CQ Challenge 2016 - On the Edge

Hello everyone, I have just begun working on a new quilt for this year's CQ Challenge, run by the Contemporary Quilt Group of the Quilter's Guild. You can read more about the challenge and see quilts from previous years here I have been lucky enough to have my quilt selected for the past two years so feel I have to set my standards high! The theme is open to lots of interpretations and initially, I was planning on doing a piece exploring the use of line as part of my current abstract series 'The Overuse of Metaphor'. After all, lines always mark the edge don't they? But I have also been looking recently at the work of Gunta Stolzl who was a weaver and the only female Bauhaus Master. She took over and revolutionised the Weaving Section of the Bauhaus which was rather dismissively referred to as 'the Women's Section', combining artistic flair with technical skill and knowledge of her materials to produce beautiful woven pieces as both stand alone pieces of art and as functional, decorative pieces for commercial production. To me, she epitomises that dreadful prejudice that textile art is somehow inferior to other art media as it is associated with the female/domestic/functional. Therefore textile art is marginalised, 'on the edge' of the genuine art world. See what I did there?!

Here is my first draft, inspired by one of Stolzl's sketches. I will draft a full size drawing and might tweak the colour palette as I go. I am not yet fixed in my choice of techniques but there will be some fabric collage, possibly some improv piecing, bubbles if I can find a place for them and needless to say, lots of stitch by both hand and machine. I will try to be good and post progress photos as I go along but don't hold me to that as sometimes, life gets in the way! k3n x