Fractured Vases

See, I'm back. I think it is in my head that Monday
is now blog night, so this will be a regular. Any-
way, this is the quilt I wanted to talk about tonight. This is my newest quilt called "Fractured Vases." After seeing it when it was finally I done, I realized that this was a little throwback to my quilting roots, and it was really fun to do.
It came about when my friend Janet and I were looking at an issue of Quilting Arts Magazine (Oct/Nov 2009, issue 41). Janet is a traditional quilter, and is always fascinated by the art quilts she sees. We were looking at a quilt called "The Cubist's Edge" by Frances Holliday Alford, trying to figure out how she made it, when Janet said she might actually try to make a part of it to help her understand the construction. I looked at her and said, What a great idea, I'll make one, too, and we can see how they both turn out! Frances' quilt consisted of 12 vases of flowers, but we decided to go with 4, as it would be smaller and easier to finish, as this was just an exercise. So we went into the project with no expectation and had a ball with it! After making 4 cut and fused vases of flowers, all different, we cut them into quarters and put them back together again. Boy was that tough to do ! I liked my vases! Janet stopped there, but I wanted to take mine one step further. I cut a band off each edge, allowing the width of the band, because I shifted them all to one side. If you try to see the bands you'll know what I mean. I wish I had taken a picture of Janet's, as hers looked absolutely NOTHING like mine, and was absolutely beautiful! Our color tastes are completely different, shapes were completely different. We basically followed the same steps, and ended up with 2 TOTALLY different quilts. It was a great exercise! Once I cut the bands, though, the quilt started to take on a life of its own. I saw that when I made those cuts, it made squares inside squares, and I wanted to emphasize that. I did so with lots of fabric paint, oil pastels, and top stitching, to make a light square inside a dark square inside a light square. I don't know that I will make another one in this style, but this was a great learning experience. I learned a lot by working in a different manner, and also from studying Frances' quilt. Oh, and this quilt will be hanging in the Plymouth Guild Art show that opens this Friday!