New Challenge Word: Memory

Our New Challenge Word: Memory

n. pl. mem·o·ries

1. The mental faculty of retaining and recalling past experience.

2. The act or an instance of remembering; recollection.

3. All that a person can remember.

4. Something remembered.

5. The fact of being remembered; remembrance.

6. The period of time covered by the remembrance or recollection of a person or group of persons.

7. Biology Persistent modification of behavior resulting from an animal's experience.

8. Computer Science

a. A unit of a computer that preserves data for retrieval.

b. Capacity for storing information.

9. Statistics The set of past events affecting a given event in a stochastic process.

10. The capacity of a material, such as plastic or metal, to return to a previous shape after deformation.

11. Immunology The ability of the immune system to respond faster and more powerfully to subsequent exposure to an antigen.

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[Middle English memorie, from Anglo-French, from Latin memoria, from memor, mindful; see (s)mer-¹ in Indo-European roots.]

Convergence of Circumstances

I knew this challenge would be difficult,time wise. Between online classes, getting quilts finished for MQS and the final prep for the classes I was teaching there; and other travel the last couple months.

But I had 2 quilts finished and ready before I left for MQS...minus the photos, that is. Add a travel delay and that puts me a day late.

I knew from the beginning that I would not have a lot of time to devote to this challenge, so I went with a re-make of an old quilt....a Ricky Tims style convergence I call "Convergence at Fowl Cay" When we were cruising the Caribbean in our sailboat the first 10 years of our retirement, we did a lot of snorkeling and diving. At this one reef at Fowl Cay, there was a barracuda that always greeted us. He was used to being fed by the native divers and always showed up to check for food. Very unnerving initially, but we got used to him after a couple dives and named him "curious George"
Then I was feeling very guilty about the lack of creativity of my piece so I did another. This time, I was in the middle of filming circle lord classes. This is my convergence of circles. Also pretty lame.
But alas, out of time. Too much travel and other commitments "converging" at once. So instead of one good quilt, there are two lame ones.

I'll do better next time. :)

convergence

Convergence

I had a particularly hard time with this word. All I could see when I thought about it was Ricky Tims' pattern by the same name. 

Finally I had a "Convergence" of desperation with a piece of antique furniture in my upstairs bathroom, & an idea!

I used a green Shiva stick, white fabric, some double-sided sticky tape, & did a rubbing of the front of the cabinet in my bathroom, then framed it with some green fabric, & using 2 layers of batting, (Dream Green under Hobbs Wool), I quilted it, did the Laura Wasilowski method of fused binding,& got it done!

Convergence

Convergence to me is coming to a point, a meeting place. This is a block/motif I've been working with, and it seemed perfect for this challenge.

Stratigraphy - Time

Time convergence ... layer upon layer of Earth's history ... visable in living color throughout the Four Corners region of the U.S. To look into the Earth of millions of years ago is a humbling experience one never forgets. We humans are but a tiny blip on the scale of time.

Ancient seas, windswept dunes, mud flats, river silt, volcanic ash, dinosaur bones and traces of prehistoric man all left their mark on this land that keeps drawing me back again and again.

Like some of you, this was quite a challenge for me! I don't know how many times I sketched out ideas for this quilt. But, my computer crashed ... I lost absolutely everything thanks to one totally ignorant tech 'person' ... (not exactly what I've been calling him for the last month!!!) ... and the quilt was the last thing on my mind! It dawned on me Wednesday that the deadline was here! Now! This weekend!!! Can't believe I finished!




Commercial cottons, upholstery fabrics, silk, gauze, scrim, hemp, sari ribbon, shells, stone beads, bones, organza ... machine and hand quilted, rusted, dyed, burned, painted, stamped.

And, to any of you geologists out there ... remember, this is art!

Where Heaven Meets Earth

From the get go with the Convergence theme, I imagined representing two elements coming together to meet in the middle, so to speak. I made three study quilts trying out different ideas for articulating my vision before I settled on Where Heaven Meets Earth, which represents the sky descending and the earth ascending and where they join together. And color seemed the best way to do this.

convergence-

-HeLa-

Inspired by the book "The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks"

by Rebecca Skloot.

Interweaving: history, research, ethics, culture, bio-medicine, race, love, emotion, fear, genetics, compassion-  all of which converge together in the background of one woman's story.

This was a particularly challenging challenge for me.

You may see more this piece on my blog.http://finishinglinesbyksperino.blogspot.com/

Converging Skies

To say this was a challenge is an understatement. Over the last couple of months we have been in the process of designing a second home and going through the contracting phase of building it in NC which is about 2 hours from where we live in GA. My time for art has really been limited.

Here is my third attempt at creating a 'convergence' quilt. The first attempt was about 3 weeks ago. I saw the date looming ahead of me and in a panic cut up about 6 different fabrics into 1 1/2" squares.....hated it! Next in even more of a panic I saw Ricky Timms book on Convergence quilts on my book shelf and thought I could at least do a simple convergence quilt. More fabric cut up and lots of sewing later I, decided it was too ordinary and decided to do some extensive thread painting on the top before quilting. I used 2 layers of stabilizer which was not enough and the top became so wonky that I had to scrap it! This was on Tuesday of this week....

I got up early on Wednesday, now in full blown panic mode, and went down to my studio and started to look through my fabrics for the third time and found a stack of my hand-painted skies. I love to paint fabric and the sky is one of my favorite subjects. I selected 5 different ones and after a couple of hours of playing with the arrangement I fused them in place. I did an overall cloud pattern for the quilting and with 2 trips abound the edges with a zigzag stitch I was done. If felt like I had just lost 20 pounds. This was really a great lesson for me since I tend to over think most things and am not know for someone who does things in a hurry. The funny thing is that I really like this quilt and it was done in a day. I'll post my bloopers on my blog later.

Converging Layers

You know when you have an idea for a design, you can see it in your head and you serendipitously create it perfectly as envisioned? Well, that’s not what happened for me. Sigh!

So here is how my quilt happened to be.

Layer 1: Fabric base made by piecing four neutral fabrics. The pattern/technique used was Ricky Tim’s Convergence quilt pattern. After all, the theme is convergence!

Layer 2: Quilting the background/base. This was done in a grid design, mimicking the convergence pattern.

Layer 3: This is the layer that wouldn’t become what I had dreamed about in my head. So I just started playing around with some fabric shapes (yes this could be called Plan B). Three hand dyed fabrics were cut into thin strips and fused to the background. This layer is now somewhat obscured from all the following layers.

Layer 4: Stitch over the fused fabrics.

Layers 5 through 11: Adding paint with all of the following methods: roller, stamping, stenciling, brushing, and sponging.

Layer 12: More quilting. This quilting was done in spiraling circles all over the quilt.

Layer 13: Torn fabric strips were placed on the quilt and hand stitched to secure in place.

What do you know…13 layers. Maybe 13 is a lucky number!

Convergence

Convergence was the perfect theme for me this time give my upcoming retirement at the end of the month. The last year of planning for my retirement and transition into a new career in fiber arts, has been all about those plans falling into place. It has been a long and deliberate process to plan our finances and determine which part of my hobby life I was willing to turn into a job. It has all come together in the last few months.

The background fabric is one of my hand dyed spirals and the star points are made from painted fabric.

Convergence: Gondwana Revisited

This challenge required long contemplation on my part. I thought of and discarded several ideas. Finally, reaching back to the dark recesses I landed on "convergence boundaries". As I recall this describes the actions of the earth's tectonic plates in moving and shaping the earth.

Gondwana was a proto-continent that ultimately became Africa, South America, and Australia (and North America, Antarctica, Arabia and part of India). It's the first three that interest me as these all have indigenous ratites: ostriches, rheas and emus.

This piece began life as individual blocks of African, Australian (with emus), New Zealand (with kiwi) and South American textiles. They were cut apart several times with insertions of thin bars of color, ultimately separated by the oceans.