Kathy's "Majestic"

  Kathy's Majestic 

The first thoughts that came to my mind for "Majestic" were some lyrics from my most favorite Patriotic song, "America the Beautiful,"

     "Oh beautiful, for spacious skies,

       For amber waves of grain.

       For purpled mountains "MAJESTY"

       Above the fruited plane.

       AMERICA,  AMERICA, 

       God shed His Grace on Thee,

       And crown Thy good

       With brotherhood.

       From Sea to Shining Sea."

In looking through my Fabric "Stash"  I found this almost as "perfect as could be" piece of Patriotic Fabric.   Although the words to this song are different, the impact they have on me for Patriotism is just about the same.  

Thank you for this amazing opportunity to express ourselves in such a variety of ways.

GOD  BLESS  AMERICA  MY  HOME  SWEET  HOME !

GOD  BLESS  AMERICA, MY HOME  SWEET  HOME  !

Nedra's Majestic - Aziza

Majestic has many meanings including 'of impressive beauty and dignity".  That definition is exemplified by the Masai of Kenya whom I observed on visits there.  I chose to portray a majestic Kenyan woman I named Aziza,  which means stately, grand and beautiful in Swahili.  

I studied many images of African women and found a tile mosaic in the Flickr account of Judit Bozsnar (a Hungarian artist) which she calls Black Princess - Homage a Jacques Leconte.  I assume he is a French artist, although I could not find any info regarding him or his work.  I did find his series of works of beautiful African women in colorful graphic attire on several sites.  I tried to contact Judit for her permisssion to replicate her image in fabric and post a picture of her mosaic, but have not received a reply.  I give credit to Judit  and Jacques for the inspiration for my version of Aziza.  When I  saw Judit's mosaic and Jacques' works I  knew I would portray her using bright graphic Kaffe Fassett and Brandon Mabley fabrics.  And here she is!!!

Brown and orange were chosen to represent the dry African landscape with the lime green and purple for accent and black for contrast.  The piece is fused and machine quilted and bound.  Black beads were used for embellishment.  I loved this theme!! I find the photo the most difficult part of this challenge.  I still have not learned how to take an "square" photo.  

Andrea's Majestic quilt

 

Paris, 1967

14" x 11"

cotton, acrylic paint, organza

My first "Majestic" thoughts were of mountains, which I was not that interested in depicting.  I read many definitions and I'm not if I actually read "something that takes your breathe away", or if that was just my interpretation, so I may be "pushing" the meaning a bit here, but once I got that thought in my head, I couldn't let it go.

My first trip to Europe was in the summer of 1967.  I have seen much that has taken my breathe away, but seeing the Eiffel Tower for the first time is still at the top of my list.

We traveled by ship and after 5 days at sea, disembarked in Le Havre, France and took the boat train ( they probably don't exist anymore ) into Paris.  It was dark by the time we arrived.  We found a taxi and after a much puzzled look from the driver as to where we wanted to go, ( we finally wrote down the name of the hotel for him ) we were on our way.  I don't know if anyone else in my family knew that our hotel was just one block from the Eiffel Tower, but I didn't and all of a sudden, there it was!  All golden and glowing.  

I was mesmerized and breathless at the same time.  I really couldn't believe I was actually seeing what I had only seen in books ( and never expected to see in person ).

I do hope  I've done a decent job of representing the view from the backseat of a Parisian taxi, looking up.  At least, that was my intent!

I used gold paint applied with a brush and sponge, in the basic shape of the tower, on black cotton.  Using tracing paper, I drew enough of the structural lines of the tower to make it recognizable and  stitched on top of those lines.  I then spent a very long time picking out all of the tracing paper (unfortunately, I used a heavy weight paper, which did not want to be easily removed ).  After cutting out the tower, I fused and stitched it on to a black background fabric that I splattered with gold and silver paint.  The partially "rolled down window" is organza.

Alice: The Majesty of Birch Trees

 I struggled with this theme at first.  All I could come up with was "purple mountains majesty," but I feared that someone else might use that one.  Good friend Linda Hicks, one of our first but now former Mavens, suggested I look up quotations using the words majesty or majestic.  Then she sent me a batch!  I loved one by American writer Washington Irving that says in part: "There is a serene and settled majesty to woodland scenery. . . "

Knowing that New Englander Irving likely often saw birch trees in woodlands near him, I recalled a length of batik that I treasure that depicts birch trees.  (In fact, I've used this fabric twice before in my MM quilts,  for the themes Translate and Boundary.)  

I assembled a background of sky, hills, and foreground using batiks, cutting them freehand and fusing these onto a muslin base.  I sandwiched this background with batting and backing and lightly quilted it.  Then I applied Steam a Seam 2 to a section of my treasured birch tree batik and cut out seven trees.  These I then adhered to the base; SS2 can be repositioned, which is handy when composing, but ironing makes it permanent.  I touched up the trees with black and white Fabric Fun Pastel Dye Sticks.  

For the fall leaves I assembled small pieces of yellow, orange, and tan batiks and began cutting them into "confetti."  This confetti technique Rita Schormann demonstrated to us at our first MM retreat on Nantucket Island.  These had no fusible product applied, but I did apply some SS2 to a few larger cuts and then I snipped these into tiny pieces and stuck them down one by one to be falling leaves.  The confetti pieces I scattered onto the tree tops and the ground.

To keep the treetops and piled up leaves in place for quilting, I covered the entire quilt with white tulle and then free motion quilted through the tulle at the top and bottom of the quilt.  

Once the quilt was finished, I was in a quandary about what to use for binding.  I auditioned many fabrics; all seemed to be too distracting.  Then I remembered a technique I learned in a class taught by Marcia Stein.  I pieced the side edges using the same fabrics that I used for the background, and for the top and bottom edges I used some of the yellow batik.  At last I was content with my woodland scene quilt!