Geometry

Our inspiration word for this month was Geometry,

Shelia Rae - I found some measurment tools including a compass and used them as embellishments. The focus fabric is by Tim Holtz. It has a technical motif. The beads are made from enameled dominos. The patterning on the dominos is very much like the fabric.

 

In addition to the challenge piece, I did two others. 

Spirit Horse uses some of the fabric Hope brought back from Africa. Here I have folded it in places to add dimension. I sprayed the background fabric with glimmer mist for a spiritual feel along with the white horse and "stars."

Marital Discord includes an embroidered squirrel on linen, pumpkins, star and other button embellishments. The title refers to an incident in my life involving a squirrel and pumpkin pie candles but I will leave the rest to your imagination.

Joan - Gravitational Waves. Maybe this is more physics than geometry but it is still math so.....

I love the image of the earth with the gravitational waves depicted. I interpreted this using hand marbled cotton for the earth, overlayed with hand marbled organza. The waves are stitched in heavy polyesther orange thread. 

Melanie - Mondrian The inspiration for this piece is inspired by the artist, Mondrian. I used Shiva painticks on black fabric. It is quilted with black pearl cotton along the rectangle lines.

I also did 2 other pieces with geometric shapes. The base fabric here is a Gelli plate print. The shapes are made from silk and hand-dyed fabric 

The background fabric here is a piece with text written with thickend dye in a squeeze bottle, then overdyed with a scrunch technique and indigo dye. The other fabrics are silk and hand-dyes. 

Cathey - Frida and the Concentric Circles. As you all know by now, I am intrigued by Frida Kahlo. Shelia Rae gave me a piece of upholstery fabric with her image and I appliqued it to this batik with a circular theme. I recently took a class at RISD on "experimental embroidery" and used those techniques here to embroider many concentric circles with warious threads, yarns, beads and other embellishments. 

Hope - Tree Snails. Like Joan, not geometry but algebra - The Fibonacci sequence. This mathmatical model is used to describe an amazing variety of phenomena, in mathematics, science, art and nature. The sequence leads to, the golden ratio, spirals, certain curve formations and the petal arrangment on some flowers. No one can really explain why it is echoed so clearly in the world of art and nature.

Tree snails are amazing and colorful creatures that literallly live in trees. I hand painted them on to this leafy fabric. Their arrangement here and the spiral patterning of their shells reflect the Fibonacci sequence.

Marica - Geometric Collage. In this piece everything from the weave in the base fabric to the cut shapes, added embellishments and the quilting reflect geometric shapes. 

Pat - Optical Illusion. I found some images on Pinterest of black and white squares put together in a way that bends sight lines and creates depth, I thought it would be interesting to make this with fabric. 

 inspiration pictures

I did not quite get the bending illusion in the linear pieced strips but it is still interesting. The circles are shaded with pencil!