Collaboration...Party of One

The second project I got involved with when I first joined the Art Quilt Group a couple years ago was a collaborative piece with four other members.  We started with an image of a seated woman by a painter whose name I wish I could recall. There were other small groups doing collaborations, but they chose to each make one piece of a larger image.  Our group of five decided to divide the image into five sections, and all five members would make all five sections.  That way we would each end up with a complete image after we exchanged sections.

We got off to a good start and made progress over a couple months…but then things seemed to fizzle.  I had all my sections done, but others lagged behind.  And so, my five sections have been hanging around for a couple years, another UFO!

With the sad news of my home quilt shop (where the Art Quilt Group meets) either closing or being sold at the end of this month, I wanted to create something meaningful for one of the shop owners, Darlene, who has been so instrumental in keeping the Art Quilt Group going and has allowed us to meet in the shop.  Plus, she was one of the original five in my collaboration group.  After a bit of a search (that’s a long story in itself), I found my five sections of the seated woman and decided to sew them together and finish it off.  Here’s the result.

Here’s the original image.

I’m happy with how it came together.

The final product, because it started a couple years ago and has taken this long to complete, reflects an evolution in my outlook and development as a quilt artist.  When I first started, I wanted to create the image as closely as possible with just fabrics and fiber; I wanted to keep my painting and quilting separate.  Instead of paint, I felted fiber rovings for highlights and tried a bit of thread painting in other areas.  I also used tulle for shading.  Then, somewhere along my journey, came subsequent challenges – colored pencils, oil pastels, water-soluble crayons, watercolor pencils, all on fabric.

As careful as I had been to assure accuracy in making the sections, they didn’t completely match up when fully assembled.  Really, that would have been fine if each section was by a different artist – it would have been part of the charm – but it didn’t work when all the sections were so similar, so I brought out the colored pencils, oil pastels, etc., to smooth out the transitions.  Also, using these materials and referring back to the original image allowed more subtle details the painter had included.

At group this past Monday, we all decided to carry on, regardless of whether or not we have the shop as the meeting place; there are other options.  I’m happy about that and look forward to the evolution of the group.  With change comes opportunity.

These past couple years have been a positive journey for me personally with good challenges and opportunities for creative growth.  I look forward to carrying on.  I’m so grateful that Darlene invited me to join in the first place and that she and the others in the shop have been so supportive and encouraging.  I hope she likes the piece.  She was the one who submitted the image of the painting for consideration in the first place, so I know she has a fondness for it.