Thursday, June 27, 2013

One was due, I made two



Hoodoos

 These are my Klee challenge quilts. Once again, our little 6 person group makes an interpretation of a chosen artist and this month's was Paul Klee. He was my choice, so we all did our own pieces. It was fascinating to see the choices. I learned that I like all the styles I researched. All our quilts are 12 in square

Hoodoos is a technique I've played with for years, where I piece tiny strip to tiny strip and make long sections. I haven't made anything with them yet. Then when I saw his highways painting, this came to me.
I love it so much I plan to make a larger one. I had a lot of fun playing with hand dye scraps, and playing around with color relationships.
The amazing thing to me was that I grew to absolutely love the organic ochre/red strip. Not colors I use often if ever. It's true, all colors have beauty. The ochre looks especially pretty next to the blues. 
Joyful Woman

close up of Joyful Woman
Klee's squares with letters in them always intrigued me. I didn't realize before this exercise that he had other styles. I loved his whimsical line drawings too. The color placement was a terrific exercise alone, then I added half square triangles and the whole thing danced. I think the black line took away from the dance, but really wanted a strong black line drawing and love to see women in art.
I toyed with the idea of another poodle, and my DH suggested the "line drawing" be a poodle but I didn't feel like it.
I'm a moody little artist.
I placed the beaded cording on the finished quilt, and held it in place gingerly while stitching over it with free motion. If it shifted a bit, well, it's a woman! What woman doesn't shift a bit in her life? I lovelovelove his letters in squares, so I did free motion zig-zag letters spelling JOY and surrounded with my fave beads.

Who doesn't need a little more Joy in their lives?? I do, ( raising hands and waving them around)

Thanks for looking
LeeAnna


9 comments:

Lisa Chin said...

What a fun challenge! Great job!

MulticoloredPieces said...

Hi, LeeAnna. Marvelous pieces. The dyed fabrics parallel Klee nicely. I really like your technique in Hoodoos, the pieced strips. Perfect.
best, nadia

Quilt or Dye said...

I love the pieces, especially the top one. I think it is great that your group is basing your challenges on artists! Lately I have found that researching other artists really makes my own work better. Who knew?

Shannon said...

These are both just wonderful! I love the color choices and organic feel of the shapes/pattern in the top one!

Madalene Axford Murphy said...

A great challenge--and you must really get to know an artist's work by using it as an inspiration for a quilt. You certainly captured some of Klee in both these pieces. Love the colors in that first piece!

LA Paylor said...

thank you one and all for the comments so far. I dithered over the style, but the first one was something I've started and stopped many times, but with commercial fabrics. The hand dyes totally looked painterly so with a flick! of the magic that happens when we're lucky, it came together. I see a couple of big ones like hoodoos in my future...

LeeAnna

LA Paylor said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Anonymous said...

Wow! Klee has always been a favorite artist of mine. I LOVE your Joy quilt with the "drawing" of the woman- you did that directly on the quilt with freemotion? Did you draw it first or just go for it?!

LA Paylor said...

I placed a cord that looks beaded, down in a pleasing way, carefully brought it to the machine under a free motion foot, and c a r e f u l l y zig zagged over it. It wanted to move around a bit but I managed on the whole.
thanks for the compliments! The others didn't enjoy Klee, but he was my pick.