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Design Concept

FIBONACCI SERIES #2: AUTUMNAL EQUINOX is about the feelings I have in the Fall when the first hard freeze collides with the glorious warm colors of the turning leaves and the autumn sunsets. One silk habutae fabric was painted in turquoise and mauve to represent the frost. A second habutae fabric was painted in hot gold and oranges fading into mauve, as they often do in the autumn sunset. Silk noil was manipulated into spirals and painted in a profusion of colors, reminiscent of autumn foliage. All of the silk fabrics were manipulated while wet. The dyes were then poured on and allowed to flow together in a technique that is similar to water color painting.

The lattice was pieced from the two silk habutae fabrics, intersected by bars of the silk noil. All three fabrics were cut into strips and pieced in the orderly progressions, observed in nature by thirteenth century mathematician Leonardo Fibonacci. (1-2-3-5-8)

Silhouettes of birds fly diagonally across the quilt from the lower right corner to the upper left corner. They represent the Autumn migration. They are birds of the imagination, and do not represent any specific species. The fabric for the birds is a commercially dyed black silk noil. Although each birds seems to be flying at a different angle, their sizes are graduated in the Fibonacci sequence, which creates the illusion of distance.

The fabric on the back of the quilt is cotton print cloth, which was manipulated into folds and painted with dyes in shades of orange, turquoise, and purple.

The free motion machine quilting roughly echo the silhouettes of the birds. As they flow together they begin to look like wind and air patterns. All of the quilting was done freehand, with no marking of the quilt top. This kind of quilting is like doodling. It's patterns are as distinct to the individual quilter as handwriting or a signature.

This quilt was designed using a computer assisted drawing program. The lattice was drawn first by creating a series of long narrow rectangles for each of the three fabrics that I would be using. I scanned pieces of the two silk habutae fabrics to create bit maps, with which I filled the orange and turquoise rectangles. The photograph of a painted fabric similar to the silk noil was scanned to fill the border and vertical bars of my drawing. The outlines of eight different birds were drawn by hand on paper. The drawings were scanned into my computer, and outlined using a program called Streamline, which converted them into vector drawings. The vector drawings were then imported into Corel Draw!, my computer drawing program. I tried many different arrangements for the birds and finally selected five birds, which I filled with black, and arranged diagonally across the lattice. The five birds were sized to correspond to the Fibonacci progression. The computer drawing was done in a scale of 1mm=1 inch. To make patterns for the birds, the size of each bird was converted to inches, and they were printed out full size on a laser printer. Three of the birds were larger than 8½ " x 11" so they were tiled (printed on several sheets of paper and assembled like a puzzle)

The full size patterns were traced onto Wonder-Under ™ and fused to black silk noil. Each bird was carefully cut out and fused to the pieced lattice. The birds were then stitched down with a very narrow black satin stitch.

Exhibitions:

• SOUTHERN ILLINOIS ARTS AND CRAFTS MARKETPLACE, 1996, Whittington, IL
  
• SPECTRUM: THE TEXTILE ART OF CARYL BRYER FALLERT, Traveling Solo Exhibition, 1996-1997 Illinois Art Gallery, State of Illinois Center, Chicago, IL, Illinois State Museum Gallery, Lockport, IL, Illinois State Museum, Springfield, IL
  
• QUILT UTAH '97, (Invitational) Pacific Southwest Quilters and Fiber Artists, Salt Lake City, UT
  
• OLD FORGE ARTS CENTER, Solo Exhibition, 1998, Old Forge, NY
  
• COLOR AND LIGHT: Solo Exhibition at Kauai Museum, Lihui, Hawaii, Jan-Feb.'99, & Tri Cities Quilters Show, March, '99
  
• UNITARIAN CHURCH OF EVANSTON, May-June '99
  
• LONG ISLAND QUILTERS SOCIETY SHOW, invitational, March 2000, Freeport Long Island, NY
  
• Art In Embassies Program: US State Department, US Ambassador's Residence Canberra Australia, 2000, US Ambassador's Residence, Amman Jordan, 2002-2004

Publications

• Catalog of Art from the Residence of the US Ambassador to Australia, 2001