Saturday, August 16, 2008

Done, done done

they are done.Facings and sleeves. Thank God for the Olympics which keep me seated in front of the telly, thus making sewing them to the quilt by hand bearable.
They are hung on the design wall in my studio. I can see them on the way to the kitchen or over to the side of the house and into the oldest grandson's; who has left home, bedroom that is now the home office.
These piece had to grow on me from the start,
For one; they were part of a three piece commission that the buyer decided she could not afford after the scale drawings were done and rather than having to pay additional money to have them redrawn, she settled for these two.
For two, she is a pianist and wanted these pieces to go in her music room with her black baby grand and a treasured oriental rug with a lot of grey and black, so hence the color palette.
Working with the black background was really hard for me.
I have been in the best yellow/red/orange mood for months and when I am in that mood the last place I want to go is into the black. But into the black I went kicking and almost screaming on many days. But I finally told myself to get on with it. The longer I took to get it done the longer it would take. So like taking a dose of Castor oil I held my nose and got on with it.

Then thirdly, if that is a word she wanted music notes somewhere in the pedals of the flowers. Music notes she got. I tried for subtlety. I hope I was successful.



3 comments:

Suze said...

Those are absolutely lovely pieces! I think the hibiscus flowers look stunning against the black...
What techniques did you use?

Juanita Yeager said...

Thanks Suze
They are machine appliqued using a combination of commercial and my own hand dyed fasbric. I prequilted the random fractured background which was made with 12 differnt blacks tone on tone fabrics, before I place the leaves and the flowers, using quilting lines to minic veining and contour. I secure the edges of the flowers and leaves to the background with a blind hem stitch, .
I use both Prisma color pencils and fabric markers to get the shading and to some extent to alter the color of the fabric to enchance the dimensional aspect.
Funny you see hibiscus, when actually they are my hand drawings of petunias that are blown up quite large. Each piece measures 36" x 48".

Anonymous said...

These are lovely quilts! I think the vibrant colors look stunning against the black background.