Andrea's CELL

Some of My 100 Trillion Cells: All Purple

Initially I was working with a concept of depicting cell phones in a prison cell, which gave me great pleasure thinking about, but after viewing images of the human cell online, decided to work with my vision of what some of my own cells might look like.  Many of the online images reminded me of my snow-dyed fabric so I then began to think about fusing circles on top of a piece of my purple emersion-dyed fabric.  That seemed a bit too stark, so then started screening words and circles on the background.  While in the process of screening, my "little grey cells" were at work thinking about and ultimately rejecting fused circles for ones pieced using the "Six Minute Circle" method by Dale Fleming.  I saw her demonstrate her method on Simply Quilts a few years ago and have wanted to try it ever since.  Although my circles took more like 20 minutes, I love the technique and how forgiving the stitching can be, yet produce a visually perfect pieced circle.  When my seven "cells" were completed I then quilted more circles using a variegated 12wt. Sulky cotton thread ( for some reason, my practice circles were evenly stitched, but not so on my quilt, which was very disappointing ).  I then thought I was done, but NO!  When I viewed from a little distance it looked rather flat, so out came the beads.  Well, I have never beaded on fabric before and did not realize how long the process takes!  The first circle, on the lower, right took more than 4 hours to bead.  I still look at it and wonder why.  Once I made the decision to bead, I thought that all seven cells would require beads, but happily after completing the third in the upper right realized that any more would actually be too much.  With great relief I could then put on the binding and consider the piece done.

back view of "Six Minute Circle" construction

close-up of beads and screened background