Art Quilt: Wave

After a trip to Cambria in September I dyed some large pieces of cotton the color of the foggy ocean there (or so I felt), including some crumpled strips to resemble foam, But I couldn’t bear to cut them up, partly because I didn’t have a clear plan. I tentatively trimmed off some for the quilt, “Breaking News from the Sea,” and the rest moved around the studio as I worked on other projects.

Exploring the joining technique put forth in Paula Kovarik’s book, [Amazon Affiliate link] At Play in the Garden of Stitch, opened more possibilities. In my bookmaking days I would paint paper and cut it up (techniques in my book, [Amazon Affiliate link] Painted Paper), finding at times that the smaller pieces were more interesting than the whole, so the basic process was familiar. With deColourant I added waves and more texture before cutting and piecing the pieces to begin this quilt.

Wave

35”w x 20.5”h (89 cm x 52 cm)
Hand-dyed cotton, linen; deColourant; newspaper and gel medium; linocut; machine pieced; machine and free-motion quilted; machine joined

Details:

Here is Our Lady of the Waves, again.

and the back:

Kind of looks like a map from the back.

This is a quilt that does have a poem, but the poem didn't make it onto the quilt.

wave: 

a drawing in, a letting go / a riding, a tumbling, a receding / a dive through dark, a welcoming light / 

a crash, a gentle lap

 *

A peek behind the scenes. The project went from this:

to this:

So many waves. Waves of grief, waves of relief, waves of anguish, waves of happiness, waves of heat, waves of ambivalence, waves of guilt, waves of panic, waves of nostalgia, waves of sound, waves of nausea, waves of sadness, waves of grain, waves of exhaustion, waves of excitement, waves of fear, waves of laughter, waves of change.