Week in Review 2022 – 04/01

What Inspires You?

What inspires you? This is a question artists are asked. Therefore, it pays to have your elevator speech prepared to answer. I am inspired with a question, what would happen if…? Art for me is a constant state of exploration and experimentation. I use what I have gleaned over the years and stretch, topple, reinvent and combine it. This way I am never bored. There is always something new to delve into.

Trying a New Technique

Honeybee collects pollen from an abstracted raspberry hued, large petaled daisy, atop a deep aqua green background.
I added the wings to the honeybee.

Last week the flower with bee wasn’t quite finished. The bee still needed its wings. I’ve done my share of thread painting. I knew that would be a good way to handle the wings, but how could I achieve the transparency, luminescence and delicate veins of the wings? Thread painting requires structure to be sure the stitching doesn’t bunch up the fabric. I also need a pattern to follow as I stitch in order to get the proportions correct. What would happen if I created the wings from the backside using just Whisper-lite for stability, Solvy for more stability and some fun transparent, iridescent fabric? What do you think?

Three octagonal shaped blocks with black corner triangles. Fabric selected includes a variety of yellows collected over the decades of 1980 to now.
I am up to speed with the Rainbow Scrap Challenge, now that all three yellow (March’s color) blocks are sewn together.

What happens when you combine blocks? OK, 36 years of making quilts, I know the answer to this one, but I never tire of the secondary designs. Love how the yellow scrappy blocks I made in March for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge combine to create an octagonal feel.

Designing A New Quilt

Photo taken during the fall of Kiev from a hillside looking down over the town.
This is a photo I found online after googling Kiev skyline. It gives a sense of the architecture and layout of a portion of the city.

Remember Bat Sh*t Crazy? Sometimes what would happen if thinking leads me to visualize and try out a several designs before I settle on one. I have decided to take a completely different approach. I got there from the title. Why depict Putin as a vampire? Instead what would happen if he appears as a bat flying over Kiev? Next thing I knew I was in research and design mode.

Townhouse in a variety of muted colors are aligned to look like a village street with a hill off to the right. The sky is red and crazy pieced.
My husband took my original plan and with an eye to the resource photo, created this take in Power Point.
A yellow town house with blue windows and a door. This one has shutters.
There are four different townhouse patterns created in EQ 8. This provides a variety of sizes, thus adding interest.
Yellow townhouse with a blue door and windows. It is three stories high.
An advantage of using EQ 8 is I can design the townhouses to be easily assembled using paper piecing.
I took advantage of EQ 8 to design four townhouses.
The sky, or upper portion of the image is made up of jagged, scraps of red fabric. The base and much of the right side of the image is covered with tightly packed yellow buildings with blue windows and doors.
This will be my blueprint or guide for piecing together Bat Sh*t Crazy.

I’m really looking forward to finding out what will happen if I both follow and intuitively modify this plan. It is one thing to design a pattern, quite another to interpret and create it.

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By Gwyned Trefethen

I am an artist who uses fabric, thread and miscellany to create designs gifted to me by my imagination.

12 comments

  1. OMG the art quilt of with the houses should be perfect – love the bat overhead – good luck in making this

    1. Thank you, Karen. I’m eager to get started. It will take months and I expect some trial and error, to get all those houses to line up and behave. I’m up for the challenge.

    1. Would you believe I was listening to an audiobook that include the phrase “bat sh*t crazy” and had a eureka moment? Not only did I have my title, it completely changed how I wanted to portray my thoughts about Putin invading Ukraine. Thank you for your vote of confidence.

  3. The wings on the bee are exquisite — though I wonder if you might rotate that square 90 degrees to the right? I tried it by tipping my laptop…as somehow I envision the bee approaching the flower a bit more from above. Clear as mud? Maybe I’m just over-thinking…

    As for the bat…I *really* like the geometric take on the cityscape, and the blood-red sky…but I’m thinking the bat is a bit too pudgy, rendering him just a tad too cute/cuddly, which I’m sure isn’t the look you’re going for! 😉

    1. In fact, Margaret I have rotated the bee, even prior to your comment. I will leave it up to whomever purchases it to choose their favorite orientation. I oriented it the way my reference photo was taken, but other orientations work, too.

      That bat is simply stand-in to give a sense of scale on position. I will “sharpen” the bat’s wings and trim the body to make it more menacing.

    1. Thank you, Nancy. Now that I realize I finish something every week – be it a block, a design or occasionally a quilt, I am grateful to you and others for providing TGIFF to share my work and see what others have achieved. Loved your post about April 1 being the start of the school year in Japan and the opening of cherry blossom season.

  6. Wow, as usual, your blog is filled with inspirations. Thank you! The wings on the bee look great. Can’t wait to see more of the Bat Sh*t Crazy. What a concept!

    1. Good to hear from you, Margo. It is rare for my muse to feed me a visual image that gets my message across to viewers. I’m really looking forward to pushing forward with this.

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