Abstract Buttons

In a previous post I wrote about a class taught at our guild by Rosalie Dace.  I had started work on a three-piece quilt based loosely on a painting by Wassily Kandinsky.  This is how my pieces looked when finished.  They were three different widths, between about 10.5" and 14" wide.  They were all about 32 inches long.

I worked deep purple curved strips into the black background.  Then I attached the various circles onto the background.  I used quite a few decorative stitches for this.  I free-motion quilted loose, intertwined circles onto the fabric circles.

More crazy circle quilting!

I quilted a few wavy lines up and down the quilts.  Then I wanted to add some more interest, so I did some long hand quilting stitches in wavy lines up and down the pieces.

This is the "rogue" block with the square pieces instead of round!

And again, the finished product.  I learned a better technique for adding a faced binding than I had used before.  I'd never sought out a way to do this, and just added two facing strips on each side, sewed them down, then added two facing strips on the top and bottom.  But this method is much better.  It gives a mitered corner finish on the backside.  You can find the tutorial on the Occasional Piece blog.  Elizabeth, the writer of this blog, is a talented quilter and a really good blogger, too. 

I entered Abstract Buttons in Art in the Redwoods, an annual art show at Gualala Arts Center in Gualala, California.  I won the "Red Dot Award," which means I had a red dot on the entry ticket, indicating someone bought my quilt!  So that was very rewarding.

Rosalie Dace Class

I was fortunate to be able to attend a four-day quilting class given at our guild by Rosalie Dace.  She lives in South Africa and travels almost half of each year teaching classes.  The class she taught was in abstract quilting, and she has been greatly inspired by Wassily Kandinsky (1866-1944).  The first day we saw slides of his  abstract paintings.  I tried to get inspired, but I really don't really like modern art very much so it was hard for me to find inspiration.  Finally I found a painting of his that I decided I could use as a jumping off place.

Photo from WassilyKandinsky.net

The painting I was looking at was basically concentric circles one on top of the other one.  (Always liked this idea.)  The colors in the painting were very bright.  (Like the bright colors.)  

The photo below shows my beginning fabric choices for the circle pieces.  I added some more fabrics as I went along, tweaking things a little bit here and there.

I chose to use a black silk/cotton fabric for the background.  So I pinned all of my little selected stacks onto the black on my design wall.  I pinned them all as they appear in the above photo, rearranging here and there as needed.  Looking at it, I saw the three rows of four and decided that I wanted to cut my black fabric into three pieces and make a triptyque.

And then Rosalie suggested that I make my backgrounds a little more interesting by inserting some deep purple wavy lines.  Here are portions of two of my fabric strips, which have had the curved inserts added.  I can tell you that I was not a very happy quilter making the first curve.  Fortunately, that happened at the end of the second day, so I got to go home and re-group.  The next day dawned brighter (metaphorically!) and I finished the rest of the curvy strips quite easily.

This is my "finished sketch," for my wall hanging.  Shall I tell you about the circle that isn't a circle?  If you look at the top photograph where I had just decided on the fabrics to use you will see that this square cross block is just as it appeared at the beginning.  When I came to this set of fabrics to cut into circles, I looked at it and thought, "I like that one just the way it is."  So I am leaving that one as a rectangle.

The circles have tear-away stabilizer on the back.  I've been sewing the circles together.  After they are all secured I will sew them to the black pieces and do some more decorative stitching on them.  Then I will layer and quilt the three pieces, making more circular patterns on them.

I have to end by saying how great it was to learn from Rosalie.  She is a great teacher.  She didn't teach us a technique; she taught us about art and design.