Yesterday was our 2nd reveal day of the year.  It's always a visual delight!

Try an Abstract

'Foothill Fog' by Sophia Day
16" x 19.5"

This is an abstract of a photo of the fog in the valley in front of my house.  I used curved piecing, commercial fabrics, blue tulle and wavy straight-line quilting.  The original quilt was relatively easy to complete, but it needed something else.  I thought a misty tree in the foreground might help.  I tried printing a tree on lutradur and burning it to get wisps.  That didn't work, and the lutradur was not transparent enough to just print the tree on it and overlay the quilt.  I tried painting the outline of a tree on the quilt, but that just ruined the bottom and I had to redo.  I finally decided to print the tree on fabric and impro piece it into the quilt with the fog running through it.  I learned a lot about what didn't work.  I'm eager to continue experimenting to try to find the perfect solution.

'Sticks and Stones May Break My Bones, But the Words You Sent May Kill Me'
by Tracy Visher, 16.5" x 30"

This quilt qualifies as abstract, by default, as it is non-representational. It is created of shapes, that, while they work together, they do not look literally like anything recognizable in the world.  This was inspired by a painful fallout with a decades long friend who sought to express a difficult time in their life solely through electronic written word, rather than a face-to-face meeting where our history might have assisted with the resolution of issues. I used linen, fused and non-fused commercial cotton fabrics, embroidery pearl cotton thread, hammered copper wire, millinery lace, labels printed on cotton, cotton/poly thread and 80/20 cotton-wool batting.  I wanted a way to express how the emails and text messages I received, and the words therein, created a visual memory that I find much harder to recover from, than had words been spoken out loud. As a very visual person, the electronic memories have left statements in the ether that are not resolved in any way. A personal interaction, while difficult, allows you to see facial expressions and hear voice inflection that carry the remainder of “the story”. I found the abstract format to lend itself much better to the emotions of the exchange than I felt I could have done w a representational image. The floating “stones” inside the copper wire depict the accusations and the fact that they are “caged” in my memory.

'Aqua Motion' by Carole Rossi
19" x 46"

It has helped me to think of abstraction as a continuum, with representational or realistic images on one end and purely non-objective images on the other end, where the image is coming from "the art itself" - it's about color, design and the shape.  That's what I wanted to do with this piece, but in a more orderly fashion than with my earlier improvisational pieces.  I created a drawing, thinking of shape & design flow.  I used a variety of commercial cottons - solids and batiks, quilters 100% dream cotton batting and I machine quilted with mettler's 40 weight poly-sheen threads, using simple straight lines.  I challenged myself to create a completely non-representational image, but not with improvisational piecing.  Rather, I drew a design and created a pattern which I pieced.  This is more laborious than improvisational piecing, but I think it is helping me make abstracted designs which are more balanced and have a better flow.  The circles are appliqued.  I wanted to depict joyful movement throughout the piece, while also managing to play within one color range.

'Morning Rays' by Jan Mitrovich
21" x 31"

Abstract art uses visual language of shape, form, color and line to create a composition which may exist with a degree of independence from visual references in the world (Wikipedia).  My inspiration was an article in Art Quilters magazine showing how paper can be stitched to enhance an art quilt.  I used a piece of floral paper as the inspiration for a color palette, then tore various papers and added stitching and fabrics to add texture and variety to create a garden feel. I used scrapbook paper, image tranfer to fabric, brown paper, heavy art paper, black batting, velvet, tulle, wool roving.  All fabrics except the batting and maroon dot print are hand dyed.  This was definitely an off the cuff project.  I first played with tearing and stitching paper to various fabrics and experimented with transferring images onto fabric.  I then pulled out my hand dyed fabrics, created a color plan, then attached and adhered as the spirit moved me.  I decide early on to leave the edges raw to create an organic feel.  The final touch was to add the tulle and roving to the upper left corner to emphasize the sun rays.  The challenges were adjusting the machine tension for stitching on paper and balancing texture, color and design.

'Ghana Village' by Ann Sanderson
25"x19"

I created an abstract design from these very inspiring African fabrics.  I used fabrics from Ghana Africa and some of my fabrics that I printed and a few commercial fabrics.  I also used embroidery and beads.

'8-seconds' by Janene Powell
3'x5'

This is an abstract of a rodeo horse.  I used paint, colors and neon thread, silk, fabric and net.  I used items I had not used before.  

'Sunrise in the Woods' by Marylee Drake
36" x 44"

This is an abstract of the view I imagine I see when I squint my eyes at sunrise through the trees.  I love the colors of sunrise and sunset.  I used thickened dye on cotton using stencils and multi-colored dye.  This piece was started with scraping thickened dye, using stencils, then compressions with rollers and a final paint of dyes over the whole piece.  

From a Song or Poem

'Oh Moon of My Delight' by Elisabeth Baratta

The inspiration is from Omar Khayyam's 'Man Talking to the Moon'.  

Ah, moon of my delight, who know'st no wane

The moon of heaven is rising once again

How oft hereafter rising shall she look

Through this same garden after me - in vain

This was created with cotton and faced with tulle.  My husband collected Rubaiyats his whole life and this was inspired by one of the illustrations.  

Wild Card:  Flowers

'Flower Power #2' by Michelle Pearson
18" x 33"

This is a 2nd flower quilt in a series made for my colorful breakfast room. I used cotton fabric and Steam-a-Seam Lite 2.    This is the first time I quilted the main piece before adding the vase and flowers. Making the flowers was really fun.  

'Moonlit Flowers' by Elisabeth Baratta

These are flowers in a Midnight Garden.  I used all cotton fabric.  The flowers are made out of kaleidoscopes.     

'When Georgia Met Jackson' by Lynn Tubbe
23" x 23"

 O’Keeffe’s carefully crafted flowers do battle with Pollock’s paint throwing Inspiration for quilt/Source of design.  This piece was made for the SAQA Regional call for entry “Art Movements in Fiber”. I used handprinted and commercial cottons, painter’s drop cloth acrylic paints.  I had a very hard time choosing ONE art movement, so I combined two of the most renowned, but wildly different, 20th century modern artists. 

'It's Not Pink, It's Fuchsia' by Tracy Visher
20" x 22"

This is clearly a flower blossom.  On a trip to Tahoe with my nephew, I was fascinated when I happened to pass by this fuchsia plant. I loved how the shadows and folds of the white petals seemed to hold nature’s secrets.  I used Prochem liquid acrylic, Linen, poly satin fabric, rat tail cord, fused commercial cotton fabrics, fused batik fabrics, embroidery pearl cotton thread, iridescent organza, velvet, dupioni silk, Inktense pencils, cotton/poly thread and 80/20 cotton-wool batting.  I always enjoy putting unexpected things you find when you view my quilts up close. The text fabric for the shadows in the white petals gave me that. I also fused irri. organza over linen for texture you could still see. I painted the wet linen background, then sprinkled rock salt over it to give some interesting texture once dry.

'Field of Surprises' by Carole Rossi
33" x 38"

The dominant feature of this quilt is flowers – some crazy and some more realistic!   Hence, it fits the Wild Card Theme.  I used my own hand-dyed fabrics, commercial fabrics, piece of dyed white wool from colleague Linda Waddle; Inktense pencils, Textile Medium, rayon threads (40 weight Mettler Poly-Sheen) and cotton threads (Superior King Tut), Quilter’s Dream Cotton Batting. I challenged myself to create a piece with surreal floral images, inspired by artists such as Salvador Dali who sometimes transformed flowers into surreal creations.  My piece contains realistic & fantastical floral images, placed randomly in vases in a field.  The vases are oddly shaped.  I hoped to create joyful reactions & to make people smile!  I challenged myself to use my Derwent Inktense pencils to paint the sunflowers.  Now I can’t get enough of Inktense pencils. 

'Take Peace' by Pat Gillings
26" x 26"

 The source of the quilt was a picture taken by me at the Crystal Hermitage Gardens in the Ananda Village (Buddhist retreat) The pictures were manipulated in a computer program and assemble in grid. Printed by Spoonflower. The title comes from a plaque in Oregon that says “There is no peace in the future that is not present in the present moment so TAKE PEACE.