Textile work -- The Migration of a Shape

Few years ago in Paia, on Maui, I saw the sculptures of a very fine sculptor named Pascal Pierme. He's from France & lives in the US.

I took some photos & then started working on his alluring shapes.

I made notes in my journal.

I still haven't done exactly what he did, but he got me started on a great trip. 

And I'm not done yet. 

I have enough now to sketch out various stations & stopovers.

Here are my first configurations. 

This is where it all led.  Above it is quilted by machine & I didn't like it, so I ripped all the stitching out & hand sewed it. It's a stunning example of the visual difference between machine & hand quilting.

Then I found these amazing silk plaid bias strips.  Experimentation began: I couldn't settle on something that I thought really worked....

 





This project was done last winter after my trip to Vermont.

I rather like the flatter look better, though maybe that's just a case of not-so-great photography or bad lighting!

Or it could be that my batting had too much loft & was too poofy.

This was an exercise started at Nancy Crow's class in May.

 I hand quilted it without batting, part way through didn't like it. I tore it out, machine-quilted it, & liked it way better.... oh, & I added low-loft batting into the sandwich of quilt front&back. You just can't get those fabulous lines with hand stitching. It's faster too.

When I do this kind of machine quilting I generally make stuff up as I go along. At the beginning a few lines get put in spaced throughout. These secure the basting. Then elaboration begins.

I'm kind of in love with the transition from this......to this, with slightly softened rectangles a la Pascal Pierme...

I also love my mother's Venetian scarf coming into play. What would she say?  She & her large shadows.

 I came home with from my May workshop with Nancy Crow with two large beginnings: one was in grey tones & one was in color. The righthand image is when I have started quilting the piece up.

 

 The color version went though a number of auditions too.
    

  
 This is it right now, on the frame. I am making decisions about thread colors, lines of stitching, & adding more softened rectangles quilted into the overall design. The blue shapes on the upper large brown shape shows where I am going to quilt in interior shapes the way I did with the large yellow shape.

  

Upstairs, on my work wall, is another piece-in-process.

The silks are the last scraps of my mother's scarf. I'm intrigued by the change of ground in the center. I was planning to put red where the white work wall is, but suddenly I think that white shape is just too much to give up.  I now have to work that thought out!

What a journey.

I've loved it, wrestled with it & am still not done with it.

I still want to get into the nesting idea.

That's it for now.