Virginia A. Spiegel

October: Field and Forest (In Progress)

I’m working on the above art quilt for the members’ show, Surface Matters, for the Surface Design Association conference.  Under the influence of the organization’s focus and my recent peace artwork, it’s all about layers of surface design.  The theme of the conference where the members’ show opens is Off the Grid. Well, that’s a theme I can work with on both literal and metaphorical levels.

I started with a basic quilt (sort of a crazy-pieced top, batting, backing) with the theme of forest and fields in October in the Midwest.  We have a certain glow going then with the tawny empty fields and the brave sun.

I used a variety of my hand-painted fabric in an orange/peach palette with creamy beige highlights and a little green.  Some parts of the pieced top were made of a vintage polyester scarf with dark-colored swirls fused with Mistyfuse to a painted fabric.  

I added machine stitching in green thread in a jig-jagging hedgerow-kind of pattern.  Then I added “forest” with hand-stitching with Laura Wasilowski’s Artfabrik’s hand-dyed cotton variegated thread and some tiny sun stitches in variegated rayon thread (only for the totally stitch obsessed- very slippery stuff for hand-stitching).  

Onward from there to oil paint sticks (Shiva), adding some irridescent gold, copper and turquoise highlights.  I let that dry and pressed it well. Then I hit the top ridges of the piece with a dark pigment ink stamp pad. Then I added some strips cut from my big Boundary Waters 32 that include painted fabric, Lutradur and velvet. Then light washes were added of several colors of Golden liquid acrylic paints in the gold, copper, and yellow families.

October:  Field and Forest (detail)   

To top it all off, I added a tilted machine-stitched grid of variegated rayon composed of squares and rectangles.  I still need to square it up to 18×18″ (required size) and, believe it or not, I’m thinking of a 1/4″ binding.  I haven’t done a binding for a long time, but this seems like an artwork that would benefit from a strong edge. I also marked this artwork as “In Progress” because, to be honest, I haven’t decided which edge is the top yet.

The Surface Design Conference is May 28 – May 31, 2009 in Kansas City, MO.  More information here.