Escaping the Grid

Just in case you're wondering..   These posts don't always fit into neat, 3-times-per-week format. Sometimes - like with the series on my mom -  it takes 5 posts to do it right, which leaves me with a Friday post to fill. So you wind up with a non sequitur like this post. On Monday, we get back to NEW ART! Yes, the tablets have progressed and more are ready to be seen!  

Escaping the Grid   64"h x 58"w  My textile art doesn't fit neatly into any category. Some can be classified as art quilts, but my tiles and tablets - sewn on industrial felt or ceiling tiles - aren't quilts at all. At one point, I decided that I was going to create a truly amazing QUILT, one that would be accepted into Quilt National. A quilt that would have my signature embedded objects, but also have at least some relation to traditional quilts. 

Visually borrowing  the color/patterns from previous creations, I photoshopped a loose interpretation of a Log Cabin square. The plan was to have some of the strips with embedded objects, some rusted, some discharged with ghost images. That gave me a plan to start making strips, and tacking them to my work wall:

An early arrangement. The names of different quilts were thermofax printed with discharge paste onto a beautiful piece of black linen (center). I emptied pin cushions, stuffed them with felt, and sewed them to red strips. On the table next to the wall, you can see stacks of tiles from this too shall pass series (before I realized that they would look better with covered sides). My critique group pointed out that the distinct separate 'pages' of printing on the black linen was distracting, so I cut them apart and sewed them together without the spaces (which you'll see in a minute). 

If you look back at the first image in this post, you can see that the final version has elements from a Double Wedding Ring pattern. The first versions looked like this: 

These are just paper cutouts pinned on the reconfigured black background (the one I talked about earlier, here with no spaces between 'pages'). I played with those Double Wedding Rings so many different ways....

Originally planning to decorate them with snaps and bobbins (truly, horror vacui) but then I thought of sewing machine feet, so I gathered up those images:

and  had them running around the rings:

But... if you look at the actual Double Wedding Ring pattern, you see that there are little squares where the rings connect. So, I figured that I would print this configuration on cloth:  

Then I could cut out the rings and squares. By printing the black discharged wording in the background, I would have smidgens of  black print on the edges.  I could sew them together on the actual black linen background. 

But before I actually did that, I figured out another way:

I cheated.   Instead of all that cutting and sewing, I printed it all together: the rings, the background, the squares.

I could even photograph the finished strips, and have those show up in the rings that were floating away:

Now, each strip (whether it was rusted or embedded) had to be sewn separately: each strip was constructed with it's own woolen backing. So putting them together was not a case of quickly machine stitching quilt strips. Here's the back:

Finally, all the sections were put together. Strips of discharged sewing machine images and iron prints were added. The last ring, a red one, had images of human feet, not machine feet:

I had embedded pins, and the ends of spools of thread, and tools, and sewn around each object:

Escaping the Grid was submitted to Dairy Barn Arts Center on September 3, 2014. 

Size: 64"h x 58"w  Date completed: 8/2013

Statement: This framework (loosely based on a log cabin quilt pattern) imprisons pins, spools of thread, and scissors, all tightly captured under cloth. Sewing machines and irons are branded into the border. The lattice of a double wedding ring is built over a field of quilt names. But the web is coming undone, the rings are breaking free, and the tiny sewing machine feet printed on the edge of each ring finally gives way to bare feet, human feet, on the last red ring.

Escaping the Grid was rejected by Quilt National, and has never been shown.