Wednesday, August 17, 2005

Weird Quilt




The QuiltArt list was talking about the weird quilts in Quilt national this year, guess there are some unusual materials used (to which I say cool!), and the topic morphed into a challenge. Now I'll admit, I'm a sucker for challenges. I've done almost ALL of them actually. And I feel I make weird quilts, let's just say, a lot of the time. I have to consciously work at it to make a normal quilt. A lot of times my weird quilts come about by me being lazy. Too lazy to get out boxes and boxes of fabrics and pick and choose the perfect colors. Instead I'll just reach over to the right side of my work table and pick things out of the pile of scraps, or is that heap, it is usually about a foot high. So this time the first thing I laid my hands on were the "Do not remove under penalty of law" tags from the pillows that I made my mom last month, and I was off, eventually making this quilt which is named "Penalty"
Here are some details so you can see what's going on.

This shows the penalty tags, which by the way are heat reactive, must be some type of Tyvek like material. I liked how they curled and crumpled when I hit them with the steam. Then I added the beading.

The white shapes were scraps from the Kona coffee quilt, cutting out the blossoms. And remember I never throw away anything.

This detail shows the stitched out word: Penalty, and the freebie conference badge/pass tag complete with clip. It was fun to bead upon!

Another detail to see the stitching. I had fun using the Madeira polyneon (really is neon colored), with the cool stitches on the new machine (Janome 6500).

And here is my materials and artist statement in case you want to read it!:
Materials: Cotton scraps, cotton knit, convention pass tag/clip, glass beads, fusible batting scraps, metallic thread, polyneon polyester thread, letter beads, edge trimmings from quilt sandwiches, silk burnout chiffon, gold glitter pen, sharpie markers, pigma pens, selvedge edges, tyvek "do not remove under penalty of law tags from pillows."

Artist Statement:
Weird in this case is the shape, the materials, the message. I always found it weird that the labels that arrive sewn into the seams of our pillows, mattresses and other stuffed items don't always get removed by we consumers. We read the "Do Not Remove Under Penalty of Law" line, and read no further. Instead we put up with scratchy, sharp, noisy labels under our ears and hope for them to eventually soften up with washing. Pay attention and read the whole thing, there are NO mattress police that will swoop in and nab you if you cut that tag off. Really.

1 comment:

Debra Dixon said...

Fun! I like working like this too--there is so much "recycable stuff" that can make great quilt statements that I have piles of it creeping into my studio daily.