SPICES

 

I've had a deal of trouble with this post but, finally, here it is!

I was so much at a loss about what to do for this theme, in the end I decided to focus on the word "spices", rather than spices themselves.

I used the same fused silk technique as my circles and squares quilt but, this time, I embellished with embroidery, beads and sequins.

I'm really looking forward to seeing what everyone else came up with for this quarter so hopefully my internet will hold out and I will visit all the other reveals now :)

Spices - A Trio

This theme said circles to me, and I struggled with it.  I had an idea of the tops of spice bottles with gorgeous warm yellow and orange, and deep earthy, rich colours, but for some reason I couldn't get it to come together.  So I abandoned ship on the first big idea, and thought about a smaller lifeboat sized idea.

 

I have a tendency to go big on these challenges and then struggle with getting them finished so my lifeboat idea was going to be small, only 6 inches.  So, still playing with that spice bottle concept, I came up with this illustration of three bottles side by side.    I had a lot of fun playing with shadows and highlights and selecting colours from my scraps that I thought would work.

This came together very quickly, though the little highlights were a bit fiddly, and I used fabric glue in addition to bondaweb to keep them stuck.

 I had the idea of matchstick quilting but after completing the first pass of straight line quilting I added a line between the quilt lines and I didn't like it.  So I ripped that one line out and went across instead for a grid. I managed to catch each of the pieces quilting in both directions.

Single fold binding to finish which as this was small I thought would be a good piece to practice machine binding and I hated it (I always get a neater finish handsewing the binding down).

But you know when you have a challenge in mind it informs other things or other projects inform the challenge idea in your head?  I took a curves class with the Quilters Guild who had Carolina Oneto doing a workshop online and it was a lot of fun.  

 

So I went back to playing with circles and came up with this idea the other day.  I just had to have another go at it.  

A project for another day maybe.  In the end what exists in the world is my trio of spice bottles.  Looking forward to seeing everyone's interpretation of the theme!

Spice Market

 I have not traveled widely, but I hope to some day.  I keep a big binder of travel articles, and one thing that always draws me in is photos of markets and their displays of spices.

This year, I bought a huge collection of photos from the estate sale of a couple who had traveled the world in the 1990s and early 2000s.  Among their photos, I found these two that inspired me for this theme:

I decided to stick with those simple shapes of bowls and piles of spices, but I used more heavily patterned fabrics to portray the bowls, instead of the solid colors shown in the photo.  These are all scraps of my own handwoven fabrics, and to me they evoke the feeling of travel in exotic locales. I turned the selvedges up to be the top of the bowl, and then tucked in triangles of wool felt and vintage velveteen for the pyramids of spice powders.  I did some hand-stitching on the felt, and also did blanket stitch around the cut edges of the handwoven fabrics.

As always, there are things that could be improved in this piece -- it would be fun to embroider the names of the spices in the background.  But I do love the warm spicy colors, and the fact that my handwoven fabrics are now out on display instead of tucked away in a box.

To read a little more about this piece, you can also visit my home blog, Deep in the Heart of Textiles.