Inspired by ... the date! And Mondrian

As the header says, the date got me going - 27/7/17.

This month's artist is Piet Mondrian, about whom I knew nothing. I still don't know much, have just done a very lightweight search.

I have seen his work, and similar artists, around the place without knowing who did it.

It was hard to come up with something that wasn't just a copy. I'm not sure I've succeeded, even though it is my own interpretation.

I decided to do reverse appliqué, seeing I was reminded recently of how often I have used it in the past.

I also just used pieces of fabric I already had. They are not totally flat colours but I have stuck to the three primary colours, and black and white.

I remembered that when I was doing the Design for Stitch course, a while back, we did a session on lines and shapes.  I got out my folder and came across an image that I quite liked.

But when I tried to make it on an A5 sized piece of paper, it wasn't going to work. And the black was not quite what I was looking for.

I used it to come up with a new design.  Then I realised that I was going to have to be cutting out some very small pieces if I put in all those shapes.

New design needed.

Here it is, all sewn and ready to be cut.

The fraying is always a bother with reverse appliqué, I'll have to see if I can get rid of all those little threads.

The finished item. I haven't put my initials on it yet because it is a bit hard to say which way up looks best. I'll have to give that some thought. 

I think I liked it better with the white border but too late now!

4th Gondwana small quilt.

I was a bit late posting my 4th quilt for our first challenge. The group has only existed for about a year and we set a task of making 4 small (12"x16" - not sure of the metric dimensions, quilting always (mostly) seems to be in inches. Luckily I remember the days when we used imperial measurements - shows my age, I know) quilt.

Anyway, back to my stream of thought, after that rather large interruption.

Our last one was due last Saturday but I still only had the idea. That idea has been rattling around in my head for ages! I even went so far as to print some fabrics. It was when I was in the doldrums a bit and thought that I should be doing something.

So I got out two stamps I had - one on the soft cut stuff, which was a raised image. The other was cut into lino and gave the other sort of image (can only think of 'not-raised').

I had thought about fossils being buried in layers, so decided that I might play around with layering various fabrics and cutting back to them, using the image I have used a few times, of an ammonite. Also called reverse appliqué.

I used black fabric as the background, so I could cut back to that to represent the holes you often see in these fossils.
I have also been doing a little bit of reading about fossils and some of them become opalised. So I thought I would like to put in some colours that might indicate this - and be more interesting than the browns I kept seeing.

I drew the pattern on the background and used a thicker thread in the bobbin to show the spiral. It was only moderately successful, I think I could have used a darker colour, or lighter. More contrast, anyway. 

Work in progress, doing some of the cutting out. Not enough contrast, I thought. 

The daylight caused the photo to look very different. 

One of the fun things was that I used a multicoloured fabric and it was always a surprise what colour would appear.

I am not 100% happy with the outcome, the image doesn't leap out at me, but it is ok. And it is done. And I have learnt from it.
One thing I learnt, or reminded myself of, is that you need to do more than one line of sewing where you are going to do the cutout. The fabric just pulls out if you only use one, you need two to anchor it.

Also, you can't see the various layers all that well, especially that they have other fossil shapes printed on them. No matter, I know that there are other fossils buried in there.