Saturday, April 15, 2017

Carolyn's Quote: "Each Flower A Soul"



"Each flower is a soul blossoming in nature."

In March, Alice and I took a class from Lenore Crawford who mixes painted fabric with cotton prints.  After the class, I was not happy with my piece.  It was based on a photo I took of a vivid pink ocotillo bloom at Ghost Ranch, the home of Georgia O’Keefe.  So when thinking about our theme “quote,” I decided to cut it up and make a close-up version of a modern looking cluster of flowers popping up from the ground. 

As a flower-lover, I found a lovely quote by Gernard de Nerval that suited my intention for this design.  Nerval was an 18th century writer, poet, essayist and translator.  As a friend of Victor Hugo, he translated Goethe’s Faust into French, thereby introducing the French to a variety of German Romantic authors.  He thus became a major figure in French romanticism.


I used pieces of my hand-painted flower that had previously been bonded onto 100% cotton and fused the pieces into a design using Wonder Under.  Each piece was layered onto a piece of dark blue batik. I thought the design needed some other colors, so I free-hand cut and painted a yellow batik flower and green batik for greenery.  The small yellow flower above the leaf is a piece from a Kaffe Fassett fabric.  The quote was digitally printed on a yellow background.  I made a sandwich of the design by adding cotton batting,  a layer of 12”x12” Timtex and a backing fabric.  Then I machine quilted the design through 6 or 7 layers with Aurifil thread on my domestic Bernina machine.

9 comments:

  1. Carolyn, you have turned what was at first a disappointment to you into a wonderful quilt! It amazes me how the stitching on it brings it to life, as well as the addition of the yellow and the green. And putting it all onto the dark blue background: outstanding! So the entire week, in retrospect, was well worth the time we spent!

    ReplyDelete
  2. I love this! The colors are fabulous!

    ReplyDelete
  3. I love how you salvaged a bad experience to make something beautiful/ no ufo left to provide guilt and remind you of something less successful. The color and contrast is quite striking.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Carolyn ... Stunningly beautiful ! And that you were able to re-purpose a project is awesome :-D Inspired by your Quotation, you literally did bring this soul back to life !

    ReplyDelete
  5. Am so impressed that this is repurposed and stunning!! the colors are dramatic and the blue background sets it off beautifully!! Love it!!

    ReplyDelete
  6. Carolyn, I am applying Sara's 'fork in the road' to your work - you took one fork and it was disappointing, then backed up and took the other fork! I see so much beauty in this apt resurrection.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Beautiful quilt. Sometimes letting go of something disappointing is the way to new beauty.

    ReplyDelete
  8. Love your quote! Its wonderful you were able to use your flower from a class. Love the colors and stitching.

    ReplyDelete
  9. I loved seeing this in person in Arkansas. It is so beautiful. You were able to certainly make great use of a very disappointing project.

    ReplyDelete