Into Matter comes into being

This quilt, "Into Matter" (from the Parallel Worlds series) , was a tricky one and required a lot of testing out of different ideas and materials. I generally knew the direction, but not quite how to achieve it. Therefore, I have many process photos so that I could carefully track where I was going. Photos are very helpful because they are the best way to be able to step back and get an overall view of your project.

At the top of the artwork you can see little spots of white. These are scraps of paper which I have not completely removed. Since it is difficult to draw directly on cloth because it shifts around, for this and other series, I would draw onto tracing paper, pin it to the quilt where needed, and quilt through the paper. Then I would tear it away. Sometimes this was easy, sometimes painstaking, simply depending on the amount of lines and space between them. Here I also tested out having a different base at the bottom of the cube.

In this slideshow, you can see how I began to build up the pillar within the cube with wool, then add thread snippets and then finally stitch the cube walls. You can also see how the quilt gets progressively more rippled as I add more stitching. This is generally not great because it makes it more difficult to work with as I go outwards from the center.

In the end, I settled on the idea of the flowing flames of fire to contrast with the icy, rigid crystals on top. Here I'm building up the flames in layers.

With some added hand-embroidery around the cube and other features, and quilting in the background, this piece is coming to a close. All that's still needed is to give it a good stretching so that hopefully it will lay flat. The amount and density of quilting in different areas has a direct impact on how flat you can get your quilt to lay. The more even the density throughout the quilt, the better. The more variety in density, the more likely the quilt is going to ripple a little.

Completed work-

detail-

This work was featured in Patchwork Professional March 2020.

This work is in a private collection, but other work from this series is available for purchase from Roberta and Bob Rogers Gallery.