Fiber Art, Texture, Leaves

Today I wanted to do a bit of looking at texture in fiber art. I have always loved being able to reproduce with a certain amount of ability realistic items in my fiber pieces. I use a lot of techniques and supplies. Some I may have posted before, but as a cohesive post, my outlook on the art in general may be a bit clearer.

My first photo is a sketch of pears, done with oil pastel and then stitched, fluid acrylic added for background (which the oil pastel resists), some quilting, then more acrylic paint. At the end, I have a small still life sketch, an exercise in materials.

The lily is a combination of realistic work and background abstraction. The leaves and flower are the centers of attention; I love dimension in leaves...these being two layers of cotton fabric sandwiched in felt, stitched and then a heat tool used to burn out most of the felt. The flower is on watercolor paper sent through the printer. The curve of the leaves adds a sense of the lily coming off the background, into the here and now.

These next two shots are of dimensional leaves and a flower, stitched with batting and a lining fabric, trimmed carefully, turned right side out and then stitched again to add realistic details such as leaf veins and the separation of the flower petals. Beads are added for stamens on the flowers, and set in a crystallized glue for water droplets on the leaves. They are to represent a loose form of a lily pad, set atop a quilt with silk pieced fish. Having the leaves loose above and not pieced into the surface provides another layer of visual depth.

I was experimenting with a fabric collage background when I did this small work. The butterfly and leaf skeletons are dimensional. The rest of the piece is quilted and has bobbin thread work to provide the proper texture for the fiddle head ferns. Layers of tulle build shadow and depth. The leaf skeletons hang over the edge of the background, adding a little motion to the whole...moving the view from the butterfly, to the ferns, and off the picture plane.

The next two photos are from a piece I did during the Summer Olympics held in Athens Greece. The victor's laurel wreath of tradition is pieced into the background, the freestanding leaves are a repetition of the pieced motif.

These were made from a textured silk fused to a cotton background and are quite sturdy.

The last piece is a landscape done from pieces of diverse cotton fabrics, with both print and stitch used to achieve a realistic view. It is a small piece and still holds much detail; worth a click to enlarge and see how it was put together.

I often have to educate people who have not had the opportunity to see fiber art on the difference between it and it's first cousin, traditional quilting. It is *ART*, just made with fabric rather than paint. Or it is art ON fabric, as the case of the pears, but using traditional quilting methods for texture. There are endless possibilities with these methods. I try to explore as many as possible and see what works best for whatever project it is I have at hand.

In today's fiber art world, there are so many options it is becoming hard to keep up with all of them! For those of us choosing fiber as a medium of expression--even for part of our work--we live in a time when it is exciting but also when we can get lost in too many things to try. Keeping balance and focus as to what our final outcome/goal is probably has become even more difficult.

I think there is a Chinese proverb, to paraphrase: "May you live in interesting times."

We certainly do! May your art show it!

I bid you....

Pax.