by the poem by Carol Ann Duffy, about vivid imagery

We have a shared blog here, and you can find the other quilters here:

Betty on Flickr: http://www.flickr.com
Elizabeth at Occasional Piece
Nancy at  Patchwork Breeze
Rachel at The Life of Riley
Simone at Quiltalicious
Susan at PatchworknPlay

We are a friendly group, who all have very different styles and approaches, who come up with an overall annual theme to work on, sometimes with quarterly sub-themes for extra inspiration. The group is kept to a size where we are close enough for us to communicate easily with each other, but a spot sometimes opens up so if you're interested in joining let me know in a comment below.

All members have to do is:

• Desire to expand their creativity. 
• Have a body of work that members can review, preferably a blog.  
• Make a year commitment to the group and do their best to make deadlines unless some crazy life occurrence happens. 
• Be willing to review other Four in Art work and leave a comment within the first week of publishing.

Four in Art

The Knotted household has been living in chaos since a leak through one of our ceilings back in the summer.  We are almost back to normal, but dealing with the fall-out means my contribution to Four-in-Art this quarter is going to be delayed. Thanks to my fellow Four-in-Arters for being so kind and understanding!

Please do visit the other participants at the links below.  This is our last quilt of the year inspired by the theme of 'Literature'.  Each of us has taken this theme and run with it in our own way, and seeing how everyone else has responded to it has been such a lot of fun.

Betty at a Flickr site: http://www.flickr.com

Elizabeth at Occasional Piece

Nancy at  Patchwork Breeze

Rachel at The Life of Riley

Simone at Quiltalicious

Susan at PatchworknPlay

Mrs Midas: A Four in Art Quilt #3

I'm here to share my latest contribution to Four in Art.  I'd like to introduce Mrs Midas:

Mrs Midas
A Four-in-Art Quilt, August 2015
No 3 in the 'Literature' series

This quilt was inspired by the poem by Carol Duffy, which you can read in full here.  The poem comes from a collection called The World's Wife, in which Duffy examines, sometimes very comically, the lives of the women behind a collection of famous men.  Mrs Midas is a poem from the point of view of the wife of a modern Midas, "the woman who married the fool who wished for gold".

It's full of beautiful and vivid imagery, and terrible sadness.  Unable to embrace his wife any longer Midas has to move out to their "caravan in the wilds, in a glade of its own".

"You knew you were getting close.  Golden trout on the grass...And then his footprints glistening next to the river's path."

The colours that the poem evokes are what influenced my quilt - I really wanted to get across the feeling of the gold, beautiful but unexpected in contrast to the greens of the grass and the wooded glade.  It is made using various kona and klona cottons and some gold silk dupion, and quilted simply in the ditch.  I had quite clearly in mind some ideas - the (rather wobbly) flying geese which represent Midas's footprints in the grass, and the stylised applique leaf - and I knew I wanted to make an improv quilt, and for it to be abstract, which fits in with my plan to make each quilt in the series progressively more so.  (My previous two quilts are here.)

I'm not satisfied with the pictures of this quilt and I want to take it outdoors when the weather is more reliable, but I do love it. There are many practical details I would fix but I managed to get out what I had in my head!

Watch out for the reveal of our final quilts on 1 November but meantime please do visit the other participants and check out their quilts for this round of the series.


Elizabeth at OP Quilt  

Betty at a Flickr site: http://www.flickr.com

Jennifer at Secondhand Dinosaur 

Nancy at  Patchwork Breeze

Rachel at The Life of Riley

Simone at Quiltalicious

Susan at PatchworknPlay