Done and dusted

Taking the quilt pic with the "grown up" camera -
And sending off the photos, as well as the 20cm fabric sample -Getting the colour right on the photos was ... suboptimal. Never mind, it's gone to meet its fate. On to the next thing.

Breaking out

At last, real action on the quilt for CQ's Breakthrough challenge. A chance remark at the Knitting & Stitching show led to the purchase of silver and white textile printing paints. I used potatoes to print these "eggs" -Before printing, section by section, I bonded snippets of bright fabric -
Sometimes they stuck to the potato, but the random blank areas seemed to work just fine. So did the more heavily printed sections. Mostly I used a paintbrush to apply the paint to the potato, but there was also a foam pad in intermittent use. And sometimes I took two prints from one inking. White and silver were used randomly.

Though I'd drawn out a plan for the sections, using three sizes of "egg", it got adjusted along the way, and once the middle area was done, each new section was a new decision - what size egg? how many rows? what colours of fabric?
The size of the black linen (salvaged from some unwanted but hardly worn trousers) was 70x70 - I'd planned to cut it down to 60x60cm, but that would have diminished the piece. So I left it as is, and started printing another piece of black cloth - marked out to the correct size.
Also, I added "breakout" pieces to some of the eggs - and some strips printed on velvet. Those would be caught down by the lines of vertical quilting, about 1/4" apart. This pic shows the quilt before quilting, trimming, and binding.

"Breakthrough"

Various ideas I've had for the CQ "Breakthrough" challenge - nothing has "clicked" yet, and the deadline is getting closer and closer -





That idea of the crack, held together by the quilting, came from seeing "Tankini" by Weeks Ringle in the Quilt National 2009 book -
Is it copying, plagiarism, or even breach of copyright, when the size is different, the shape is different, the fabrics and colours are different, that "crack" is different, and the source of the idea is acknowledged?

Another "stolen" idea

While leafing through the Quilt National 2009 book, hoping for THE "breakthrough" idea, this quilt by Mary Beth Frezon made me want to play with paper, paint - and masking tape -
The tape can be re-used, adding in white areas where it crossed itself first time round -
The sheets were torn into squares, rearranged, combined, rearranged - Or the paper can be left in strips - and masking tape can be left on -
I sewed that arrangement onto fabric, to see how quilting might fit in - still not sure about how the quilting works, or if I'd take it further.

More sampling

A continuation of the work seen here - the shapes have become eggs, and something is trying to break out -But these shapes, especially the one on the lower right, are more like what first came to mind. I wanted to do hand embroidery, but might try some other form of crackly patterning - batik? starch resist? shibori?
The interesting thing about nests-full of eggs is that though they're laid over a period of several days, they all hatch at once - there's some sort of signalling going on between the eggs. And it's not just bird eggs ... eggs are smarter than we thought.

While googling "hatching" to add a link to support this interesting fact, I've realised that hatching is also a system of mark-making -- cross-hatching. Sometimes it takes a while for the penny to drop. This opens whole new vistas - it might even be a breakthrough!

Sampling again

This was actually the first sample towards an idea for Breakthrough - it's based on that card (David Austin, The Stars above the Sea) and on the celestial drawings/prints by Vija Celmins
I wanted the light to break through the dark areas, like a night sky - maybe with the odd constellation - and ended up looking in an astronomy book and finding a page about the search for the invisible, undetectable stuff called dark matter, how when scientists find it - or are sure that it doesn't exist, or know how much of it there is, one of those options (it's all a bit mind-boggling!) - then they'll be able to figure out how long the universe will go on expanding. That would be a breakthrough, but how much "practical use" is that knowledge ...

More sampling

Just getting an idea of what might happen. No matter how clearly you visualise something, it has a way of being different when you actually make it. Or else, you get started and the idea takes off in a completely different direction. Usually I like those kind of surprises, but sometimes it would be nice to stick to Plan A....

Well that's the background - here are some shapes to translate into fabric -
I have no plan for these at all - let's wait and see what happens.

Sampling

Trying to get different greynesses with different weights of thread and density (and type) of stitch -And the sample swatch of machine and hand quilting, on various recycled linens, that I'll add the sample stitches to, in those moments when a bit of hand-stitching would soothe the soul -
Having got this far, though, I've had another idea - different, maybe better? (This is for CQ's "Breakthrough" challenge - deadline November. Better get cracking ...)