NTAQ Challenge-My Process

“Difficulties strengthen the mind, as labor does the body.” 
― Seneca

    For the month of November, my local art group, North Texas Art Quilters (NTAQ) has the challenge to be inspired by a picture by Modigliani .  Modigliani is one of my favorite artists...his paintings are so full of emotion and, although his characters are usually not realistically proportioned, that feature adds to the beauty of them.

"Gypsy Woman with Baby"

    Please excuse the lines on my  picture but that is how I chose to create my challenge! The first thing I did was to draw vertical lines throughout the picture...not equally spaced.  The I divided up the space with horizontal lines determined by the change in color or value.  I then chose my palette and began to cut up my strips of fabric.

Cut up strips and the beginning of the sewing.

     After sewing the first strip, I could use it to determine how the sections of the next one should be according to the divisions I had made in the picture.

The famous seam ripper!

    Whoops! The wrong orange...Seam ripping is an integral part in my design procedures!

     So this is what all the strips look like before sewing them together vertically.  Because they are not the same width, and because I didn't make many of them wide enough to sew together with out loosing part of the design element, I had to come up with a different solution to put it all together.  I lined up the strips on my design wall and tried a few ideas.

Layout #1

Layout one sewn together would make the width about nine inches!  Loosing much of the design.

Layout #2

       This layout was too spread out...creating too much of a distortion.

Layout #3

     This layout seemed to fit best....sewing very narrow strips of gray in-between each vertical strip of pattern without loosing too much of the over all look.

Final layout

So this is my final "Gypsy Woman with Baby" except for the quilting.  That part will have to be postponed for a few days because I am trying to get another work done by November 10.  SAQA is sponsoring a show titled "Life Along the Rio Grande"; the finished work has to be a specific size.. 32" x 48".

      There are so many subjects....I went through my pictures from when Dick and I spent some time in Big Bend National Park...Javelinas, road runners, cactus...then I came across a couple of photos I have of a Century Plant with "the Window" in the background.  I decided to paint the background and add the actual plant in fabric as well as some of the foreground plants.

My painted background 

I do have quite a bit of work to do on it with just six days to go....but I seem to work best under pressure!  Will keep you posted!!