Second in a series?

A few weeks ago, I produced a 24" x 24" work in cloth that was based on a 10" x 10" painted collage. I posted about it, showing how it came together, step by step. Now I have made a second piece using the same process.

I was inspired by this painted collage, one of my orange-and-blue series. The largest shape has a wrinkly texture, created by painting tissue paper and then glueing it onto a painted background. The shape below that is a stamped texture on a grey-blue background, and the black-and-white rectangle is made of printed cotton.

original painted collage, 10" x 10"

I printed out a photo of the piece, and measured each of the shapes. Then I tripled the measurements and used that template to make shapes in cloth that corresponded to the original. 

When you assemble a quilt, layering top, batting and backing, stitching is required to hold the layers together. So this added element of stitching has to be carefully considered. 

I used closely-spaced, irregular stitching to create a texture for the large orange-red shape, and then applied patches of orange paint over the stitched cloth. And I reproduced the short, horizontal painted lines with yellow and orange thread and a dense, back-and-forth machine stitching.

stitching detail

I used a white marker on blue-grey hand-dyed cotton to recreate the patterned shape, enlarging the texture, and stitching around each mark with grey thread.

stitching detail

The final piece, shown below, is an exploration of the intersection between painted collage and art quilting.

painted art quilt, 24" x 24"

My objective is to be able to leave the security of modelling a work after a small finished piece in paint and collage, and to develop a feel for working larger and more directly, using both paint and stitch on cloth. Maybe a simple preliminary sketch of the shapes, colours and textures will serve as a useful aid in this process?