I don’t say this often, but this art quilt was all hand stitched. I almost always attach something by machine, or get a trapunto effect by using dense machine stitching to add dimension.
In this case, the underlying quilt itself was all hand stitched. But it is not all my hand stitching – some unknown woman made the quilt remnant which is the base of this piece. She pieced baskets from a rather unattractive orange fabric with a white background. As I stitch things onto it, I know at least part of it was made from sheets – the thread count is high, making my stitches less than pleasurable.
I overdyed the remnants of this antique store find in the indigo dye pot and now I have green baskets on blue. Much better color.
This piece got its start when I found escutcheons at Seventh Street Salvage and brought some home. The composition was started with a thrill, but stalled when I struggled to find a way to attach the heavy piece to the cloth. After months of staring at it and rejecting first this potential solution, then the next, I just sewed it on. Who knew it could be so obvious? Or so simple.
The weight did dictate that some support was needed, so I mounted the piece onto a canvas mat – that involved hand stitching too. You can examine this photo taken from the back and see that stitching.
The machine was needed to attach the label to the canvas. That could have been done by hand, but it’s faster and easier by machine – gives my hands a break. I first remove the needle and presser foot, put the canvas under the needle bar, reattach the needle and presser foot, then stitch free motion to attach the label.
I combined elements I liked because of the color or the mood they conveyed. The title is obviously linked to the key and the escutcheon, but I like to think of our home as a safe place for the birds and the bees and the flowers, as well as for the humans here.
Watching some YouTube videos on the art of photography led me down a rabbit hole. I’ve fallen into the world of street photography, past and present.
In the 1930’s, ‘40’s and maybe into the ’50’s, studio photographers could be found snapping photos of people on city streets. I wondered if there was some forerunner of Polaroids that allowed instant printing of the image, but a bit of research said that was not the case. These photographers were sometimes hired by big department stores, but more often were from local portrait studios. The candids were taken and a business card was given to the subject. The hope was that a visit to the studio to collect the photo would result in more portrait appointments.
I am thoroughly intrigued by the notion of both kinds of street photography. Just what I need; another hobby. But, the memories of the old images we have led to the discovery of some newer ones we have made already and I’m already incorporating one into an art quilt. Oh, my, what have I started?