Reflection

It's great to have a deadline.  Participating in the Fast Friday Fabric Challenge has pushed me to work quickly and to work smaller so that it doesn't take a year to finish a piece as it has on three of the other projects I am working on.  One of the latest challenges involved a style of abstract painting known as the color field movement.  Mark Rothko with his large swathes of color is perhaps one of the best known examples, but others included a natural element with the hint of a horizon line and other line gestures drawn from nature.   This challenge came out right before Christmas, and I was going to ignore it but was intrigued by the focus on color and letting color make the impression and tell the story.

So I thought as I wrapped presents and then packed for a trip to celebrate with the children and grandchildren.  I began to focus on a beautiful piece of green fabric that I had dyed last fall and thought it could be the major element for the piece.  But water is never far from our thoughts here in Pennsylvania as the gas drillers pump rivers of water tainted with all sorts of nasty chemicals past our water supplies, and the same chemicals seem to be evaporating into the atmosphere from the holding ponds.   As I thought about that horizon line I realized I could connect, with color, the sky and a river just as they are connected with the natural water cycles.

So this is the outcome of all my ruminations:

Piecing the river and sky took the most time, and then I did a lot of close quilting on the green fabric, which you can see better if you enlarge the photo.

I named it Reflection and just finished sewing down the facing so decided to share it with you.  It's about 20 x 28 1/2 inches. 

And if you're still reading, thanks for the company.