Wrong-doings turned RIGHT!

...not really wrong-doings, more like should have been doing something else.

I am behind on customer quilts -- what else is new.  But, the weekends are mine, or at least they should be!  Most of the time I only take one day for myself, but this weekend I took both days - can you believe it!

You've all heard about my latest deadlines... quilt shows, guild challenges, etc.  Well, this weekend I should have been working on True Colors.  Not, nope, didn't happen... I know, I know!  True Colors has two deadlines - I know, something can't have two deadlines... the first one would be THE deadline.  BUT, in this case it really does have two.  The first one being the World Quilt Show Southern States Competition in West Palm Beach.  The entry deadline for that show is 9/24/2012.  Possible... if I quilt like a mad woman, do nothing else, and fall yet further behind on customer work.  The second one being the PSL Crazy Quilters UFO Challenge (read a bit about it here).  That is not due until 10/3/2012.  See - the same quilt can have two deadlines... if I miss the first one it will be bad, but still okay.  I'm babbling...  back to the topic of this post!

Saturday morning I woke up super early, after less than 4 hours sleep (that is my norm lately).  It was a dreary miserable rainy morning so I decided to piece the background of my MCQG challenge.  That would be good and would solve the boring rainy morning.  Well, that is how it started!


[NOTE:  IF YOU DON'T WANT TO SEE MY MCQG CHALLENGE STOP READING NOW]
and... that was your warning!  

And, if you missed the first post, click here!


To catch you all up on my weekend, here's some show and tell -- and being that I'm babbling it'll probably be lots of tell:

Let me say again, I am not a very scrappy person.  I love big blank fabrics so that my quilting pops.  So, this will be a very good attempt at controlled scrappiness!

And there's the fabrics!  Well, some of the fabrics.  Notice, not very many prints.  I am becoming a "fabric snob"  -- no, its not a bad thing, it's just my thing.

And, messiness is starting.. maybe this is why I haven't been piecing that much lately?

Almost done with the darks, dirt, ground, bottom, whatever you want to call it.  Let me share one of my biggest peeves... pressing.  I press seams OPEN.  ALL of them, OPEN!  You don't have to, it's just something I do, I prefer it, but I won't force it on you... well, unless I'm quilting for you, then I'll fill your ear with it.  Oh, and you see that one strange fabric that is so much different than the rest?  Hint:  it's a kinda' calico-ish brown -- that's not mine, that was the swap fabric.

And the lights -- notice the difference in row sizes... trying to keep it interesting -- it's scraps you know?  And look at the darks, see that tiny little braided strip?  Cool huh?  it is from the same fabric as the very far left side (a basket weave), just cut differently.  So far that's my favorite one!

And now, to sew the darks to the lights.  Looking pretty good.  That's pretty much how I saw it in my head.

Now, some of you know how much I love brown.  It is one of my very favorite colors.  Well, I also have a favorite fabric line -- RJR Handsprays.  Eons ago, while still working at the quilt shop, I bought 5 yards of the brown Handspray -- I think it was called chocolate.  Anyway... this is the very last piece of that five yards.  WHAT you say... no worries, after I bought that 5 yards, I bought another 3 yards!  I'm good with the brown!

BUT, since it was the very last piece (hence the word SCRAP), I had to piece two little sections for my tree applique.  Pretty cool huh!

And here's the tree all cut out ready for edge turning:

And here is the tree on the background fabrics.  Looking just like my doodle!  LOVE when things work out the way you planned!  So here is the first peek at Bend

So, now all that's left are the leaves that need to be made and attached to the tree.  There are 33 in the doodle -- not sure how many will actually make it to the quilt.  And to add the text of the quote.  Then all of the applique will need to be stitched down and then quilted.  But I'm thinking I made some great progress this weekend!  Oh, and this will finished to about 40" wide, right now it's about 46".

JTA 2012 Challenge - Cubism

Well, when you leave something until the last minute it usually bites you in the ass.  And, it did!  I did not start working on my cubism block until a few days before it was due.  Not smart, not smart at all!  I rushed it, skipped some things that I probably shouldn't have, but in the end I think it turned out okay.


Let's start with some research of CUBISM...


According to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Cubism was on the the most influential visual art styles of the early twentieth century.  It was creative by Pable Picasso (Spanish, 1881-1973) and Georges Braque (French, 1882-1963) in Patris between 1907 and 1914.  The French art critic Lous Vauxcelles coined the term Cusbism after seeing the landscapes Braque had painted in 1908 at L'Estaque in emulation of Cezanne.  Vauxcelles called the geometric forms in the highly abstracted works "cubes".  Other influcense on early Cubism have been linked to Primitivism and non-Western sources.  The stylications and distortion of Picasso's ground-breaking Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (Museum of Modern Art, New York), painted in 1907, came from African art.  Picasso had first seen African art when, in May or June 1907, he visited the ethnographic museum in the Palais du Trocadero in Paris.  The Cubist painters rejected the inherited concept that art should copy nature, or that they should adopt the traditional techniques of perspective, modeling, and foreshortening.  They wanted instead to emphasize the two-dimensionality of the canvas.  So they reduced and fractured objects into geomtric forms, and then realigned these within a shallow, relief-like space.  They also used multiple or contrasting vantage points.


And the official definition from Dictionary.com

cub·ism

 

[kyoo-biz-uhm]
noun ( sometimes initial capital letter ) Fine Arts .

a style of painting and sculpture developed in the early 20thcentury, characterized chiefly by an emphasis on formal structure,the reduction of natural forms to their geometrical equivalents,and the organization of the planes of a represented object  independently of representational requirements.

And then, my favorite, artyfactory.com, which explains the two different styles of cubism, Analytical and Synthetic.

Cubism had two distinct phases.  The early phase which lasted until about 1912 was called Analytical Cubism.  Here the artist analysed the subject from many different viewpoints and reconstructed it within a geometric framework, the overall effect of which was to create an image that evoked a sense of the subject.  These fragmented images were unified by the use of a subdued and limited palette of colours.  

Influences by the introduction of bold and simple collage shapes, Synthetic Cubism moved away from the unified monochrome surfaces of Analytic Cubism to a more direct, colourful and decorative style.  Although synthetic cubist images appear more abstract in their use of simplified forms, the other elements of their composition are applied quiet traditionally.  Interchanging lines, colours, patterns and textures, that switch from geometric to freehand, dark to light, positive to negative and plain to patterned, advance and recede in rhythms across the picture plain.

Needless to say, I marched to the beat of my own drummer and did my own thing.  I probably came close to the synthetic cubism style, but I don't think I nailed cubism quite as closely as I wanted to.  Although, I came pretty close in my rushed time... at least I think so!

Here is my mini-quilt for cubism, it still needs to be tweaked and quilted, which will definitely add more interest:

And here are the others in the group, well except for Pam's as she was away on reveal day.

Kathy's

Pat's

Natalie's

Judie's

Eyvonne's

I can't wait to see what Pam created.  I think they all turned out fabulous!  Our next block/mini-quilt is "Expressionism" -- can't wait for that one either.  It's not due until July but hopefully we'll all get ahead of schedule with the challenges and possibly have them done for the Mancuso Show in West Palm in November... hopefully!

Check out the previous JTA challenge block "Fauvism".