Mess of Yarn

The piece that's pictured in the previous post (when it was covered in a mess of looped yarns) is finished.

Untitled - 11"x 12"

I had cut the loops and then began tying by two together at the corners of each colored rectangle.  I had done this and trimmed them for nearly half the piece while watching TV.

My intent was to use the old tradition of yarn tying a quilt in a contemporary way.  The problem was that this was beginning to look boring.  Besides, I was missing the yarn lengths with their wonderful gradation of colors.  But I had gone too far with tying and clipping those ends short to make a good composition.  It hung on my design board all day while I wrapped presents.  After supper I got the idea to cut the top part away.  This balanced that area of knots with the clipped short ends with the part that I hadn't yet tied and cut.  I knotted the corners of a few more rows.  But rather than clipping the yarn to make small neat knots, their lengths were graded from those short ends to the long uncut ones.  I tamed those longer yarns by combing them with my fingers.  I love it!

Here's what became of the top part that was cut away ...

two postcards

The above pieces are part of a little challenge that I set for myself to see how I could create very three different pieces using similar backgrounds for each.

The idea was spurred by my Thursday Bee group.  One of our members, Pat Blankenship, donated a large amount of bonded Batik fabric scraps for us to play with.  We were instructed to bring a pre-quilted foundation on which to create a design from Pat's scraps.

I had just sorted through the trunk full of my UFO's and came up with three quilted pieces that I had cut away this art quilt.  The orange/rusty/green background had been quilted before I cut "windows" to drop in the three focal pieces.

 Regeneration - 60" x 34"

Here are two of them ...

.... and the pile of Pat's scraps I brought home to continue playing.

And finally, here's the first one begun that day at Thursday Bee.

Moonlit - 11"x 16"

And the second one created while taking breaks from the aforementioned messes.

Posies 11"x 16"

I enjoyed "playing" with these.  It's playing that keeps creativity fresh.  I'm excited about the loose yarn technique I stumbled upon.  I suspect you'll be seeing a bit more of it in my future work.