Saturday, March 15, 2014

Sara's Translate

When I first thought of translation I thought of the conversion of one language to another or from one symbol to another. My next thought was translational symmetry - the movement of an object from one place to the next without rotation. This concept reminded me of a design exercise I did when in a 2d design class when we were given sheets of printed r's and e's and were asked to create a composition-I decided to work with a simple shape. I started out making a freezer paper stencil and using Shive paint sticks on black fabric,That done, I decided that I wanted something with more contrast and I had just finished a workshop with Esterita Austin so I decided to use Mistyfuse on fabric and use fusible appliqué . I cut out 3 sizes of small circles out of the fused fabric using my accuquilt die cutter, I arranged lines of translated red circles and liked the result. I went back in with green circles on an angle to add visual interest.

I decided to quilt this using "matchstick" quilting that I had seen on some modern quilts - closely spaced lines that are roughly but not quite parallel. A 12 inch quilt seems like a much better place to try ou a technique than a larger quilt - especially one that is so time consuming! I'm not sure I like the effect enough to use on an entire quilt but I may use it in some areas of quilting where my overall quilting is fairly dense. I was glad to be able to try it out .

9 comments:

  1. Wonderful! I really like the matchstick quilting.

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  2. I am learning so much from the quilts this time! From Janet, a refresher course in geometry, Euclidian, no less; Braille typewriters; and now translational symmetry and matchstick quilting! Amazing. This is a lovely quilt, Sara. Thanks for contributing to my education!

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  3. I think it was really successful. Nice use of it as well.

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  4. Really interesting composition, and even though your matchstick quilting is a bit hard to see, I think the dense quilting is a nice contrast to the simple circle shapes.

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  5. Striking contrast of colors and shapes. Love the texture achieved by the quilting.

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  6. That is seriously intense quilting! It looks great and I'm sure it felt like it was taking forever! You created great movement in this quilt with your design and the quilting.

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  7. You created lush eye candy! Beautiful!

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  8. I had never heard of a matchstick quilt - but now I have! Thanks for introducing me to this technique. Love the colors and the way this turned out!!!

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  9. Love the quilt! I enjoy quilting like this. It certainly is time consuming, but I love the effect. It looks like silk.

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