I’ve been working busily on my hollyhock quilt and now it’s finished. I’m a bit disappointed that it’s over, it was a really enjoyable project. I need to catch up on a few things and then officially start on my next commissioned quilt. I say “officially”, when in reality, I’ve been bouncing ideas around in my mind , long before today. I’ve done a few preliminary sketches, playing around with possibilities. I can already tell that I am going to find this an interesting project.
This red hollyhock art quilt was a commission. Commissions present an interesting challenge, I think it’s a beneficial to take a step back, and work on a theme that may not be your usual approach or subject matter. It might be stepping out of what has become your comfort zone. For a commission to work, you need to translate it into your own interpretation of the subject. This was an easy quilt to capture my interest and spark my own enthusiasm. It is a theme I enjoy working with. I love doing stylized flowers, and hollyhocks? Well goodness yes! That was a bit of a coincidence. My client loves hollyhocks, she even has their images on her business cards. When she received her quilt, I enclosed in the paperwork one of my older business cards, it also contained a wonderful image of hollyhocks . When this fact had first occurred to me, I had to laugh, we were a good fit, my client and her artist.
I’ve posted some pictures of the progress along the way. Now it’s finished, here’s the finished red hollyhock quilt. It has it’s title now, “A Bug’s Eye View”. As I worked on the finishing touches, my husband stood there looking at the nearly finished quilt. He decided it needed a little bug in it. Humm…
It is a floral art quilt, I added a slightly contemporary spin, a little non traditional approach to a floral theme. I chose to give the flowers and stalks a disproportional profile. As my husband observed, this is how the large would appear, seen through the eyes of a tiny bug, dwarfed by it’s hugeness. I thought it might work, a cute little ladybug, that you would barely notice. But first, I needed to run the idea by Karen, the lovely lady who had commissioned the piece, how would she feel about this? She liked the idea and so my little ladybug became a part of this quilt. And that is how the red hollyhock art quilt came by it’s title “A Bug’s Eye View”.
You’ve seen the progression, here is the finished version. You may notice that the ladybug is missing, she truly was a last minute addition. I had already taken the final photos.
But after she was added into the picture, as I stared at the quilt, evaluating it, I realized that she was indispensable. She needed to be right where she is, looking up at the great big world from the ground, viewing a group of red hollyhocks.
I added texture to the leaves, they are not just visually dimensional, but have actual texture and dimension.
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Barbara Harms Fiber Art & More 