New Men

I have finally found some time to make some progress with my Voyage Quilts.
Here is no 2 in the series

Skinny Man with hat.
Whilst in Orissa in February I photographed this man who was looking at his goats.
The backgroung in painted with added applique

Here is the third one in the series, again similar technique. I photographed this guy in the Flower Market in Kolkata

I have started on the 4th one, not finished yet but here are the 4 together. 

Gillian

Earth Quotes:If you think the ocean isn't important, imagine Earth without it...........

My third Earth piece is based on the quote:

"If you think the ocean is not important, imagine the earth without it. Mars comes to mind. No ocean, no life support system."

Sylvia Earle

I have used various shades of blue dye with three layers of discharge paste  which were sponged on the dyed background to create the various depths of the ocean around coral reefs. Jacquard discharge paste was used for the layer processes but to achieve a 'white' to show the coral near the surface I used a powder discharge paste  which was very effective.

Some colour was added to the reef with thickened dye and some highlighting with Inktense blocks. The piece was then machine quilted to add additional texture.

Jean

Earth Quotes: Trees are poems that the Earth writes upon the sky......

This quote:

 "Trees are poems that Earth writes upon the sky" by Kahlil Gibran 

was the starting point for this piece. The background was dyed and lightly discharged to give some soft images of tree shapes.

 It was then overdyed, discharged with some larger more definate, shapes.  I then appliqued with dyed fabric the three trees in the foreground before machine quilting the outlines of the trees.  Some Inktense pigment was used to create light falling on the trees

Jean

Indigo

For this month I have chosen Indigo as my subject.  Not a cloth coming from the African Earth - but a colour. I felt that Indigo is significant enough as a dye within Africa that it warranted attention. The plant is grown and used in many cultures across West Africa.  I've created a kind of sampler with many small pieces of different indigo cloths set on the background of a beautiful piece of strip woven Mossi cloth.  These Mossi cloths come with a fabulous hand twisted fringe that I just had to include.  (It is removable if it is deemed necessary for exhibition).  All the fabrics are from West Africa and include examples of weaving, tie-dye, starch resist, and stitch resist. Some are old and some are new. 

Magie

Earth - Quotes "The earth laughs in flowers....."

"The Earth laughs in flowers"    is a quote from Ralph Waldo Emerson, a nineteenth century American Philosopher - this was the starting point for this piece. 

It is a wholecloth piece dyed and discharged to achieve a textured natural background using Gocco screens I made to discharge the flower images before adding some Inktense pigment to some of the flowers in the foreground.

I machine embroidered flower outlines through the wadding but left some of discharged images  unstitched to give a softer distant effect. Whilst I initially used Jacquard discharge paste for the first discharging, I used Decollorant with pigment to remove and add colour at the same time for some of the flowers.

Jean