“Big Bang” Art Quilt

Fabrics are my color palette. I use pieces of fabric the way a painter uses paint. Cloth, however, is so much more than pigment. It is also a material, with a body and texture of its own. The tactility of cloth, in fact, was what drew me to textiles to begin with. A piece of textile art is not only a painting. It is also a sculptural relief of sorts, albeit flatter. Layering fabrics, thus creating a three-dimensional effect, however miniscule, has been a continuous interest of mine all along. See my Tree Bark series for an example.

Lately I felt an urge to further play with the materiality of fabric. I wanted to see how I could take advantage of the sculptural potential of cloth. I wasn’t interested in building vassals, making baskets or sewing textile sculptures. I’ve already spent several years creating three-dimensional objects out of fabric, after all, when I created an endless assortment of functional pieces. No, this time I wanted to try fabric manipulation, to incorporate folds and twists as part of a design. In other words, I wanted to create a more pronounced textile relief.

I had a vague idea, which required a large, flexible and somewhat soft piece of cloth. I didn’t have suitable fabric in my stash, however, so I kept an eye out whenever I visited FabMo. One day I got lucky. I returned home with a piece of blue fabric that looked a bit like suede, but was soft and pliable.

Venturing into Unfamiliar Territories

I cut a few pointed ovals of the kind I used in Dioxazine Flow, and started pulling the fabric between them, like water flowing between rocks. 

I didn’t quite like the mustard ovals, so I replaced them with pointed ovals in different shades of blue. Then I pinned down both the ovals and the folds.

I found the muted color palette pleasing, but wanted a bit of spark. To achieve that, I hand stitched around the outline of the ovals with embroidery floss in different shades of red. I had to be really careful, because all those pins made stitching a rather risky endeavor!

When I was done stitching the ovals down, I went on to stitch along the folds, to keep them in place.

I made sure to stitch on both sides of each fold, in a way that secured the background fabric into place, and preserved the structure of the folds.

After I finished stitching, I looked at the result and felt that the red contrasting stitches weren’t as contrasting as I wished them to be. I took the piece over to my sewing machine, and added another line of red, on the outer edge of each oval. I used very thick, spongy batting for this piece, and the tight machine stitching made the stitched-down ovals pop out. The red was more noticeable now, but it still felt like something was missing. 

Once again I dug into my thread box, and pulled out more red floss. I wove it into the running stitch. The result looked like chain stitches, and made the outline more pronounced. Something was still missing, though.

I put the piece aside, as I often do when I get stuck. Eventually, I had an idea: why not try big, shiny red beads? I didn’t have anything suitable at home, unfortunately. The local stores I visited didn’t carry what I had in mind, wither. So I took a risk and ordered beads online. I don’t usually like doing that, as it is very hard to know from a few photos and a description what beads would actually look and feel like in real life. There was little choice, however, so I pushed the “buy” button and held my breath.

When the beads arrived, I was happily surprised. I ordered glass beads, which had a nice feel to them, and a great spark.

I spread the beads between the folds. Over the span of several days, I kept moving them around until they felt just right.

Then, I stitched them down, which took quite a while. 

Big Bang

The finished piece is 23″ x 31.5.” It made me think of the birth of the universe, so I decided to call it Big Bang. The glass beads make it rather heavy, despite its not-so-large size.

I enjoyed experimenting, and learned a lot in the process. I’m still not sure, however, how I feel about the final result…