I would love to show you my finished piece. . . but . . . .alas this one got the better part of me. BUT it has been a great learning experience.
After much research, I decided that I didn't want to recreate one of the masters work but to come up with one of my own. I started with a photo of the door of Monet's house in France. From there I did a sketch and picked out the fabrics.
Great start right?
And there my progressed stalled. I spent three weeks fiddling with my piece - a little here and there. Never getting vested in any of the trials. It got the point where it seemed like a chore to even work on it. sighhhhhhhh - this is NOT the norm.Last week, I came up with new idea which I want to play with. Still, I'm not quite over the frustration this piece has caused me over the last month. So for now, I'll let this one bake on my wall while I tackle something else. This piece definitely has potential. I'm just not in the mood to coax it out yet!!
You can see my whole journey here - but let me tell you - its not pretty! Actually, its not a bad idea to show the world that art is not easy, nor does it appear like magic. While researching Monet's work several of his most famous pieces were done over YEARS, I'm sure with several false starts and reworks.
So if its good enough for Monet, I guess its good enough for me!!
I encourage you to blog hop over to the other participants today! Thanks to Alida for hosting! And please any hoppers who want to join in on our blog link up - Off the Wall Friday - please feel free to do so. We're here every Friday, rain or shine or masterpiece mess!
Other blog hop spots can be found at. . .
- Carol (http://www.quiltedfabricart.com/)
- Jennifer (http://www.inquiringquilter.com)
- Joan (http://www.moosestashquilting.blogspot.com/)
So What Have Been Up to Creatively?
12 comments:
Must have been frustrating, but it looks so promishing.
I know the feeling, in my experience the best solution is to to switch to something completely different, make something quick and rewarding, and then you pull out the unfinished piece in a week or a month - and you get a lightening idea how to fix it!
I love how this is coming along--i can just imagine how difficult it has been to get it to go together in a way you like....keep at it...I think it's beautiful hugs, Julierose
Oh I feel your pain and couldn't agree more.......our ideas are often not easily translated into fabric.....but we are persistent......and I know you'll end up with a wonderful piece!
I hate it when that happens, but it will come together in the end. It always does!
I love what you've done here and am in complete agreement with you that art is hard! LOL!!! It will come to you and this is going to be spectacular!
I understand the frustration. I'm sure it will be awesome and look forward to visiting again to see the finished piece.
Your piece is gorgeous! I can tell you put a lot into it!
I understand about loosing the desire to work on a project. Hopefully you will find a spark that reignites your excitement on this at some point! :)
Nina, I keep trying to put my finger on what is wrong with the flowers in your quilt. It is like tasting spaghetti sauce and trying to figure out what is missing.... Some of my thoughts.
Your windows are great with intense color and the flowers are too gray and dull. You could go over them with some bright colors with fabric markers. If you are familiar with natalie sewell and Nancy Zeiman and their books on landscape quilts they do that all the time. Your library might have one of their books so you can see what I mean. Right now it does not look like the flowers and the window belong in the same quilt.
Your flowers are too clumpy. If you look up natalie sewell and see photos of her work with flowers you will see they are much looser. You should be able to see the windows peaking through the flowers. Again their book will help. I think they actually fussy cut individual flowers or messy cut smaller clumps. Plus I think you need to get some bright greens in there. You could also loosely cut flower shapes from some of your hand dyes for some of the flowers.
Also it might help to have some flowers that grow taller to give some variety in height. Again look up their work.
I understand your frustration. Work on something else. Look up natalie sewell And then come back to your piece. I think it is worth finishing and will be beautiful when done.
I hope this is helpful. I have been giving this a lot of thought.
Chris
Thanks for sharing your process and frustrations! Most of the time since we are working with fabric we feel like we cannot experiment and we have to get it right the first time we try... but that's for sure not how Monet or other painters worked! I think fear of experimenting is stopping so many quilting artist to try to work ouside their comfort zone so I hope this post will inspire them to try something even if it doesn't get right in one go! I am looking forward to see where you will take this piece! Thanks again for joining the hop and for not giving up on us!! :)
Hi Nina-Marie, I really hope that this one will eventually see the light of day. I've got a few projects that are now years in the making. I usually let them go because I'm not sure how to handle the next step. Then, on day, it's ready to go and I can move it along. Good luck!
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