The Serenity Composite

Another outstanding interpretation for one more interesting theme.

I had all the quilts on one page and couldn’t see a pattern for the composite, so I started placing them on the page. Judy’s came first, mostly for the overall thought, “spread the ………..”, and I really liked the emotions, “praise, prayer, joy, or a place to receive all that is amazing.”

Then, the only other quilt that had a person depicted was Tricia’s and it fell into place next. I needed a foundation. How about Kathy’s stone sculpture? Works, doesn’t it?

Notice how Alice and Karen and Carolyn’s quilts so perfectly represent Serenity in theme, color, balance, and outdoors. The top row is now complete.

So, two quilts remained, Nedra and Andrea. The colors of all three in the bottom row really work.

Then I leaned back in my chair and felt the Serenity because, more by accident than planning, this one seems to work well.

Serenity my friends – thank you – the tranquility and peacefulness of the 8 quilts is wonderful.

Job well done,

Randy

Alice's Serenity Quilt--Carol's Serene Lake

This is a substitute quilt for the first one I posted.  I wasn’t happy with that one, since technically speaking, it wasn’t truly an “art quilt.” For one thing, I didn’t originate the design; it was a traditional block pattern

Recently my cousin Carol Harrison, an artist who often works in watercolors, posted one of her paintings on Facebook.  I fell in love with this lovely serene painting, and I thought, “Maybe I could replicate that design in fabric.”  I emailed Carol and received her permission to use her image.

I was determined to use only fabrics in my stash, many of which are batiks and were backed with fusible already.  I used as a base a blue ombre with graduated shades of blue. Then I began the process of selecting the fabrics for the other elements in the painting.  These I cut out free hand with scissors or two different rotary cutter blades.  As I finished one layer, then I overlapped the fabric strips to make the next layer.  All went well until I got to the water, specifically, the shadows of the trees in the water.  Green shadows look fine in the painting, but green fabrics just didn’t look like shadows us.  So I switched to blue shadows, using various batiks.  But still they didn’t look shadow-like to me. 

Sue Benner taught one workshop I’ve attended, and her method was to use multiple strips of fabric to compose her landscape quilts.  I went to her website and studied how she treated water and shadows.  Following her example, I overlaid tiny cuts from other blue batiks onto the shadow shapes. This looked much better.

After the quilt was finished, I machine quilted, changing thread colors often, chiefly sewing down the fused edges and then doing some echo quilting.  After all the quilting was done, I thread-painted the red-brown grasses at the bottom of the quilt.

I’m happier with this quilt!  Carol’s painting is below.  Beneath is, a detail of the water and the shadows in the quilt.  

Judy's Serenity

With this little quilt I just wanted to create the feeling of “Serenity”. I started by painting a background that is soothing and joyful with the colors of a sunset.

I looked for hands that were in the praying shape, but most of them were at an angle so that you could see that they were hands. Then I came across hands open and it felt right. I then had to decide what I would do to create movement. I thought that I might use flowers, birds, and hearts, but that seemed too chaotic and serenity would be gone. Next it was hearts and I was cutting they out of all kinds of colors. Again, it was getting chaotic and cluttered. Three fabrics were chosen and then grouped together to make them flow upwards.

I have great peace when I think about others, so the hearts symbolize the love I send out to everyone when they come to mind. I love the hands open because when I hold my hands open they feel so right and they can be in praise, prayer, joy, or a place to receive and rejoice in all that is amazing.

KATHY'S SERENITY

Several years ago we were spending some rather blissful days in Hawaii with our Adult Children, and our Grandbabies !      As we were strolling down one of the streets, there, on a rather small, kind of isolated area of sand and shore was a beach... very quiet and calm, and yet right in the middle of "down town."  

On that special beach were numerous 'collections' of Round Rocks that had been carefully stacked and assembled to form beautiful and (to me !) mysterious structures.   

*Where did those rocks come from ?
*Who put the rocks together to form those unfamiliar structures ?
*How do the rock structures maintain their positions ?  

            With cement ?  Glue ?  Other ?
*Will the structures remain after the tide(s) roll in and back out ?
*And if they remain, what's going to happen to them ?

       
                                  WHAT ARE THEY ???

Well, it was explained to me that the structures are made of rocks found near the beaches, and rocks that sometimes wash up on shore from other long-distance shores.    The Rocks are carefully stacked and balanced, and when the structures are finished, they become focal points that can be used during times of meditation and contemplation.... The "Quiet" Times in a person's daily routine.

In my mind, these Balanced Stones brought a sense of "Serenity," and thus my choice for this quilt  !

For the rocks, I used fabrics that reminded me of rocks with moss, rocks that had been weather-beaten, and rocks that perhaps had been traveling for a long time in order to become "Serenity Stones."    The backing fabric made me think of the sandy beaches, and some of the interesting wood, skeletal shapes, and sea shells you might find on a beach.

The quilting ....  Well, "Free Motion" is my passion, so I used the images in the fabric to suggest the quilting motifs.   Again - sand, shapes, and shells.

Notice the Free Motion detail in this picture !

Peace and Serenity to All !          MAHALO ! !

Karen's Serenity

Serenity Among the Birches

There is a peacefulness, quietness, tranquility to standing among trees. Birches are among my favorite.

Larger birches have folded edges, straight stitched down with clear monofilament thread. Triple batting behind to create trapunto.

Smaller trees fused on. Smaller trees and background stitched with smoke monofilament thread.

I am posting for Karen- Tricia

Tricia's Serenity

My daughter Michela and her boyfriend were traveling in the Vietnam this past February. They would post their pictures daily. It was such fun to see where they were. One day Michela posted a picture of her practicing yoga on a beach at Sunrise.  I thought it was the perfect scene for the Serenity theme.

I enlarged the photo and created the image with raw edge applique. I free motioned quilted it. It's hard to recreate the sunrise.

Carolyn's Desert Serenity

The desert Southwest is my favorite place of all.   I was born and raised in El Paso, Texas.  As a result, this part of the country pulls at my heartstrings.  For me, it is one of the most serene places I know.  My husband and I just made a trip to Big Bend National Park.  In springtime, it is alive with bluebonnets and blooming cacti.  The bluebonnets, a different variety from those in the Texas Hill Country, grow as tall as 3-4 feet.  Their color is a vibrant purple-blue.

My quilt was made with silk and batik fabrics and was quilted using Ricky Tims Art Studio threads.  The sky is a hand-dyed cotton by Mickey Lawler.  The cacti buds were hand embroidered using Laura Wasolowski’s hand-dyed embroidery threads.

Along with photos of my quilt, I have posted a photo of one of the tall bluebonnets of this unique part of the U.S.

Nedra's Serenity - Serengeti Sunrise

On our 2017 trip to Tanzania, we spent several days in the Serengeti. One morning the sunrise was spectacular as we searched for wildlife on our early morning excursion.  The sun was just emerging and created a beautiful sky over the verdant landscape.  We asked the driver to stop for pictures. We lingered there for a long time just marveling at the early morning painting before our eyes. I had such a feeling of intimacy with nature as we savored this scene in one of my favorite spots on earth. This picture exemplifies the serenity I felt savoring the natural beauty of Africa.  The top photo is the finished piece and the lower is the picture I printed on fabric.

My plan was to use a technique I had worked with before in a project.  The project included a  close up photo printed on fabric of a pointsettia and a pattern with petals and leaves surrounding the photo which filled out the larger flowers.  My own fabric stash was used for the background, petals and leaves.   I hoped to do the same with the sunrise photo by extending the image into the borders using fabric of my own.  The following  picture is the finished product and the second is the photo that was provided.

I chose a batik for the sky which I painted and shaded with inktense pencils to blend with the colors of the photo.  A green commercial cotton was over painted for the grass.  The texture of that didn't really look like the grass in the picture. I tried the snippet technique to add to the grassy landscape.  Stitching was added to create texture and tuille on top for shading.  Traditional binding was used to finish the piece.  I'm not really thrilled with the finished piece.   I believe this technique works better with closeups versus a landscape scene.  Closeups of .orchids I recently took would be a better choice for this technique and I hope to give a another attempt.

Andrea's Serenity Quilt

Untitled

12" x 12" snow-dyed cotton, resist, machine and hand-stitched.

When thinking about this theme in January, I decided to start with what I consider "serene" colors and came up with soft peach, pink, green and beige.  Then I considered a technique that I thought would fit the theme and decided that hand-stitching a whole cloth quilt for a few minutes daily until the entire surface was covered would work.  However, other "situations" presented themselves that distracted me from my plan.

In my stash of snow-dyed fabric I found two pieces that I felt would work, one with pinks and the with greens.  My love of working with circles continues so I designed a piece that would include resisted circles to slow-stitch.  As time was running out to finish, I very minimally machine stitched and then added a bit of hand-stitching for texture.  Even though I did not follow through with my original idea, this visually represents "Serenity" to me.

  

 

Detail