This past week in the studio, I finished framing the Inverse series: Windows and Trees from my 100 day project of 2017. It has always been one of my more cerebral series. I will try to explain the idea behind this series below and hope that once you read my thoughts, it will be more clear why I used the title Inverse.
My original two ideas for this 100 day project series were vertical lines of fabric representing trees and a square representing a window, the two pieces on the right in the photo. Since I wanted to make four pieces in total for the series, I thought about the inverse of each design. For the original Trees, I used different colored strips of fabric within the trees inserted into a solid grey background fabric. Then for Inverse Trees, I decided to have cool tones of colorful strips of fabric as the background and just have a solid colored inserted grey line for the tree.
For the Window piece, I started with one gray square of varying sizes. The next step was to add warm colors in squares and rectangles around the square to look like crazy wallpaper around the window. The Inverse Windows has a grey solid background where you’re looking out the square window at sunset with warm colors.
I wrapped all four pieces around 24” stretched canvas frames. They are hung as a series. When they are all together, you can envision their Inverse concept easier than I can explain it in words.
The rolling to-do concept from a past Studio Notes article was super helpful last week because Monday and Friday are my usual studio days but I had made a doctor appointment on Monday and then went to a local quilt show at our Botanic Gardens with my Dad on Friday. These were important and I was so glad I could do them without worrying about missing studio time. So I rolled my studio time to Saturday afternoon. I powered through ironing all 4 pieces, lining up the frame accurately and stapling the pieces of fabric art to the back of the frame.
I had an experience that holds a valuable lesson for me. I wanted to use existing 30 inch sewn 25 day pieces and the largest standard size square frames are 24 inches. That means 6 inches of the 25 day pieces will not be visible and seemed “wasted” to me. I knew I need 1.5 inches extra fabric on the edge to wrap around the canvas. So I was worried about 3 inches of wasted material. Some very interesting pieces of the daily squares are not seen on the back side of the frame. I had to let it go and move on. But lo and behold, I saw so much movement and more interest in these pieces because some of the design elements stop unfinished right at the edge and keeps you guessing. It makes the whole design appear like it is expanding rather than closed in like in a frame. You imagine the rest of the design. As a bonus, the interesting design on the edges of the frame look even better than I thought. I have included pictures of the edges of the art and how the design wraps around for you to see for yourself.
So sometimes circumstances that you think may not be ideal can take an unexpected turn and may be even more interesting than what you originally thought. I guess it helps to be open-minded.
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