Art Quilt: Midnight Zephyr: Small Craft Advisory

Working again with the theme of "wind," as I did for Wind Song, I wanted to incorporate movement into another piece. This time, not by sound, but by visual movement, like streamers in the wind, like walking in a twirly skirt, kites and sails, like flying birds. Coupled with imagination, problem-solving is part of an artist's job, and can be both frustrating when it doesn't work and a joy when it does. Either way, it is a learning experience.

This piece, like many others, took its own path and it taught me. From solar printing (and a color that originally looked too much like nylon stockings) to over-dyeing, crumple dyeing, silk dyeing, layering, working out a stitching pattern for quilting, and adding a slight silver spatter sparkle (say that three times, fast), this art quilt was born. The streamers hang down in a wing shape, a red-orange pennant at the lower left. An experiment, certainly. 

A search for a nautical flag for wind turned up the red pennant for "small craft advisory"  instead. The stitching pattern I created from a wind weather symbol. I had the name before the quilt, Zephyr, but the over-dyeing in raven black transformed the title to Midnight Zephyr, with the addition of Small Craft Advisory.

Midnight Zephyr: Small Craft Advisory

32.5"w x 36.5"h (82.5 cm x 93 cm)

Hand-dyed cotton, silk, silk organza; reverse appliqué; cotton thread; machine and hand quilting

Detail:

When one walks by it, it stirs to life. That was all I asked of it.

Addendum 11.17.22: This art quilt was accepted into SAQA exhibition, Primal Forces: Wind. See the list here. It will make its debut at the National Quilt Museum, Kentucky, in September/October, 2023.