Water Life

Immersive painting with fabric.

Statement

Water. Life giving. Constantly moving. Ebbing and flowing. Captivating. Immersive. With this series, I desired to paint with mosaic cuts of fabrics. The quilts use many fabrics used to ebb and flow throughout an immersive canvas. For instance, Water Life I uses 35 different fabrics – some commercial, some I’ve digitally created myself. The lighter blues in the quilt represent the ebb while the darker blues represents the flow of the deep waters. The center area of the quilt denotes the flurry of activity from a uniform school of water life that travel in unison through the depths of the see.

Technique

Fabrics
There were many fabrics chosen for the Water Life series. Mainly cottons of different weights – from lightweight to heavier weight canvas. The fabrics are commercial screen-painted and printed; as well as dyed solid color Kona and mottled fabrics. Water Life I uses my own green digital fabrics from my first design collection for the center area.

In Water Life I, digitally created green fabric was cut to the selvedge to capture the white lines on the top. The intent was to draw the eye across the quilt horizontally (or vertically depending on orientation) to the direction of the green mosaics moving through the blue waters.

Color
In Water Life I, fabric colors are kept especially harmonious in tone to be able to paint continuously with them in spots. While a section may look like one color from a distance, up close there are many colors making up that area of the quilt.

The colors in Water Life II are bolder and more dramatic. The intent is to show schools of chaotic frenzy in the depths of the mesmerizing sea.

Fusing
The quilt was created on a substrate muslin backing fabric with the handcut mosaic squares and rectangles are fused down onto the backing fabric. The handcut pieces create an irregularity and perfect imperfectness to represent the movement in the deep sea.

Backing the quilt
The quilt is then sewn as a whole cloth onto an Ecofelt backing. Traditional quilt batting was not used to keep the quilt sandwich as thin and tapestry-like as possible. The hand of the quilt is sinewy like water.

Stitching
Stitching was done to enforce movement. Thread colors in the blue and green families were chosen to mimic the many variations of the sea. Many repeated wavy patterns with cotton and nylon threads with stitches of varying lengths were used.

Orientation
The quilt is meant to be oriented horizontally or vertically. This flexibility in viewing is present in most of my quilt designs as it allows the viewer control over the experience.

Inspirations from my water-inspired paintings