Newest Landscape--"Traffic Jam"

"Traffic Jam"

c. 2008

Last week, I attended Paula Reid's class at Sew Many Ideas. The class was about using your machine to add embellishments such as cording, ribbon, yarn, charms, etc. Paula is a machine quilter and has quilted about 30 or so of Alex Anderson's quilts.

I took a beautiful hand-dyed piece (mine!) of blues and purples. It already looked very "underwatery" and very luminous. I added some ribbon, cords, and yarns in similar colors and in very random designs.

When I got home, following up on that underwater theme, I found these wonderful little wooden fish buttons! I was on a roll. I had lots of shells and I also found a piece of irisdescent tissue-type fabric which would make some great underwater creatures of some sort. These I free-cut very serendipitously from things I remembered from tv shows, aquariums, etc.

I made a "base" of tangled hand-dyed threads and went from there. At the end, that got some additional beads, as well as the shells. There are also some specifically-placed crystals, as water would get glints of light.

Make particular note of the colors used here: the lime green in almost the center, the orange threads, and the purple--comprising all the secondary colors! There is color repetition as well; some purples in the fabric, the fish, and down in the threads, the green fish and those "thready" things in the lower right center, and some white in the fabric and the shell in the lower right. Repetition of the colors leads your eye through the piece.

I had great fun with this piece, and it was done within the week! Ye-ha!