Design
Concept
The theme of this quilt is the emotions and flights of fantasy evoked by time spent in a summer garden, observing natural forms at close range. This is part of a series of small works in which my process is very much like doodling with fabric, i.e.. the design was developed spontaneously, working directly on a background, with bits of fabric and thread. Each part of the design grew out of the last, just as a doodle grows to fill a page, when the mind is engaged elsewhere.
The background fabric was hand painted with fiber reactive dye. Several small ovals of hand dyed fabric left over from other projects were laid on the background and stitched over with rayon embroidery thread in several shades of blue and purple. The remainder of the design was developed by "drawing" freehand with my machine and various colors of thread to create an organic composition that is more a landscape of the imagination than a real garden scene.
The embroidered composition was surrounded with a wide black border and quilted in a freeform, organic design.
As a child, the margins of my school notebooks were filled with doodles. The title "Life in the Margins" refers to these margins. |
