Fabric Collage

Thanks to 3 Creative Studios and guest artist, Donna, I had fun this morning playing with scraps.  I'm taking a trip in a couple of weeks and will need a few special hostess gifts (for some very special hostesses!!!) so thought I'd make a test piece to see how Donna's tutorial would work.  I tend toward precision in all things, but this free-style approach to small art pieces really appealed to my inner playmate and here is the result. "Sunflower" - a 5 1/2 x 8 inch mini 'quilt' in some sunshiny colors plus B&W for the pop factor....... Guess I could add beads or buttons if I wanted to, but am very eager to get on with the next experiment!

Please click to see larger image ;-0

Just in case you're thinking my squaring-up skills are lacking,  this is meant to be wonky ;-0

First art show!!

The Sarasota (Florida) Surface Design Guild was invited to participate in an art show at the Sarasota Art Center - end of March through late April.  We work in so many different ways, from knitting to book making to polymer clay, quilting, beading, etc., so our president and board came up with a few guidelines for entries so there would be a [somewhat] cohesive look to the display of all our mediums.  One of the choices we were given was to use a 12x12 pre-stretched canvas to do anything we liked with - paint, stamp, cover with twigs, whatever our little artistic hears desired.......

I'll play with almost anything, but for an entry in my first ever art show, I wanted to make something using materials that I'm confident with.  Wrapping the canvas with a small quilt seemed like a good idea.

Since discovering Susan Carlson and her fabulous fabric collage art quilts, I've been spending quite a bit of my playtime arranging and re-arranging tiny bits of fabric using Susan's technique to make fish and butterflies.  I used one of Susan's fish patterns early on, but came up with my own butterfly patterns, and now, this Sea Anemones collage.  I love to bead, too, so here's what I've designed for the show.

Click for larger image - this photo taken with the flash and the colors are accurate....

 The next photos were taken under incandescent lighting.  There's a color shift I can't seem to correct, but the beading shows up to advantage, so I've left them as is.....

Please click to enlarge

Beading detail - please click to enlarge

Beading detail - please click for larger view

Beading detail - please click for larger view