Geometric Design Fun

At our March Fyber Cafe meeting, we had fun doing a design exercise with geometric shapes. I stole this from another group's blog, Kathy Schmidt in the UK, links at the bottom of the post. We each started with Six 5" squares of bright fabric, with fusible ironed on the back, such as Steam a Seam or Wonder Under. Then the two darkest value we cut once, to use in the background, the remaining squares we cut into other smaller geometric shapes, about 4-6 pieces from each square. We cut rectangles, strips, squares, lot of circles, crescents, snakes, many different triangles, stars, eggs, etc... I provided a yard of black solid cotton, to use as a background, and we placed the larger pieces first, then the cut shapes.

We were allowed to place pieces on top, under, overlap, and all over the black fabric, you could move other pieces, we played a long time, every so often moving two steps to the left, so you worked on a different section. At the end we each removed two pieces! The idea was to consider design options, balance, value, line, repetition, shape, color. After everything was in place, we stood back and gave it a good look. We wanted a little more of the black/negative space to show. Paper was placed on top and it was rolled up, to take home and iron all the pieces in place.

As I ironed it, I fussed a little, mostly on how they overlapped and to even out the black space. After ironing, it was cut up into 16 sections approximately 8" x 10" some of them cut straight, and some wonky. Each artist will receive a piece to play with, cut up, repiece, add or subtract, extend, cover over, alter, or embellish. Just to have fun playing with color and design.

I am linking this to Nina-Marie's "Off the Wall Friday" click on the badge on the right column to see what other wonderful artists have been doing this week. Kathy at Quirks Ltd. in the UK has a blog on their groups efforts on a green background with organic shapes click here, scroll down to Jan 21 also check out their geometric pieces on a black background scroll down to Nov 22

Beginning Construction

I started with a full size freezer paper template, with an 18" circle drawn on it. I decided on the soft curves and spaced the layers, to flow across the sphere. This allowed me to see the size of the trees I would be working with, and how much of the sea/sky/polar areas.The earth/soil strip runs roughly at the equator, creating an equal amount of earth/sea. I colored the freezer paper with crayons, made dark lines for each section, and penciled in a lot of detail with quick sketches. Deciding to add animals or not was important. I didn't want them to look too cartoonish, but they are part of the eco-system, and I definitely wanted a few, birds or penguins, or fish/whales. So when I decided to thread paint them on top of the pre-printed cutouts, that made a big difference. Now as I work with my drawing, I think maybe the scale will be all wrong, and they would have to be too small. As I choose fabric for the Northern sky and a shimmering white for the polar snow, I needed to consider construction. I didn't want the dark blue seam to show, if I layered the fabric with raw edges. I decided to machine sew the curve seam, so the dark could be ironed to the back side. The snow and glittery netting needed to be crumpled up and stitched in place, so I needed to sew them to a muslin foundation. I also wanted to add beads to tack the folds in place, but the quilting needs to be done first. So I decided to add a thin white batting to the layer and quilt as I go. This way I can add the beads right away and not have to add all the detail at the last minute. Also my stitches to add parts won't show on the back, so I won't have to worry about it. Also the finished piece will be mounted on fabric covered stretcher bars, so no one will even see the reverse. I will finish it off on the back, but it won't show all my detailed quilting.