CELESTIAL EYED GOLDFISH by Gladys Love

When this theme was announced, I immediately thought of moons, stars, planets, the milky way, and other galaxies.  I also thought of two people I know with kind of "celestial" personalities....lovely, gentle, sort of ethereal persons who constantly amaze me with their ability to see life as magical. 

However, since I don't have that kind of personality.....I had to really think to come up with something that would fit this theme.  I googled images for "celestial" and got many many that would fit in with what I had been thinking.  And then one popped up that made me laugh and I thought it was perfect. It made me happy! It was a "Celestial Eyed Goldfish".  Here is the photo that I worked from. 

I have had the great pleasure of taking a class from Carol Shinn (http://www.carolshinn.com/) who is well known for her thread painted works of art.  I decided that would be the perfect way to present this little fish.  It was printed onto canvas with an ink jet printer, and away I went, stitching in all the colors and trying to duplicate his comical expression.

 

I wasn't happy with the way his tail was not visible so I took artist's license and drew it in.  Here it is partially done. 

 

I was quite happy with the way this looked and continued filling in the tail.  I had a little helpful input from my son, who raises koi, as to the colors in the "fantasy" tail.  I learned from another project that it was important to do the eyes first or they look terrible after all the other work is done and then your project is wasted.  So the order of work was the eyes, the body, the background and then the tail. 

I was quite pleased with how the canvas flattened out behind the fish as I progressed with the colors.  A learning experience as I made some of the stitches go different directions and I think this helped.  When all done, I cut him out of the canvas so he was a free form "patch" that I could apply to a 12 x 12 background. 




The background is a technique learned from my friend Joan, who did one of our challenges with strips of old silk.  We had split two skeins of these strips between us so I decided to use all my "watery" colors for the background.  Here is what it looked like as I played with the
background.  I was dissatisfied with the white edges showing.  I had carefully trimmed the canvas away and then pulled out the warp threads to give it the thready edge, but the canvas color made too much contrast with the background for my liking.

So out came the fabric pens and I colored the front and back of each section to match the thread beside it.  This was better.  I was quite happy with the look of the silk so did some free motion quilting to fasten it down, added some embellishments and here is my "Celestial Eyed Goldfish".

 

And here is a close up of the threadwork, and a photo taken of it flat to show the three dimensional effect in the eyes and tail. 



I think my beading is not random enough so I may be adding more to make it look more natural.  I'm told random beading is the most difficult!  Apparently that's true!   Now, on to LOVE! 

INCANDESCENT MARILYN by Gladys

When this theme was announced, I had to go to the dictionary to look for meanings and interpretations.  What I found was:

Incandescence is the emission of light (visible electromagnetic radiation) from a hot body as a result of its temperature.^[1] The term derives from the Latin verb incandescere, to glow white.^[2] Incandescence is a special case of thermal radiation. Incandescence usually refers specifically to visible light, while thermal radiation refers also to infrared or any other electromagnetic radiation.

Having read this there were multiple ideas swirling in my head.  But that's normal.  I'm an idea person, and seldom a completion person!  How's that for True Confessions?  However, back to the theme.....almost immediately I came up with this idea and tried to think of reasons not to do it, but nothing else came out of my hands so here we are.  I started late in my attempts to do something to do with fire, which didn't work, and then finally got down to what I wanted to do in the first place.  They say listen to your heart and I should have because I'm happy with and had fun making this piece.   

I thought instead of light or the normal sources of heat, I thought of sex appeal, which is another elusive kind of heat.  There has been of late, a lot of resurgence of interest in Marilyn Monroe, the all time sex symbol for my generation.  Here is the picture I chose to use for a reference, found on Pinterest.  

Looking at this photo made me wonder what it was that radiated the sex appeal she was famous for.  Was it the looks?  There have been lots of women just as, or even more beautiful.  Was it the body language?  Or was it the diamonds?  I don't know and probably never will, but I truly enjoyed interpreting this photo to my 12" x 12" interpretation of Incandescence.

The project is worked on a black background which has a few sparkles on it.  The face and hair are layer upon layer of chiffons, both polyester and silk.  The face and shoulder are obviously carefully cut to indicate the appropriate shadows and shapes.  But the hair I truly enjoyed doing.  I just free hand cut teardrop shapes of all the colors of chiffon I had in yellow, pale yellow, glittery yellow and white and stitched down each piece as I went along, building up the shades and shapes and covering what didn't fit with a couple more layers.  A really free way to work and I enjoyed every minute of it and am happy with how it turned out.  The embellishments (did you know I love to embellish!!) are bits of treasures from my collection, a single earring, a strip off a dress from the thrift shop that I tore the diamonds off and kept, and a set of plastic eyelashes designed for Halloween but perfect for enhancing her sultry look.  The binding is metallic fabric and that was a trick!   

Thank you Barb, for coming up with such a great theme.   

Manhattan IS an Island!

The year 2009 was a very special one in my life.  The publishing of my first book, followed by a trip to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania for spring quilt market, and that followed up by meeting two very good friends in New York City for 5 days.  An absolutely fabulous time that left an indelible memory and set the bar very high for anything to match it! 

When the theme "Island" was chosen, and it wasn't my first choice....we can thank Joan for this one, I had so many ideas that I didn't know where to start. Joan knows.....she heard about all of my ideas....seagulls on logs, grandmas with babies in their lap, etc.  Procrastination being one of my stronger character faults.....I thought and thought, but there was no action.  It was an easy theme for someone who lives on an island (Vancouver Island), and especially when that someone knows people who live on even more remote islands which she gets to visit regularly!  There were also the predictable "No Man is an Island" phrase....and you should have seen the man I was going to create....but I digress! 

I was pondering between three of what I thought were really good ideas when one of the friends I met in Manhattan and I went for a long beach walk here at home.  She wiggled her eyebrows and said "Manhattan is an Island"......and smirked.  That was it.  I loved the idea.  So here it is. 

This is a collage/improvisationally pieced/bead embellished/thread painted and quilted representation of some of my favorite things in New York City.  There are so many more!  But I chose these from my photographs, printed them on fabric, pieced them into pieces of sari silk (yes I shopped where Joan did), clothing, hand dyed fabric, lame and best of all, some words (Manhattan, Times Square, Grand Central & Broadway) are from commercial fabrics purchased at City Quilter in NYC!  

I love to embellish my work, and in this project I worked with individual sequins and learned how to lay them out in a line.  Not my favorite enterprise, but they seemed just right to represent the marquee lights.   I used some square sequins that are meant to represent windows on the NASDAQ building, and trimmed them to varying sizes to fit with the shape of the building in my photo.  I have more embellishing to do, but this could go on forever so I thought I better just post it as it's close!  I want to add some thread painting and a few more beads.