My Seurat...Sunday in the Park with Cole

Sunday in the Park with Cole  12" X 12"

Our focus with STAT this month was the artist Seurat. He was very interesting to me because he looked at color in a new way. He was scientific, and studied the way colors relate to each other, mixing in our minds. Look at any of his work really close up and you'll see dabs of different colors, but when you back up it might read as "blue" or "green"

A quote "Let's go and get drunk on light again – it has the power to console" (Georges Seurat)

I used the fabrics purchased in Lancaster recently, and some Ginny Beyer fabric to interpret his work. The female figure was in my blue scrap bin on some really vintage fabric.
This is how I started...

laying out yardage on my stabilizer. I free hand cut out trunks in 4 fabrics. I don't like fusible so it was kept to a minimum.
I scissor cut angles as I went along, no pattern, no worries. If something was too small I cut another piece and layered it on. I built the whole background this way.
When it made me happy, I dabbed a bit of glue stick on the larger pieces, pressed it just to meld the cotton and carefully took the sandwich to the sewing machine for quilting.

This time I wanted variegated cotton threads, and I really like Oliver Twist hand dyes. I lay unspooled thread over the piece to test, then put all spools for that project on a little holder

Here is a more close up view of the quilting.

Originally I planned to quilt only little circles but changed my mind. As I worked I added little shards of tree fabrics to each one to add shading and dimension. Each shard is loose, so it frays a bit which I love. I catch it up in free motion stitching as I go. Adding on little pieces is like dabbing on paint.
I think Seurat would have enjoyed watching me work in my medium.
I adore how the dots on Ginny's fabric blends like paint when you stand back.

After the quilting was finished I really liked the piece without binding but needed an edge treatment.

 This is on peltex so facings aren't going to work. First I tried a lame in gold but it was too shiny. Then I settled on another Ginny fabric with many colored dots, in brown to remind me of a frame. I did my quick binding (see tutorials page) securing it to the front with an ocher colored rayon thread and button hole stitch. Then I couched down a very thick gold cording and it's just the right touch of sparkle this time.



 Note I did not use the pink poodle shown in the second pic. I just cut a free form poodle out of my recent pacman black fabric. In person it works great! Circles and squares of gray on black.

He must be a miniature poodle, as his legs and neck are shorter than Cole's ever were! The last thing to do was take some bronze metallic knitting thread, twist it boucle fashion to make a leash and attach it to the gold collar.
Done!
related posts lancaster-loot
                    exploring-seurat.
                    Other STAT quilt posts
STAT is a group studying master artists and interpreting their paintings in fiber, with an emphasis on texture