Evanescent (Art with Fabric Blog Hop, Fall 2016)

I want to cut a slice in a quilt!

This is how my creative journey started :)

Evanescent (18''x18'')

When I was thinking about an interesting different twist for my Art With Fabric Blog Hop (Fall 2016 Edition) I thought that adding inspiration from written art (book, novel, poem, music) would be quite interesting!

When I started thinking about music, I immediately thought about Evanescence! 

I have always loved Amy Lee!

I had very gothic inspired college years... if you told me then that I would wear or have in my house something in a color other than black I would have thought you are completely crazy... well... check out my blog now :).

Anyway...

This is how the creative process progressed:

1. I want to slice a hole in my quilted piece
2. the Evanescence main symbol looked like a perfect shape to slice, simple but intriguing
3. I had no idea if that process would work or it would end up in a disaster, so I obviously chose to use the fabric that I dislike to work with the most: white (because in this way if it was a disaster, I wouldn't feel guilty or sad for the "waste")
4. ok... white... since the piece can be a complete disaster, why not try few other things that I never tried before? so let's add an overall unusual shape and some writing with a fabric marker! The choice for the shape was pretty easy given Amy's love for the piano; and the sentence that I wrote is my favorite quote from all their songs, so that was an easy pick too
5. but now... what do I do with the rest of the piece??? I drew different sections like the strings inside a grand piano and in several sections I quilted some zentagle motives that I like. That's a good start... but there was something missing...
6. the more I read the quote, the more I had the feeling that the solution for the missing "piece" was there... darkness... darkness... of course! let's embroidery few more quotes with glow in the dark floss!! :) :)

Ok... now some pictures (even if it is impossible for me to show you the quotes in the dark... I promise, they are soooooo cool) :)

Overall design... and a corner of my Mondrian piece too :)

Close up of the hole cut out! :)

In this picture, I try to give you an idea of the texture the quilting creates. 

It is pretty nice in person, but hard to photograph.

The glow-in-the-dark quotes stitched in different sections are:

"Do you see me?"

"Perfect by nature"

"Fear is only in our mind"

"It's true, we're all a little insane"

Despite my complete dislike for white fabric (which is still intact), I learned so many lessons from this piece!

1. glow in the dark thread and floss are super cool! the floss is a little harder to use than regular embroidery floss, but not that much. The effect is great (but I don't know how well it holds up in the wash, as I am not planning to wash my wall hanging any time soon)
2. permanent fabric markers are not that great to work with. They are easy to use, but they are not very precise (at least the ones I had). If you look closely you will see a little color bleed around the letters... I think I still prefer the crispness of embroidery (even if it takes longer)
3. the frixon pen is not that great to trace embroidery designs. The issue is that the markings go away if you very strongly scratch the area with the provided eraser... the problem is that it pulls stitches too! The crayola washable markers are so much easier to use: you just soak the piece in cold water over night and that's it! I don't think I will use the frixon pen any more for this kind of tracing
4. slicing a hole in the finished quilt is easy but it creates quite an unstable region :) I zigzaged around the shape before cutting it, but I left the area around it unquilted. To have a more stable area, I should have added dense quilting instead. I like it as is, but this is a good lesson. Plus it's good to consider where you are planning to put the hanging sleeve too :) I had to use a mini sleeve to avoid covering the sliced area! :)
5. the curved binding was pretty easy, except that I think in one area I pulled the binding and that added some distortion. Just need to be careful next time

This is what I love about this hop: it encourages me to work outside all my comfort zone and experiment with things that I would have never tried otherwise.

Check out how these other amazing artists interpreted the challenge of this blog hop!

Terry @ terryaskeartquilts (http://www.terryaskeartquilts.com/)

Janeen @ quiltartdesigns (http://quiltartdesigns.blogspot.com/)