Designing Chaos

 

1,3,5,8,6,9,7,2,4.

Here's what Slopes looks like when I switch up the position of the rows. I jotted down each version just because. This is the order when numbered from the original top to bottom position of the rows: 1,3,5,8,6,9,7,2,4..

1,3,5,8,6,9,7,2,4.

Here is: 2,5,7,6,3,9,1,4,8 Pretty different, huh?

2,5R,7,6R,9.3,4,1R,8

Next, I wanted to see what would happen if I reversed the direction left to right of some of the rows. So this is the same row order as above with some of the rows reversed right to left: 2,5R,7,6R,9.3,4,1R,8 The overall emphasis on the diamonds turns into two colored triangles. Very choppy looking to me.

 2,5,7,6,9,3,4,1,8

And then this is the final version: 2,5,7,6,9,3,4,1,8 It makes me think of shark fins (or teeth), sharp sharp sharp angles. I do kind of like that one lavender diamond in the upper right.

Original and Now Final 

After looking at all these versions, I guess I really do like the original one the best. But it was fun to see how much chaotic-ness ensued just by moving things around. I honestly am surprised a bit about that, I guess my original block placement design was more "planned out" than I'd realized. With this much action going on with the colors and shapes, a bit of considered planning was worth it. 

Honestly, this little experiment here was worth the price of admission to me. I've demonstrated to myself that my version of planned or controlled chaos is worth the time it takes to design, to me. Of course I know that, but sometimes one forgets...it took a lot of work to make something big enough to play around with in this way, but well worth it. Now to sew this thing together!

Word for Word Class

 I was lucky enough to get into Rosalie Dace's three-day "Word For Word" class at the Sisters Quilt Show. I've always enjoyed seeing her quilts at shows like PIQF and was excited to get to learn from her. She turned out to be a very excellent teacher, inspiring, informative and organized.
Our first exercise was to cut out a letter from very nice thick black paper that she brought with her all the way from South Africa. I chose a kind of curvy letter Z, with the cross like my family taught me to do. (boy did I ever get in trouble for that in school!)

Then we were instructed to deconstruct the letter and find an interesting design(s).

 And also to play with the background pieces that weren't part of the letter.

And then we were asked to do a final design incorporating all the pieces. This was up on my design wall. It reminded me quite a lot of the research we did for the Notan class. This was a great warm-up for me, and I was ready to make a quilt out of this design, but nope...there was a lot more to come...

Design Exercises

At the last CQFA meeting, one of our members, Amy Witherow led us through several exercises from  Katie Pasquini Masopust's book "Inspirations for Design." She set up a white-on-white still life with all sorts of interesting objects, vases, shells, silk flowers, packaging, a gravy boat. The idea of using all white objects was to take color out of it for us so we could concentrate on the lines and shapes of the objects we were observing and drawing.

I hadn't done a blind contour drawing in a very very long time. Blind contour means No peeking (the hardest), pen stays on the paper (also very hard), eyes trace the edges of the objects and your hand translates that into a line on the page.

We had various amounts of time to do each one. I found that a quicker time was better for me, getting unhooked from criticizing my work before I was even done with it was a good thing.

I think this last one was the best at showing what I was actually seeing.

Next was the hardest of all, not blind contour but we had to pick one shape, for the two things on the left I chose a rectangle and then using *only* that shape draw the still life. The upper left was a rectangular take on just the gravy boat, the lower left was the entire still life represented in rectangles. I find this one the most pleasing to the eye. The upper right was the entire still life done in an elongated oval.

I think this was the most challenging exercise for me, which means I should probably attempt it again several times until I get the hang of it.

Lastly, Amy handed us each a piece of nice thick black paper and we free-hand cut out shapes from the still life and then glue-sticked them down to a piece of white paper, arranging them however we wanted.
Amy shared her sketchbook and process drawings of one of her teapot quilts which was really interesting. I loved seeing how she used this process of abstraction and translating into a great quilt. I'm so glad she presented these exercises to our group, I think we all learned quite a bit.

Another Notan Challenge

Another small-group challenge, Notan again, expanding the square was our assignment, along with some embellishment. I looked at my favorite of the paper exercises we did last time and took note of what I liked and didn't like. Didn't like how it went off the page.This was the new one. Whoops! Off the edge of the page. But I liked a lot of the elements and how the design worked together. But I did not want to try and copy it exactly, so this was a warm-up.

I decided to try working with leather and chose a nice deep black, rough on one side and fairly smooth on the other.

 The first two cuts, and it looks like a christmas ornament or maybe a lemon. I used gluestick to hold down the pieces in place.

 I tried to take a picture at each step so I could un-do something I didn't like.

 First one

 And then another.

 Ahhh, almost off the edge.

 Another ornament on the side, or chili pepper I suppose.

 Partially quilted, not free-motion, so the spirals are very wonky.

 And all done. I think I'll add some hand-stitches in white embroidery thread in the center of the square.
I really wanted the square to still be there in my final design and I think I achieved that. And I didn't go off the edge!
Others in the group made some great things, here's a picture of all four of ours together:

 Dolores Miller on the upper right, Maureen Lardie on the lower right, and Geri Patterson-Kutras on the lower left.

Attempts at Transparency

 For the third meeting, our small group decided to try an exercise inspiration from a very different book, This book is beautifully produced, the exercises are illustrated with different media used and it's just an overall fun experience reading through the very rational, yet still fun approach to learning about using color in any type of artwork.  The subtitle of the book is: 50 graphic experiments for exploring color design principles, and I love that they are titled experiments as opposed to lessons or exercises. Experiments means that extra element of fun and unexpected results.  Understanding how and why color works is vitally important, and something that I think I'll be interested in learning and working on for the rest of my life.  It's a pretty much endless topic.
This first experiment was about achieving the illusion of transparency.  First I made a design I liked out of overlapping shapes of colored tissue paper glued onto white paper.

Then I translated it into a fabric approximation.  I actually did not have the correct greens or yellows so there was a little color experimenting going on.  I knew I was weak in the yellow department, but I was surprised that I did not have the right greens.

Lastly I made a second fabric version that switched out the overlapping parts of the shapes and tried to interpret those color changes correctly.  I was close, but not 100% due to lack of fabric choices (I know hilarious given the size of my fabric stash).  Good thing it was just an experiment right?  In general I really liked how this turned out, and the challenge of finding the right yellows and greens to use was definitely worth trying.

Now onto the next experiment!

The End of Anise

For the second design exercise, our small group decided to again go with something out of   Design by Nature: Using Universal Forms and Principles in Design (Voices That Matter) .  This one was about finding patterns in nature.  First we were to choose a natural object and draw it everyday in our sketchbook.   I choose the end of a bunch of anise.  When I chopped it off, I was struck by all the patterns and interesting shapes and structures.

Since it would be changing soon (decomposing!) I took a lot of pictures of it.

And I even scanned it.  My son saw me doing it and just kind of shook his head and asked no questions.  At this point, he knows better, otherwise it's an art lecture from mom.

Then of course I had to fool around with the scan in Photoshop. I really loved how this filtered treatment brought out all the structures and patterns so clearly. 

Next we were supposed to start detailing the patterns from the object, exploring the details of it and expanding upon them in our sketchbook.

I also decided to carve a stamp based on one of the line drawings I did which emphasized the shapes and patterns I found most interesting.

 

My ink is getting a little old and gloopy and I need a padded stamping surface, so some of the stamped versions are too splotchy.

But I got at least one that I was able to use to make the small quilt (8.5 x 11") our group had decided to do as "homework".

It was supposed to be 3-D in some way, so I stuffed the stamped image of the anise.  But I wasn't happy with it, it was too literal, and "the usual" for me, and definitely cheating a bit on the 3-d aspect. I wanted something else, so I made a second one.

This is much more 3-D and much less literal.  I used lutradur and steam-a-seam to stiffen the folded fabric and then ironed the folds in.  

A closer view of the folding.
All in all, it was a really useful exercise, and is one I think I could repeat it many times.

Design Exercise the First

 As part of a new small group I'm a member of, I had to make a small piece incorporating three symbols that each of us chose. I chose a spiral, which surprised no one. The other two members chose a kind of S shape (not-exactly sine wave but close) and a triangle.  We were all recently reading the book
Design By Nature: Using Universal Forms and Principles in Design by Maggie Macnab (I highly recommend this book!, It is very well done and thought-provoking), and we adapted some of the ideas about design and pattern into this group exercise.  It was really interesting to see what the other two group members came up with, all three were completely different.

I started out first with a three part background all in greys. I kept the irregular edges of the fabric pieces 'as-is' for visual interest.

The shapes were quilted and drawn in each section, spiral, S-shape and then triangle. I drew the shapes with a fabric marker, and added the dots at all the corners of the triangles because of a pen mistake.  That made me think of architectural style drawings, so I went back and drew over the shapes, adding fig.1, etc.

My original plan was that this would be the background and I'd add additional fabric shapes on top of all this.  But I was pretty happy with how it looked at this point so I stopped there.  This end design turned out to not combine the shapes quite as much as I really wanted to though. I will probably try this exercise again as I found it really useful and I'd like to see what else I could come up with.