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Wednesday 15 February 2012

Silk Challenge




At the Waverley Art Quilters end of year dinner late last year, we were all given a 7½" square of silk. Every piece of silk was in a different colour and they were hidden in a brown paper bag so we couldn’t see what we were getting.

This is my piece of silk!

I would never have chosen these colours; in fact it would never occur to me to put bright burgundy pink, bright yellow and orange together. Everyone else got these lovely greens, blues and mauves. I asked if anyone wanted to swap with me but nobody did!

I looked at this piece of silk all December and January, trying to find some inspiration until I finally came across a greeting card that had a bird with a curly tail on it.



I photocopied the silk and then traced the curling shapes and then simplified them to form a bird’s tail. Then I remembered that we had to include some of the challenge fabric in the design so I made up some 2" squares and made a post for the bird to stand on using some other colours in the fabric.



I used all silk fabrics that I happened to have at home. The yellow background and the orange fabric I had dyed myself. Most of the fabrics were the 50/50 silk/cotton blend that is so easy to work with compared to 100% silk. I quilted it with YLI 100% silk as well.



This week the Waverley Art Quilters group met for the first time this year and it was amazing to see everyone’s different interpretation of the silk. It was interesting to find that most of them had trouble with the colours of their silk samples.

We are going to study Van Gogh next.



Bye for now,

 Linda

2 comments:

Gina E. said...

OOooh, I LOVE that! You are so creative - I doubt if I would have been able to come up with something so unique.

Linda Steele said...

Thanks Gina,
Everyone elses was so different although someone else also did a bird. My first thought was a flower but I assumed that everyone would do a flower so I didn't. No one did a flower though!