In Progress

Around Thanksgiving just as the holiday season was gearing up, the online challenge group I belong to issued a new challenge: create a quilt using one shape only and not in a traditional repeated block pattern, but in some abstract design.  As usual, this was supposed to done in one week.  With hundreds of things on my to-do list, many of which involved preparing for the VESTA exhibit or the holidays, I couldn't get the challenge out of my mind.  And during a few free minutes I cut out a shape in various sizes and colors and began to play with it.  And this is the result:

Now this is unfinished.  For one thing, it is cropped, not bound yet.  But I did try some new things with it--couching the blue lines of heavy thread and narrow ribbon and quilting the center swath heavily with a variegated thread that has some yellow in it.  Each shape also has a pattern of quilted pearl cotton on it, although none of the quilting shows up well in the photo.  Enlarging may help. Right now the piece is about 32" x 20".

I was trying to keep the piece abstract so that it didn't have one obvious meaning.  In other words, it could suggest several possible interpretations but was primarily a pattern that was hopefully pleasing.  The reactions from the critique group were interesting.  Several of the commenters tried to make something out of it--a particular animal, rocks--and were frustrated because it didn't look enough like what they thought it should be.  And perhaps the piece is flawed because I am playing with suggesting a meaning and undercutting it at the same time.  I named it "With the Flow," connecting with the liquid-y nature of the piece and implying the slippery nature of pinning it down with one interpretation, but that could be a problem as well, pointing too clearly toward one direction.  Naming a quilt, as I pointed out in an earlier post, can be a help or a hindrance.

Now that it is no longer part of a challenge that only allowed me to use one shape I am thinking about whether to add another shape and perhaps whether it is worth spending more time on it, but decided to share it with you before I changed it.   

So I welcome your thoughts and, if you are still reading, thanks for the company.