This was a challenge for me and definitely took me outside my comfort zone. I am involved, peripherally, with a local Art Group which produces an exhibition every year in November. Most of the exhibits are paintings and drawings in different media although there are always a few sculptures and ceramics as well. I was asked if I would put some textile art in so I had a think and decided I would have a go at some mini-quilts based on famous artworks. Here is the result,

Clockwise, after Monet, after Mondrian, after Klee and after Rothko

I decided it would be fun to use different techniques in each of them. In trying to evoke the spirit of the Monet’s water lilies, I layered many different fabrics, attached them using machine appliqué and then free motion quilted over a layer of fine chiffon. Finally, I machine couched some variegated green embroidery floss to imitate the hanging tendrils of weeping willow.

I chose to base my second mini quilt on Mondrian’s “Composition in red, yellow, blue and black”. This was the simplest to do but it did involve precise piecing and some choices about how much straight line quilting to do. I decided that less was probably more in this case.

My choice for the third piece was Paul Klee’s “Senecio”. The was probably the most challenging of the four to interpret. I searched through all my scraps to find the right ones and used Bondaweb to secure the shapes to the background. I then used a mixture of raw edge appliqué and free motion quilting (FMQ) to secure everything, followed by concentric quilted circles in variegated thread to give some texture to the background.

The final mini was inspired by Rothko’s “Violet, black, orange, yellow on white and red”. this allowed me to use some of my precious scraps of Oakshott fabrics. Leaving the raw edges showing demonstrates how the shimmering effect is achieved by weaving two different colours to produce the fabric. The straight line FMQ was great fun to do, using a variety of threads.