Fruity

For August, our inspiration was fruit.

Melanie 

Watermelon. The background and center of this piece is hand dyed fabric. I overlayed fused watermelon colored Angelina fiber to give the wet watermelon texture. For the white inner rind, I used white ultrasuede and couched light green yarn and bright green silk ribbon around the edges. I was lucky enough to find the perfect glass beads just the right size and shape for the seeds.

Juicy Orange Slices
Fir this piece, I use a bright orange synthetic for the background, a nappy orange corduroy for the rind, white ultrasued for the inner rind and hand dyed orange fabric painted with translucent pearl fabric paint for the orange sections.

Cathey
Pink Grapefruit

For this piece, I used white silk fir the inner rind, and some of my ice dyed fabric for the sections and blue background. For the outer rind, I used modgepodge to glue many opalescent seed beads for glimmer and texture. I highlighted color within the piece with a dry paintbrush and acrylic paint. There is also colored pencil work. The blue background is spritzed with pearlized spray

Marcia

Summer Raspberries

For this piece, I used colored pencil to for the foliage and stems. I found perfect raspberry beads for the ripe fruit. To represent the core left on the stem after a berry is picked, I used spiral silver beads and for the unripe berries, I used small green beads. In the upper right, I quilted in a raspberry flower and used a variety of beads to represent stamens and other parts of the raspberry flower.

Joan

Looking at Fruit Fiber in a New Way

I am a Registered Dietician. The America Dietetic Association (ADA) is having a member photo contest. The challenge is to submit a photo that shows food in a different way. Since I am a fiber artist more than a photographer, I made an art quilt piece and submitted a photo of it. 

I had a greeting card with fruit images drawn by a local artist. I received permission from the artist to interpret her artwork in fabric. The piece shows a new way to look at fiber. These fruits are among those containing the highest fiber and, of course, here they are created with fiber. The bright colors in these fruits indicate that they are also a good source of phytochemicals.

The piece is made from silk, hand dyed fabrics, embellished with beads. A bit of fraying upholstery fabric creates the brown rind of the kiwi.

Unrelated to fruit, I recently finished a stacked rock landscape piece.

Rock and Shadow

The background of this piece is hand dyed. The pink and light horizontal color represents light source. I created the rocks by felting wool roving around actual rocks and then cutting away the felted shapes once they were dry. I stacked the rock halves on the background. I collect rocks and geodes and plan to do more pieces with them as a focus.