“The Road Ahead,” fused and quilted fabric collage mounted on canvas, acrylic paint

I started this piece when I joined the “Take it Further” Challenge hosted by Sharon B in January, but I didn’t go the direction I thought I would with it. The concept was “people or person who inspires you” or a color scheme, and I went nominally with both and then veered onto a completely different path. Here’s my post on the mountain-scape collage, and here’s just the quilt before finishing the edges.

I’m glad I didn’t stay with my original concept, because I’m really proud of this piece. I don’t do a lot of painting, but mixing the colors and continuing the design of the fabric was deeply satisfying.

Here’s a better view of the center, with the quilting stitches — simple outlines with metrosene thread. I used Terry Grant’s edge finish technique that was recently in Quilting Arts, but used a broader zig zag for a bit of a rougher edge than hers.

I wanted the edge of the quilt to show in the painting, to give a sense of depth to the whole piece, so I didn’t paint over the neutral threads.

This side really needed another mountain for balance, which I added after extending the others — next time I’ll plan a little better to get the layers of paint in the right order from the bottom to the top.

The sky was really fun — I turned the canvas upside down and just started with continuing the lines from the fabric. I mixed a little more red into the paint than is in the fabric to echo the rusty mountains a bit. The gold is really gold, but shines a little too much in the pictures. Once the sky was in place, the depth of the whole composition really came together.

The paint washes out a bit in the pictures — the difference in the texture is part of what I really like about this, but I may play more in the future with contrasting intensities as well.

I look forward to playing with more paint and fabric together, and refining the techniques I stumbled into working on this piece. More on working within challenges later.

This entry was posted by Jess on Saturday, May 3rd, 2008 at 1:55 pm and is filed under Challenges, Fabric. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.