Joining pieces, joining people

collaborations, improv process

Last Autumn I discovered the extraordinary work of Leslie J. Riley. Her quilts, full of textures, secondary motifs, and swinging colours, suggested me the idea to make systematic exercises in textured piecing. I started preparing blocks with different texture types, such as: striped columns and rows, log cabins, high contrast colours, low contrast colours, and so on.

Last Winter I joined the local quilt guild “Biechi Mati”, mainly focused on traditional patchwork, but open to trying any type of technique. According to their request, I carried my sample texture blocks, they put on the desk all their sewing machines, and we spent one afternoon playing with improv piecing together.

Last Spring it was planned to repeat the textured improv exercise at local quilt shop Patchworkvictim. Francesca made the Zoom platform available in order to keep the discussions on improv virtual and interactive. During the first session I have been sewing some pieces of the column and rows texture, and this sample is shown in the first video resumed at this page (visible also on Patchworkvictim you tube channel).

This Summer I took my textured samples out from the demo bag, and I decided to grow one of them wider. Now that I’ve finished the columns and rows quilt, I’m aware of how many people has influenced this year long work!

Let the shapes talk

improv process

I started this quilt while attending a modern patchwork course by Daria Blandina and Roberta Sperandio, whose activities can be followed at the page D+R Patch Fun.

Even if its look is mainly modern, I didn’t plan any pattern: the position of each piece was improvised, one after the other, line after line, and some scrappy stripes found their way within a few smaller shapes.

The combinations offered by equilateral triangles surprised me: unexpected hexagons and bigger, nested triangles appeared during the work in progress. When looking at the top, I started playing with myself a mathematical search of how many triangles I could see in the overall picture, being them complete or incomplete… A good excuse to look again and again to my color map, as if it were a treasure hunt!

The initial idea in my mind was a mountain landscape full of trees. When a friend of mine, visiting our home, proposed the image of a lake and its reflections as appearing from the quilt, I was proud of feeling a connection with my early intent. Later, a quilting mate commented that such colors reminded her of crystalline waters… Yes, I like this: multiple interpretations are welcome.

Finally, when my husband said that he saw the view of a regatta, as the one populated by thousand sails which we admire every year in our gulf, I could not stop seeing it myself too!
The most important annual event in my hometown is a sailing race. Its images are impressed in the minds of all the locals, thanks to decades of celebratory photo galleries, posters and graphics attached on all the street lamps, triangle-based logos printed on the gadgets, and stunning aerial views offered by media coverage, usually depicting the winning sail running distant from the competitors, inside a blue sea full of boats surrounding our lighthouse…
Each place has some symbolic images of their own, embedded in its local culture. So, if I title my work “Barcolana”, in Trieste this will be well understood.

Before this quilt, I didn’t feel oriented to piecing triangles, maybe because I didn’t know well how to use them.
In this occasion, I heard triangles speaking in both languages: the one of abstraction, the other of figurative subjects, overlapping within the layers of fabric.
Next time I will feel more easy in letting any shape to propose an expression for itself!

Composing with figures or abstract shapes

collaborations, improv process

I’ve just finished the top started during the on-line workshop by Sherri Lynn Wood on improv wedge curves. This has all been improvisationally made: no drawing prepared, no measures taken.

It’s been a great exercise on the distinction between graphic line (followed by the eye) and sewn line (may be the same or a different one).

Tomorrow I will talk about graphic compositions, small and large, in a zoom live session hosted by local quilt shop. Italian language. For link to join, please contact Patchworkvictim.

To cut is to draw

collaborations, improv process

I’m reading an essay from influential Italian designer Riccardo Falcinelli, Critica portatile al visual design. I love all his books.
In the chapter about “screens”, he talks about the use of the body during design making: “to sketch, to paint, to attach, to photograph, all of those are actions that should be kept alive, in order not to limit ourselves to few repeated moves done in front of a screen, to shift pixels, otherwise we risk to repeat a type of graphic design that looks all the same”.

I have to say that, when I sew, it’s a pleasure to stand up from the sewing table, to go to ironing board, and then check the result at the design wall, in order to return to the cutting mat with a decision in mind about how to go on.
It’s true: the physical gestures required by patchwork have a great influence on the result.

How to cut fabric?
When do I piece fabric?
Before or after having sewn them?
(After? Really? Well… what’s wrong with sewing first, and reduce pieces by cutting them, only later?).

Tomorrow I will talk about this: in a zoom livestream session.
The good part of this platform is interaction. How and when do you cut your fabric pieces?
I wish to see you then, and to talk about that!

If you want to join, you can ask for Patchworkvictim newsletter (italian language), and you will receive the meeting link.

Un frammento, un nuovo inizio

improv process

In questo periodo sto raccogliendo i frammenti di stoffa più piccoli, fino a quelli da solo un centimetro, per usarli come punto di partenza delle creazioni di pannelli patchwork improvvisati.

La forma stessa dei frammenti e dei ritagli riesce ad animarsi, e a guidare le scelte, suggerendo l’inizio del mosaico che emergerà.