Colourblock

I had a bit of a time deciding on how to approach this challenge.  In the end, I went the way I was most comfortable with - partly due to wanting to actually have something to show today, and partly because, well, it was comfortable!  I guess I haven't quite broken loose of my comfort zone, and kicked that box aside!

I'm not one for fussy - I prefer clean and simple.  I like graphic.  I like lines.  I like colour.  I like balance, although I don't always achieve it myself.  Piet Mondrian's style suits me.   (to see an interesting presentation of his work, and how it changed over his life as an artist, check this video).

gridwork

I took the idea of a limited colour palette, and played with lines and gridwork.  I introduced some neutrals, in the shape of white, grey and black.
I added additional lines through the use of stitch.

stitch

I like what I ended up with.

Colourblock

finished size 16 x 16

Hands Free Tote

Well I’ve finally made it.  It’s done!

I started out surfing the internet hoping to find some creative ideas.  I found pictures of balance wheels from time pieces, an elephant balancing on a beach ball, a balance scale…you name it there were many.  None really “rang my bell".

While looking at my African Collage and trying to figure out how to quilt it, an idea came to me.  Have you ever attempted to carry something on your head without using hands to maintain its balance?  Women in Africa do it all the time and make it look so easy.  So there I had it...my inspiration for this piece.

I started drawing out the image in my sketchbook.  Here is a piece of it.

The next decision was how to construct the piece.  An abstract representation or a natural one.  I chose the natural and started making templates for the various pieces that would be needed to construct the figure. 

 I was quickly running out of time.  I also needed to find an appropriate background.

Well here at last is the piece. 

It was constructed with hand applique.  I added colour to the white and black print with watercolour pencils.  I added charcoal shading to one section hoping to give the clothing some dimension.  And the basket…well that took a bit of experimenting which you can see on my blog here.  All in all I’m pleased with the piece, but I have to learn to balance my time a bit better.  Thank you Judy for a challenge that stretched my imagination and applique skills.  I also managed to use some new products, that I will use again.

I made it.... barely!!!!

 

 

As I feverishly put on the finishing touches of my latest challenge quilt....

I am reminded
(once again)

that...

"Life is a Delicate Balance"

Aye Caramba!

I never thought I would get this challenge finished!

The theme was deceivingly easy but it took many weeks to finally come up with my idea!!!

That was in between some travel to Florida, to Toronto, 

and last night, 

I returned from a bus trip to Lancaster Pennsylvania
for a quilt show and plenty of shopping (that is for another blog post)!

I spent a whole lot of time on the bus chatting with friends while I stitched!

Yes,

this quilt is done completely by hand
(that is, no machine was involved!).

The figure...



which is meant to resemble me...

(you think??)

was created using my hand painted and hand dyed fabrics
which I hand appliqued onto the background hand dyed fabric.

Then, I decided that I would use some of my lettering skills
that I have recently been working on in
Joanne Sharpe's online Letter Love 101 class.


(many of my commitments)

With a pencil, I lightly wrote out all the letters
to be used and embroidered with Perle 8 cotton....

(many of the activities that I try to squeeze into my day!)

and some of Laura Wasilowski's
hand dyed variegated embroidery floss.

I tried to blend those x's from the list of my commitments 

with the scattered lines of my favorite activities

together over top of my curly mop...

to represent that fine balance that I am always trying to achieve and maintain.

Albert Einstein said,
"Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance you must keep moving."


But sometimes, it is best to get some sleep!

Good night everyone!

Off-Balance and TIPSY!

 

Tipsy, 16 X 16

Hand dyed and commercial cottons, machine pieced and quilted 

I had so much fun with this challenge!  I enjoyed doing the freeform piecing over Christmas, so decided to use that for this challenge.  With the word balance, I immediately went to the meaning in art.

As I played with my ideas, I wondered if I could give the viewer the sense of being off-balance at the same time creating a work that is balanced artistically.  I'll leave it to you viewers to decide if I succeeded!

My palette is partially drawn from a quilt I made for my daughter years ago, and by my desire for COLOR after the browns and grays of a Utah winter- even a mild one!

I love circles, and wanted to use curved lines in my quilting to offset the more straight edges of the piecing.  So I sprang for a gadget for my Bernina that allows me to sew circles.  It was definitely worth the money.

So, no deep meaning in this one, just plain fun. 

In Search of Balance

For the first time ever, I decided to work from a photograph. I selected an arty foliage photo my husband had shot and changed it to a black and white image. For the background fabric I selected 20 squares of various dark prints. I made paper patterns for the leaves, fused fabrics, cut out the leaves and ironed them onto the background. As this process was proceeding, I kept having misgivings about it, but hubby assured me it was fine, so I then sewed the leaves on and when finished, I knew it was a no go. Additional photos.

I had been so proud of myself for finishing 2 weeks early, an unheard of event for the chief procrastinator. Now I had to start over. After many hours of searching for ideas on the internet I decided on an asymmetrically balanced design of black and white, more or less.

The design then had to be enlarged to the correct size, paper patterns made and fabric auditioned. This small mock up enabled me to audition fabrics over and over again until I was satisfied.

Finally I was ready to cut and sew. I am not accustomed to working from a such preconceived design. My normal method of working is to design as I go. How to quilt the piece was also a challenge. Instead of quilting an all over design, I quilted each section, which was also a new experience. Plus, I did not use any text and used all commercially printed fabric, so I can do it! 

vertigo

I tossed with lots of ideas for the balance quilt, like a poem about two tightrope walkers that I would have loved to translate into an image, but got me really tangled. Then there was this saying: ‘Balance is the visual weight in design’, right down my alley! After I had sketched some designs they all were very colourful and balanced, but I wanted to dig a little deeper into this theme and try some new techniques. Then I tried to work on a feng shue like quilt, I worked out the idea of Audio Balance, a technique to feel balanced again after a burn out, which is all done with a computer programme, but none of the ideas did see the light.

So the pondering and procastination started all over again. Both my husband and I have been diagnosed in the past with vestibular neuritis (caused by a viral infection in the ear) and experienced an extreme balance disorder. So, there it was, my theme for the quilt! Vertigo! *

I painted fabric and lutradur with blue and yellow inks to obtain that (not so nice) green colour, that you get when you have vestibular neuritis. I printed a drawing of the ear and the inner ear (equilibrium) on lutradur, fused it to the fabric and stitched it down after I basted the quilt layers. With red shining paint and a thermofax screen I printed lines on the lutradur. These lines stand for the ‘short circuit’ that takes place in the equilibrium.

I used a variegated thread and elongated the screen print lines with the quilting. I was still missing the dizzy factor, so I quilted circles with another thread (no quilt without circles for me he?)

When you have this severe dizziness your eyes move rapidly from the left to the right or in circles and it feels like the world is spinning, so you can’t focus. You might experience problems with speech and sight. I stamped the words balance, giddy, tumble, woozy, speech, fuzzy, nausea and blurry in one of the circles, and stamped them again with a darker colour, to make it all a bit more blurry. Then I stamped little stars in another circle but the effect was almost nill, so I embroidered over the stars.

I wasn’t too happy with the overall result and needed something to lighten up the greenish background colour (green is my least favourite colour you know... ) and made a yellow binding with some red fabric pieces that I had painted with the SG paint.

I allowed myself too short a period of time (5 days) to make this quilt, so I miss my happy colourful self a bit, but well, you win some, you loose some.

Thanks Judy for this interesting theme that should have allowed me to work like I love most, simple and balanced but also challenged me to look further.

Nicolette

*(Vertigo (from the Latin Verto, ‘a whirling or spinning movement’ is a type of dizziness, where there is a feeling of motion when one is stationary. The symptoms are due to a dysfunction of the vestibular system in the inner ear. It is often associated with nausea and vomiting as well as difficulties standing or walking. There are three types of vertigo: objective − subjects are moving around the patient; subjective − patient feels as if moving himself; pseudovertigo − intensive sensation of rotation inside the patient's head. It can be caused by vestibular neuritis which is probably caused by a viral infection of the inner ear.)

Frayed around the edges

you've got

and you've got

and if you're not careful, the edges start to fray

This was my response to the balance challenge presented by Judy.  This idea came to me very quickly, but it took until Friday for me to actually make a start!

The straight line quilting through the work section indicates the structure that exists there - it is a pretty controlled environment, with a known objective.  The Mctavishing through life expresses my desire for a more creative outlet.  But, I've learned that you have to maintain this balance or things start to fray.  I work on this balance everyday, otherwise the fraying takes over!

Thank you Judy, I enjoyed this challenge!

Attempting Balance

'Attempting Balance' began as one of the two finalist from my balance brainstorming. The idea that didn't make it to fabric was based on Itten's 'contrast of extension'. I enjoyed studying Itten back at school and thought the idea of using one of his theories to create a color-field-like quilt would be fun. I did a few sketches in my sketchbook of several ideas and then tried a few in my Nook. I need to find a better app or just improve my sketching skills! The following are sketches from my Nook.

 I ended up choosing my original idea which stemmed from my yoga practices. Balance exercises are often a challenge and I wanted to portray this in my design so after starting out with a very balanced figure, I realized I needed to throw this figure off balance as one often ends up after trying to hold a pose beyond our balance limits. This idea is not limited to yoga and I think of it as the attempt we make in all areas of our life, trying to find balance with what we need to do, what we want to do and the time and resources we have.

I had never made a whole cloth quilt so decided to use paints for this piece. I mixed old acrylics with fabric medium and did the background of red swirls on a commercial yellow print. Then lots of chaotic swirls of stitching. Then to create a figure I was happy with was much more time consuming than I expected! I cut out paper pieces and moved them around, trimmed them, etc and finally painted a figure that I hoped conveyed 'attempting balance'. More wild stitching and finally more swirls of stitching going over my figure as well as the background to 'tie' the figure into the swirls.

I thought a raw edge would work best with this concept but decided I did want a binding so created a raveled edge binding. I liked how that worked out and will use it again.

Thank you Judy for a great challenge!

Tipping Toward Completion

No matter what tools you are using, our challenge is due on March 18.  I hope this fact does not disturb anyone's equilibrium or throw things off balance.

If you need some inspiration or a minor diversion, watch one Vancouver gentleman who has turned balance into an interesting past time.

ACK!

I finally came up with an idea for our challenge.

I even made a sketch!!

Now I am thinking of using these...

(I have a new iPhone camera up...BeFunky... which is loads of fun!)

my collection of threads I use for hand applique!

Am I crazy!!!??? 

Probably!

Can I get it done in time!!!???

I have no idea!

But I hope so.

Quotable Balances

In case any of you are stuck for inspiration while working on our challenge, I did some Internet surfing and discovered some quotes that might just help some of us with creative solutions to this next challenge.  For example:

“The word 'happiness' would lose its meaning if it were not balanced by sadness.”

– Carl Gustav Jung

“The whole imposing edifice of modern medicine is like the celebrated tower of Pisa - slightly off balance.” – Prince of Wales Charles

“Happiness is not a matter of intensity but of balance and order and rhythm and harmony.”

 – Thomas Merton

“Man always travels along precipices. His truest obligation is to keep his balance.”

 – Pope John Paul II

In or Out of Balance

Just in case your creative juices are "out of balance" this might stimulate your thinking:

http://shiborigirl.wordpress.com/2012/01/03/a-new-face-on-balance/

balance

Heres a sketch I did over twent years ago (OMG, that is awful, I am so old!)

Even though I chopped her toes off in the photo, I thinks she might be an example of BALANCE!
What do you think?

Challenge 5

I wish I could say that I have an idea for the next piece all worked out for this theme, but that would not be true. I was going to choose metamorphosis, but that is the current 12 X 12 challenge, so that doesn't work.


How does B A L A N C E strike you? I don't hear any applause, but I think this will grow on you and that by March 18, we will all look at balance in a new way.


Balance - noun (definitions from the Oxforddictionaries.com)

1 .  an even distribution of weight enabling someone or something to remain upright and steady:  she lost her balance and fell

2.  a situation in which different elements are equal or in the correct proportions: try to keep a balance between work and relaxation.  Mental or emotional stability: the way to some kind of peace and personal balance

3.  an apparatus for weighing, especially one with a central pivot, beam, and two scales. (the Balance) the zodiacal sign or constellation Libra.

4.  a counteracting weight or force. (also balance wheel) the regulating device in a clock or watch.

5.  a predominating amount; a preponderance: the balance of opinion was that work was more important than leisure

6. a figure representing the difference between credits and debits in an account; the amount of money held in an account: he accumulated a healthy balance with the savings bank; the difference between an amount due and an amount paid: the holiday balance must be paid by 8 weeks before departure