Wednesday, August 15, 2012

Gigabyte- Beverly

  Gigabyte, 16 x 16
Commercial cottons, machine pieced and quilted, stamped, embellished with computer parts
 
While I liked the idea of a challenge piece based on architecture, I really wanted to do something other than buildings.  I thought of landscape architecture, but nothing grabbed me with that one either.  I looked up the definition of architecture in Wikipedia, and the last bullet intrigued me: 

The term "architecture" has been adopted to describe the activity of designing any kind of system, and is commonly used in describing information technology

 So I looked up 'computer architecture', and found this:

  computer architecture is the practical art of defining the structure and relationship of the subcomponents of a computer.


That got my attention- but I had not a clue what the insides of a computer looks like!  My oldest son, who is also my long-distance computer tech support, advised me to google 'gaming computers'.  I did, and felt like I had struck gold.  After printing off and considering several images for inspiration, I settled on this one.


I've had the text fabric in my stash for over a year, and this seemed like the perfect piece for it.  To me, the text represented communication, and computers have become such a large communication tool in my lifetime.

I wanted the quilting to have a 'techno' feel to it, so I used a straight line form of stippling.  Yikes, keeping the scale the same was a challenge!



My other technie family member, brother Paul, sent me some real computer parts that he had laying around.  the one above was attached to eighteen or so inches of gray wire, which I played with using.  I finally decided that all that wire was just too much, and cut off the two ends and used them.  The Whiother piece I used it its entirety.

 While I wouldn't say this is one of my best pieces, I had fun making it and stepping outside my usual nature-based inspirations.  I think this one will also end up mounted on a painted canvas.

8 comments:

  1. Oh my! So this is what happened to my old computer? I can see how keeping the scale of the quilting would be a challenge but you met the challenge perfectly. This is a wonderful representation of the inside of a computer. Are those circles pieced/fused on?

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    1. Brigitte, the gold circle is pieced, but all the rest are stamped. I had to hunt to find the right kind of ink- somewhat opaque, and with shine. I knew there was a reason I've been saving wine corks all these years, they made a perfect stamp for this!

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  2. I like your interpretation Beverly - and so appropriate for us cyber buddies. Great use of fabric and techniques, and your circuit board style quilting is perfect!

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  3. You succeeded where I bailed. I had located a similar image, but just couldn't get started on it. Your slant on the theme is fun and I like the attached hardware.

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  4. I so hoped someone would tackle the computer architecture and you nailed it! There are so many wonderful elements, tiny piecing and the text is used in a great way! And all that scaled quilting is so perfect! Nice to have techno savvy family members!

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  5. I love your little embellishments and I especially like the text fabric, mirroring the fact that computers are full of information. This one is a great interpretation.

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  6. Wow! That kind of architecture never even entered my mind! This is such a fun variation on the theme! Love the color!!!

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  7. Oh this is so cool! I too would never have thought of computer architecture, what a great idea and you've done an amazing job at creating a fiber version of the computer board using just the right fabrics, excellent choice of stitching and I like that final touch of some real 'hardware'.

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