NTAQ Art

“If you ask me what I came to do in this world, I, an artist, will answer you: I am here to live out loud.” 
― Émile Zola

     Monday, my North Texas Art Quilters held our monthly meeting.  We met at Kay's house to do some dyeing.  She had set up her garage  for us to work with Indigo dye.  Indigo is a bit different than other dyes.  If interested, you can go to the link here to find out more about it.

Hanging up dyed fabrics

     Our challenge this month was to choose a favorite work of art from a museum, gallery, book, etc. and be inspired to create a quilt.  My friend Heather is also a blogger and did a great job showing all our pictures of our challenge so you can go to her blog from this link to see what everyone did.

      What I am gong to blog about is some other pics of our meeting as well as my process of my challenge for this month

Kay, our hostess, had been dyeing with her niece.
This is a duvet cover they indigo dyed.

Kay had also done some printing with different objects.

Michelle, wearing a necklace she made with kitchen strainers!

Michelle showing a quilt she made with dyed cheesecloth

Heather showed 25 yards of fabric she had dyed at home.

Wendy showed a new quilt she had made, some of the fabric
from men's shirts she had bought from Good Will

Wendy had also just returned from a design class
where she worked with painted paper with the
plan of recreating the design out of fabric.

       And now, my process for our June challenge which I described earlier.  I had chosen "Interior of the Buurkerk, Utrecht" by Pieter Jansz Saenredam 1645. This is one of my favorite paintings at the Kimbell in Fort Worth.  I love the clean lines, the perspective and the subtle colors.

I first sketched out a very abstract drawing of some of the shapes.  Then I cut out the paper and traced each onto the back of fused fabric.  I decided to create a somewhat stained glass look so, after cutting out the fabric, I placed it on a black satin background. (One of my personal goals for our monthly challenges is to use only fabric I already have...not to buy any new!!) The fabric I used was some upholstery scraps I had as well as some raw silk I had picked up somewhere!

After doing the first section, I decided it was too small so I added another section at the top.

Then I auditioned two similar fabrics for the border...light on dark or dark on light?

I use my iPhone camera a lot to see the various steps.  It really helps to get a look through the lens.

After fusing it all down on the background fabric, and stitching the borders on, I quilted around each section with a tight zigzag stitch then quilted most sections, leaving a few unquilted for emphasis.

And here is a picture of all our quilts from our individual choices.

     Our challenge for July is to choose one of the artists' from " The Women of the Bauhaus School", a German school of art including weavers, industrial designers, photographers, etc. which existed between 1919 and 1933....more info to come in a future blog!!