Tuesday, December 16, 2008

Pieced Window - plus Another Portrait

My sister and her husband own a beautiful home in Colorado - on one wall are two wide, short windows. Rather than plain glass, they are pieced - I don't call them stained glass as there is no color in the glass. For their Christmas gift, I have made a version of one of the windows in cloth. (Detail above, full piece shown below.) It is machine pieced and heavily machine quilted. The final piece measures 18" by 36" - I hope they will use it for a tablerunner on their dining room table, below the windows.

I chose to reproduce the window without 'color' = I used 4 grey fabrics. One of those has some subtle yellow in it - emphasized by using a pale yellow thread to quilt it. This is my first 'larger' piece using wool batting - what wonderful batting!!!

Trying to understand the differences between artquilts and traditional quilts - as I was working on this piece, I thought to reproduce the window in a painting would be boring. But to reproduce the window as a sculpture would/could be truly beautiful. And I think reproducing it as a quilted piece works really well. So, is the art of quilting more like sculpting?






This is a portrait of my daughter, painted in acrylic - from an Easter picture when she was about 8 years old - she will turn 30 in January. My painting shows her sitting on the bank of the Cacapon River - a scene from my imagination only.

3 comments:

  1. This is a truly beautiful piece and your quilting is nothing short of amazing! I'm sure your sister will love it. I am involved in challenge called "Gray Plus One" in which we have to use gray and only one color. I thought that it would be hard but look at what you did with only gray.

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  2. When you talked about this quilt on Quilt Art I was expecting to see a mediocre quilt.
    This is wonderful. What a great new way to interpret a beautiful clear glass window.
    I am sure they will absolutely love it. I do.
    K

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  3. Lovely quilt (inspiring use of gray!), and I'm sure it will look amazing alongside the windows.

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