9 March 2019

Cosmos, Part 1

Hello! I’m delighted that you are visiting my blog. Maybe you’re here because you’re curious about my latest art quilt? It's called Cosmos.



Making this quilt has been a long process, and from the start I decided to be open about how I work so that those who were interested could follow along on Instagram and Facebook and see how things evolved in real time. Regular posts on social media also functioned as a diary for me personally and were something that spurred me on in my work.

I have decided to write a series of blog posts about the whole process as a recap that ties everything together for both those who have followed me from the start and those who have joined at a later point, as well as for me personally. This first post is about the background story, the inspiration, my philosophy in art making and the first stages, where I dyed the materials I was going to use. The following posts will deal with design, machine quilting and creative hand quilting.

I made the decision to make this quilt on 2 August 2018, which means that it took me about 7 months to finish it, or 5 months if we disregard the 2 months when I needed a break and did other things. But the process had started in my head long before the actual decision to make a new quilt.

About 1.5 years ago stargazing and astronomy entered my life in a more structured way than before and when summer came I thought it would be fun to have cosmos flowers on my balcony. I adored their elegantly long and thin stems and it didn’t take long before I got out my sketchbook. And an idea started to quietly evolve in my head: a quilt with cosmos flowers as well as Cosmos, the ordered universe.


And then, weeks later, one night just as I was falling asleep it was if someone had pushed a button in my head, and I got out of bed and furiously scribbled down a rough sketch with ideas. Looking at that sketch now, it doesn’t look that much like the finished quilt. But this is often how my process starts: with messy scribbles on the nearest piece of paper.


When I make art quilts I like to colour my own fabrics, because that gives me creative freedom to do whatever I want. I’m not limited by the materials the shops have to offer, only by my own skills, and skills can be learned. In fact, learning new skills and gaining new knowledge is a strong driving force in my creative process. I love to learn new things.

So I started by experimenting with ice dyeing and fibre reactive dye as I wanted a soft and organic pattern in the area that would become a nebula (deep space object ACL 1, as I called it, a pun on the cataloguing systems used by astronomers). This was easier said than done with the type of dye I was using. It took me 4 attempts to get a result I was happy with, and only by ditching the ice and returning to the tried and true method of low water immersion dyeing.



The next step was to define the nebula. I started by cutting out paper roughly the size and shape that I preferred for the flower heads and arranging them on the fabric. I marked the outer edges of the nebula, first with string and then with basting stitches, to help me in the next step: overdyeing with black.


When it was time to add black, I thickened the dye for better control of where it went and used both a brush and my (gloved!) finger to distribute the dye. I removed the basting stitches at the end, to make sure they wouldn’t leave marks.


I then let it all dry before steam fixing the dye in a diy home steamer. (Instructions for making your own steamer can be found in this excellent book by C. Soderlund & M. Testa.)


After washing and drying the fabric I used thinned white fabric paint to spatter stars all over the surface. This is one of my favourite things to do: it’s pure magic to see how a shower of white paint can transform a surface into a starscape.


Then it was time to create a backing fabric. For an art quilt I prefer to dye the backing fabric too, as I consider it part of the whole. I decided to try ice dyeing with the same dye one last time. It didn’t work. However, I decided to use the fabric even though I considered it a failure, and afterwards I was very glad I did. The fact that it is very pale means that all the stitching can be seen easily on the back of the quilt. I decided early that the stitching should be mostly tone on tone, which means that a lot of my hard work can barely be seen on the front, unless you go very near the quilt. But the back bears witness of it.


Finally, I also decided to dye matching embroidery thread, partly because I wanted to try dyeing my own threads, and partly because it ensured that the thread would match the fabric perfectly.


That’s all for now. Next time I will talk about designing the flowers and creating the quilt top. Thanks for visiting my blog and I hope to see you here again soon for the next part of the story!



2 comments:

  1. I absolutely love this quilt. I too love Cosmos and stars (although I can only identify the Dippers and North Star, some planets). Thank you for sharing your process. I am secretly happy that I am not the only one who struggles with ice dyeing. It is supposed to warm up this week, so I will give it one last try under guise of using up the ton of snow in the yard. LOL! Thanks for sharing!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thank you so much, Jeannie! There's so much beauty out there!
      And now you know that you're not the only one struggling with ice dyeing, lol. One of the reasons that I've chosen to be open about my process is precisely that I want people to see that there are struggles and failures along the way for everyone. And solutions, if we keep searching for them. :-) XO

      Delete