Art Quilt: Kelp Kelp Otter

With words, there are studies that show that w cn rd wrds vn f thr r n vwls (we can read words even if there are no vowels) or with a minimum of letters, or just the top half of the letters in a sentence. Is that Minimalism? Our brains can fill in certain things, make inferences in the gaps. 

With this quilt, I arranged the letterpress green-printed wood type letters (letters chosen for their shapes rather than any deeper meaning)  into strips to suggest seaweed or kelp growing up from the bottom of the ocean, and added in their protectors, four otters, made of rectangular hand-dyed brown cotton velvet. The velvet is nice to pet. Imagining the rectangles as otters admittedly made me laugh, but it avoided the cutesy factor overall if I had tried to create a realistic one otter or four. Mini-animal-ist, anyone?

Kelp Kelp Otter
33.5"w x 46.5"h (85 cm x 118 cm)
Hand-dyed velvet; letterpress printed cotton from wood type; Japanese yarn-dyed cotton; perle cotton thread; metallic thread; variegated cotton thread; machine pieced; hand quilted with sashiko-style wave pattern

I hand quilted the entire piece with a sashiko-style wave pattern, changing threads from a thin sewing thread to a thicker perle cotton to a silver metallic embroidery thread to variegated sashiko cotton thread.

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This is a continued exploration into my interest in kelp and otters and the impact of the environment on them and them on the health of the environment.