I mentioned last week that my third challenge quilt is a flop… Here are the gory details…
After Eucalyptus Extension 1 and 2 I wanted to play a bit more with the colours of the next quilt. There was some discussion on this post about background colour. Thank you so much for the well thought out responses I received to that post!
Choosing background fabric for my eucalyptus quilts has always been an issue. Earlier on I always used a range of sky blues. But after working on eucalyptus quilts for a could of year, I got a bit sick of all that blue. Nowadays a natural cotton linen blended is my go-to background fabric. Ellen is right though – varying the background colour could really liven up these quilts.
So I decided to pick something out of my comfort zone. I thought about brighter, prettier colours – lemon yellow, coral, pink – but really struggled to commit to those. So (here's where I made my big error) I chose a muted (as in, take a lovely red and add brown to it) 'pretty colour' as a safer option. Maroon.
And to break up the maroon I screenprinted a blossomy design on some of the pieces. And as I stitched it all together, I knew in my stomach that I was wasting my time. High school uniform memories came flooding back every time I sat at the machine:).
The other thing I wanted to try with this challenge quilt was to incorporate some blossoms added as an extra layer between some of the pieced sections. (I have a new machine which cut these out for me – more about that in another post). Because I really wasn't enjoying this quilt, I didn't go to too much effort to find the right colour for these, and it shows. I know better for next time (and I'll try to use felt next time, I think.
I know I mentioned earlier that I was wasting my time, but really, this was part of the learning and developing process. Neither of the previous two challenge quilts really excited me either, but working through and eliminating things that don't work is helping to bring me closer to new work that I love.
I guess that when I started this challenge, I expected to see gradual changes and steps towards a slightly new style of botanical art quilts. Instead they seem to be lurching all over the place. The great thing is that the disappointing result this time has really made me thing about what I do and don't want to see in these quilts.
Here's what I do want to see:
– machine-piecing
– hand-dyed fabric
– screen-printing (optional)
– artworks that capture something of the beauty of the plants
– artworks that have a contemporary feel to them
– neutral background
Here's what I do not want to see:
– artwork that has a 'cheap and nasty', or slapped-together feel to it
– maroon backgrounds 
I spent some time putting together a mood board to help clarify the kind of feel I am after. I've referred a lot to botanical art in it. Check it out here. (One of my favourite high school assignments was making a herbarium from plants collected in the local bush). Now I've full of new ideas, and very excited to tackle the next challenge quilt!
The post Eucalyptus Extension 3 (unfinished) appeared first on Ruth de Vos : Textile Artist.
