New/Old Work

Prairie II

The end of 2015 brought me to a new job - in retail work.  The months have flown by since I last posted, while I got "trained up" and went through the holidays.  However, my art work did not lie idle. In December and January I had the honor of being in the Small Pleasures Invitational at the Jacobs Gallery in Eugene, Oregon.  All works had to be no larger than 12" in any one direction.  Prairie II was one of my pieces.  It was inspired by a photograph I took at a place called Ebey's Prairie on Whidbey Island off the coast of Washington.  Below is the original photograph.  I think you can see that I greatly simplified the scene.  The good thing about it is that I can come back to this photo again for future ideas.

 

Prairie I was also part of the Small Pleasures show.   Although this is a marshy scene it is actually a place in what we call Central Oregon, an environment that is considered high plateau desert.  Yes, that's right, Oregon has a vast area that is considered a desert ecosystem.  Although the landscape can be very stark, it has a beauty that can grab my heart.  I have always loved great wide open spaces with an unobstructed view of the sky.

Prairie I

I tried my hand at being a little more abstract in Shangri-La. Moving more toward the abstract has been a struggle for me.  I get caught up in the details too easily.  Often I start with a fairly abstract design as I build my background but then the stitching detail takes me back down the path of life-like representation.  In Prairie I, however, I think it is the detail stitching that makes the piece really shine.  In Shangri-La I was able to hold back a little better. So, the battle of personal style continues.

 

The First of Small Pleasures

It's time to start sewing on my pieces for an invitational show, Small Pleasures, at the Jacobs Gallery here in Eugene.  The show will run through December and no piece can be larger than 12" on any side.  I'm planning on 6 pieces, two series of three pieces each.  This is the almost finished first piece of the first series of small still lifes.  Here's my construction process:

First I made the background by piecing a selection of off-white strips.  By seaming them on a right angle and then placing it on an angle, it seems to give some depth to the scene.  I gave the edge between the  table and the wall a slight curve to suggest a table edge.

I usually make a rough sketch, to size, of where I want to go with a piece.  It helps me get proportions right and I use it as a reference as I proceed.  From this drawing I made a pattern of the bowl using tracing paper over the three basic pieces of the bowl.  I wanted to give the bowl some light, medium and dark areas to make it look more 3-dimensional.

Here are the three pieces laid out on a piece of blue fabric that had a lot of color gradations all within the same print.  I cut the rim piece from the lightest part and the bottom from the darkest part.

Here are the three pieces after having been cut out.  I have adhered paper-backed fusible web to the back of each piece so they can be slightly overlapped and "glued" together.  By pressing on a Teflon sheet, I can then peel the whole piece up and off the sheet as a single unit, but it can still be ironed to another piece of fabric and fuse it in place.

Here's the bowl out together but not trimmed to shape yet.

Okay, done.  It can now be laid on the background and ironed down once I'm ready.

First, I needed to add the fruit pieces.  They are all assembled in the same way as the bowl, so each one is it's own little unit.  Each one is also backed with the fusible web and can be ironed in place once everything is placed to my liking, which is what it looks like in the top photo.  I just need to finish quilting all the pieces in place since the fusing process is not permanent.