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 This quilt grew out of a UFO (unfinished object) challenge with my Peninsula Fiber Artists group. Everyone found an unfinished project and put it in a plain brown grocery bag. At the meeting, we exchanged bags without seeing what we were getting. Our challenge was to make something with the contents of our bag. Inside my bag I found a scrap of polyester knit fabric with several things stitched to it, including a spiral of polyester fabric with the words “the earth” “the water” “the air” “the fire” and “return return return” stitched around the spiral in sewing machine programed letters. I unstitched the spiral from the background fabric and used it as a theme for this piece.
I scanned the spiral into my computer and, using Corel Draw, I made a line drawing of a spiral that was the right size for the cloth spiral to exactly fit in the center
Next, I photographed four of my hand painted fabrics that had colors and patterns that reminded me of earth, water, fire, and air. I used these to fill the
spaces between the lines and shifted the images around within the spaces to create enough contrast so the spiraling design was clearly visible.
I didn’t like the sharp division between colors, so I turned the drawing into a bitmap and blended the edges in Corel PhotoPaint. I added the words earth, water, fire, air, and return in semitransparent lettering.
I stitched the polyester spiral onto the background fabric in the center of the spiral then outlined the semitransparent words with stitching. The rest of the spiral was free-motion quilted in patterns that represent the four elements. |
