For those of you who have purchased my new book “photo-inspired art quilts” (thank you) you know there is a section called “artists shorthand” in which I give you some simple techniques for creating elements often used in art quilts. In today’s blog entry, I will discuss the artists shorthand for water.
Water is often depicted in art quilts, and can be confusing. As tempting as it is to use a single fabric (as so many of them are water-appropriate) I think that isn’t as interesting as combining fabrics to make the intrepretation truely your own.
Here you can see three fabrics that look tempting to use alone as water, all soothing blues with swirling pattrens that resemble water.
When I depict water, I choose three fabrics; one that serves as the “base” and two accents–usually darker than the base. In the next two photos you will see two quilts currently on my design wall, and for both of them I used the three fabrics for the water that are pictured above:
In each of these I chose a base fabric (in this case, the BACK of the striated blue fabric at the bottom of the fabric photo–although I know that water is blue, it is not the strong dark blue of the fabric I initially chose, so using the back looked more appropriate. The farther something in your quilt is away from the eye, the lighter and grayer the color should look, and because this water is in the background, it should be lighter rather than dark blue.) I cut very thin (and not so straight and even) strips of the other two. I also used a few strips of the front of the striated blue–darker than the back and in tune with the other fabrics I had chosen. These were placed onto the base fabric in a manner I like to call “controlled random” which means I distribute each of the fabrics around the composition, trying not to line things up, but keeping the eye moving around.
In this detail of the seascape quilt from the book you can see how the darker pieces of fabric form the shadow area around the base of the rocks (I looked at the original photo to know where this would be):
This is the same shortcut–one base fabric and randomly cut little pieces of two others, placed in a manner that looks like the shadow–darker at the base of the rocks and getting lighter (although still darker than the base fabric) as the water moves away from the rock. The choice of fabrics are all unexpected–they have movement and interest without having started with a water “agenda”.
In this close-up from the Flamingo quilt (also in the book–see why you NEED to buy this book!?!?) shows clearly how the four fabrics are combined and the stitching that holds it all together:
The stitching is very stream of consciousness, moving back and forth in the direction that water appears to move when viewed from a distance.
Again, in another quilt in the book, on the rocks, the water has a base color and many other fabrics–none of which are water looking–there is an Asian geometric, a check–some lighter and some darker than the base color.
So the next time you want to depict water in your quilt, think about expanding from a single fabric to use three (or more), and using the back of a fabric if the front is too strong (remember to trust your eye and not your brain).
