Artrageous Challenge Reveal

ARTRAGEOUS, my art quilt group, revealed our 2010 challenge this past weekend. It is really hard to work on something fun and not share it for a whole year! 'Fabric Gossip' used the Telephone Game as our guide but using a photo vs. a whispered secret.
Since I was the first person in my group, I got to see the photo and I knew immediately that I wanted to use one of Gloria Loughman's techniques in my background. The technique isn't hard but it was very challenging, to me, trying to place the colors the right way so that it would be pleasing to the eye, not too drastic, and be recognizeable.

I started cutting a batch of diamonds in various sunset colors.

Once they were sewn together for the sky, I wanted to portray the water with a different directionality. Kathy Loomis had just posted on her blog about piecing gentle curves. I followed her directions and considering it was my first time doing this, was ok with how it turned out. The sky was then hand appliqued to the water area where the darker orange is.

Here is a cropped photo of the background all pieced with the tree and horizon line fused on. I then added a bit of fabric paint along the horizon line and below the tree to represent the reflection in the water.

Here is the finished piece completely quilted and faced. The moon was portrayed using the small holeless beads that you glue on. I am not quite sure this was the best technique to use since they want to flake off with too much handling. I fear as this piece gets put up in exhibit after exhibit, the beads will continue to wear off. They would be fine to use if you just hung it on the wall and left it alone.

This was so much fun and when you click on the link below, you can see the original photo along with all the other pieces and how the photo changed as each person received their bit of information.

http://artrageousfibreart.blogspot.com/2011/03/2010-challenge-reveal.html

Fractured Flowers

This past saturday, Valentine's Day, my fiber art group got together to unveil our 2008 challenge pieces....we gave ourselves flowers. Our challenge was to make four sections of a pink flower. Three of the four sections were then exchanged with others in the group so that you had 4 sections-one of them your own.
As if that weren't enough of a challenge, I made it more so for the 3 other people who received my sections. Somehow I misunderstood the parameters of the challenge and finished my sections-quilted, threadpainted, and embellished-before exchanging them. I am so sorry, again.
The challenges I faced with this were 1. the color pink-not my favorite 2. trying to find a way to fit the pieces together- especially since mine had batting already 3. how to expand on just a flower. Plus all of that, my pink sections didn't really match in values and hues. In the end, I am glad I challenged myself and I like the border I ended up attaching.

On our group's blog http://artrageousfibreart.blogspot.com/ you can see the flower we began with along with the other finished challenges. It was a lot of fun to see how everyone faced the challenge and creatively solved it. Enjoy!