Tuesday, April 21, 2009

3 minute challenge


The three minute challenge!




This is the inspiration Painting that I want us to look at and design a piece around.

It's titled
Interior with Aubergines

Only Rules: NO PATTERNS, or templates & turn off your brain.

Gather your fabrics & Decide how big you want to work...

The main idea of this project is to randomly select fabrics, that give you a sense of what's in the painting and then moving quickly, either by looking at the painting, more than the wall... or just by memory of the painting & looking at the painting.

start pulling fabrics, and laying them out.
The above photos of myself, took about 3 Minutes.


Notice things like:
Repetitive patterns such as:
Layers
Lattice/ ladder

patterns
Blues/colors,
flower patterns, etc.



Here are three ways to help keep the project moving quickly.

1.Make an abstract idea.
or

2.NO PLAN at all

or.
3. Let the scraps work their magic.


ONE:

I've made basic a sketch of the painting to find common shapes.
this could be a layout I follow, or just a way to give myself a different way of seeing what in the painting...


Like this example:

I didn't follow it exactly, I cut out random pieces of fabric approximately the size I wanted to cover and sewn them together. No pattern cutting, no templates, very much a free pieced project. If you like it great, if you don't cut it off and add something else!


TWO:
Often, I'll just take my fabrics, cut pieces, and lay them out on the design wall and see what feels good. This is the way I usually like to work.
(see the above 12 photo sequence.)
If you have a design wall great, It's great to just lay out random fabrics and get a feel for what will work well together...

That is how this quilt went together below.
No drawing, not much thought, and hey,
it's my favorite quilt!

Obviously I was thinking about Gee's bend quilts. When you think about they made the utility quilts, how they would sew together what ever they had, like a pants, leg, a pocket, a shirt sleeve, and get a very random, color clock sort of quilts; That's the goal here.


THREE:
SCRAP BIN.
Gather all the scraps of the color palette you'd like to use, Lay them out, and sew them together...



This black and white quilt grew from that box of black and white scraps. I new I wanted to make a black and white quilt,
that was the only thoughts I had.
So I sorted out all my white and black scraps, and one day sat down, and just pulled pieces out of the box and started sewing them together.


Final Design.


Please feel free to try the three minute challenge over and over, or take longer than three minutes, until you have something you are happy with.

If you feel like playing along, please let me know and I will link back to you if you show me your progress.

I would like to, then, at the end, show all the tops with the painting and see what fabulous things have been born.

7 comments:

  1. Not sure I have time, but I love this idea! I'm going to try and play along!

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  2. I just arrived home and logged in to find this challenge. Your approach is so empathic to me. When you posted "Matisse", it made me start thinking along the same lines as you. I've been dreaming of what I would do with some of my favorite artists. How about "Boggie Woggie" or Vermeer?

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  3. I gave it a try...love the orange and blues....

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  4. So, when I looked at the painting, I immediately looked to see what they were eating. I saw eggplants on the table--turns out the painting is about the eggplants!
    Aubergines!
    I don't know what my quilt will look like yet, but something's "stewing" in my mind!

    ReplyDelete
  5. this is very cool! how big are the final pieces?

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