My Latest Art Process

“For the great doesn’t happen through impulse alone, and is a succession of little things that are brought together.”—Vincent van Gogh

     I had blogged earlier about the Cherrywood Fabric contest....this year's being a 20" x 20" art quilt, using primarily four pre-selected Cherrywood Fabrics and inspired by any painting by Vincent Van Gogh.  I had decided to do an Iris, using the technique I learned in the workshop I took at Asilomar from Melinda Bula.

The Morris Iris  

I am doing a large iris from Van Gogh's many pictures of irises. My "model" was a picture taken by a friend of mine, Morris Meador, of one of his irises from his garden. 

My Enlarged  iris

     The first thing I did was to do a line drawing of the iris, then take it to Kinko and get it enlarged.   Then I color coded and numbered the sections with the fabric I was going to use.  And, using colored pencils, I colored one of the three enlargements with colors as close to my fabric as I could find.  Keep in mind that although Morris's iris is a beautiful white and lavender, I had to use specific fabrics..three shade of blue and a black. I am allowed to use other Cherrywood fabrics as long as 75%  of the work is with the selected fabrics.

Swatches of fabric at the top; iris colored with pencils.

     I then took the fabric I was going to use and added Steam a Seam...a fusible paper which is ironed on  to one side of the fabric.  The paper backing is left on temporarily. I had numbered the third enlargement to match the colored one, then cut out all the little pieces and traced them on to the back of the fused fabric.

Traced fabric, ready to cut and place on fabric

     I had traced the enlarge fabric onto a white fabric so it was kind of like putting a puzzle together.

Stage One

Two

Three

Four

     After all the pieces were adhered, I pressed them down permanently, then I carefully cut the whole flower out and placed it on the black background. I haven't attached it permanently yet because I am trying to decide whether I want to use it like this or to add some white around some of the edges.  I am posting both here..with and without a white border.

and Five

With white border

     So I would like you to chime in your opinion before I continue.  The next step will be to fuse the whole iris to the black background, layer it with the batting and backing, stitch/quilt it all together and add the binding.  The Cherrywood challenge is due August first so I have almost a month to finish. This has been a really fun project albeit time consuming.  I think I will probably do more with this technique.  I think I have shown what I started on in the workshop last winter...a landscape which I hope to get back to now that I have used the technique on this piece.