TWELVE BY TWELVE

No pictures today, but I have been giving a lot of consideration to this theme. First, the usual word association:

Identity Theft

Stolen Identity

Mistaken Identity

Secret Identity

Identity Card

Lack of identity

Non-entity

Identity Crisis

Corporate identity (logos, etc.)

Brand identity

Identity Crisis

When Helen announced the theme of identity, my mind went utterly blank. Self-portrait, collage of my various roles, what will I do? I am a bit in a rush because I leave for the SDA conference on May 22. I need to have my piece wrapped and ready to post. I also did not want to take the easy route that I did last time. So, I am earnestly at work on my piece which may be finished next week because I am having some fun with it.

The tease — it will use complements of colors in an Andy Warhol kind of way. I have hand-dyed some fabrics to give me more of a selection. See the photo above.

Here are some complements that I am considering.

Hope you are not suffering from identity theft and are enjoying this as much as I am.

The Twelve by Twelve website has now been updated to display our window-themed quilts. It's fascinating to see how the colours and the grid motif create a unified mosaic image:
The updated artist gallery pages also make interesting viewing as you can see the nine works completed by each individual member of the group so far.

Ever since we started this process I have been casually mulling over what theme I would choose but for some reason thought there was one more person before me. So when Diane emailed to remind me to pick, of course, my mind went blank. I turned to my husband for help. He suggested 'The Pelopennesian Wars'. Right.

You will be glad to know that, I decided not to to avail myself of his assistance and, totally at random from the words circling round in my head, I have picked..... identity.

Have at it!

I created these in my shibori class, yesterday. They will eventually be used in a larger version of what I might have done for this challenge. I just wanted to pop in and tell you all how excited I was to see each piece show up today. One person e-mailed me to say she thought this was our best group of pieces so far.

I have enjoyed reading all of the comments, but haven't had time to spend enough time with each piece to do my commenting as yet. I was away for 3 days and am up against a deadline for SDA conference work so have spent the day working on that. But, I wanted all of the twelves to know that you have turned out another fabulous group.

I had a heck of a time with this challenge. The "window" theme presented so many options, and while I had lists of ideas I just couldn't settle. I actually mapped out 3 different pieces, with full-size sketches and plans and all ... but couldn't seem to get myself into the fabric stage with any of them.

I kept coming back to the traditional quilt block called "Dove in the Window." During the weeks I was thinking about this project, Roger and I have been thinking about whether to remove our daughter from a traditional school setting, in favor of a non-traditional option. As we explored our feelings (and fear) of departing from a traditional path, I found myself drawn to this very traditional block. Probably not accidental, yes? I was craving the safety of something mapped out for me, and sewing these basic shapes was so comforting! My literal brain suggested setting doves on the window frame created by the block shapes, but as I was working on these, I started thinking about how one bird is resting comfortably in her nest, content to stay where she is, while the other is perched but ready to fly away.

So, all in all, this piece sums up the past two months of my life. And, just so you know, we have decided to leave the school and switch over to home-schooling to finish out the year. That perched bird has flown off into the unlimited blue sky!

The block is pieced. (Look, Gerrie! Points!) The doves, originally from photos, were painted and colored with colored pencils. I'm still not sure I'm thrilled with how the doves look -- but Terry, i have to say that when I was stuck I remembered how beautifully you use colored pencil to highlight your pieces, and I pulled mine out and was able to improve things considerably. The nest is dimensional -- fabric shreds -- as are the beady dove eyes (black seed beads).

To be honest, this result sort of surprises me. I mean, it just doesn't feel like me to me. But it pushed me a bit, to keep going on an idea when it was probably my life circumstances, and not the project, that were causing me to feel out-of-sorts with anything I tried. The deadline made me keep going even when I wasn't thrilled with it, and it came out better than I thought it would. So, it's not my favorite piece that I've done for these challenges, but given how well it fits my emotional life right now, I'm satisfied with it.

I hadn't been thinking for too long about this new theme, when one day I was looking for something on the Internet and came across the saying "windows to my soul". I knew immediately what I would create for this theme.

My quilt is made with fabric, but details (eyes, mouth, shading and highlights) are stitched and/or painted. The frame around the face mimics the frame around a pane of glass, or window.

I really loved this theme. Thank you for picking such an inspiring image, Gerrie.

I wanted to explore layers, transparency and variety of texture. I've titled it "Seeing Through."

On a few of the daily pieces I've been doing for my Lent series, I've set small pieces on two layers wool felt. I like stitching through it and I like the additional border detail.

I did printing with paint using a Lego on the building on the left. The next building is some sheer-ish netting on which I did some hand embroidery. The next piece is hand painted and I cut all the windows out with an exacto knife. You can barely see the greenish building that is painted on the surface using a freezer paper stencil. The short navy building has a grid pattern that I printed with paint on plastic canvas. The wide purple building has lots of big cut out windows and the blue sheer building on the right is made with poly organza and stitched with more hand embroidery.
I machine quilted three building images in the background before I added all the buildings in the foreground.

Like Gerrie, I love the grid format of windows in big buildings. In fact, I love the grid in general. I really enjoyed exploring this design element for the windows theme.

I saw many beautiful window screens last year in China. I loved the simpler ones, based on squares and rectangles. They inspired me with drawing this grid, which also makes me think a little bit of a log cabin block, courthouse steps style. 

As I discussed with my family the many associations that we each have with windows...
...nothing inspired me! Until one day, as I was driving, the phrase "Window of Opportunity" came to me.

My sister, her husband, my brother and my husband and I are all self-employed these days. As we run our businesses, uppermost in our thoughts is the need to identify and make the most of each opportunity. We have had many conversations about the concept. Some opportunities are seemingly small, but lead to bigger things. Some are hard to make out; easy to overlook. Some are bright, clear and obvious.

My quilt didn't become anything startling or overwhelmingly original. I was a bit disappointed that it looked, well, too familiar. It's fairly quiet, subdued even, but it expresses what I wanted to convey and so, in the end I am satisfied.

I carry images in my head that I remember over and over, like the chairs in our last challenge. This photo was taken on the Island of Iona in 2003, when Mr C and I went on a hiking trip in the Scottish Highlands. Iona is a small island in the Inner Hebrides of Scotland that has an important place in the history of Christianity in Scotland and is renowned for its tranquility and natural beauty. Ì Chaluim Cille is the Gaelic name for Iona. Fuinneog is window in Gaelic.

This photo of the ruins with the beautiful stones and the opening, looking out on the sea has stayed with me and begged to become a piece of fiber art.

Because of my hectic life this past month, I had to simplify my process. The stone structure was printed on lutradur that was coated with Golden Digital Ground. I created the surrounding landscape from my hand-dyed fabrics and machine quilting. I love the shape of this structure so much - the wonky, off kilter shape and that gorgeous diagonal line.

It is said that the eyes are the window to the soul. Swedish researchers* have even found that iris patterns may give important clues about our personality, ranging from how warm and trusting we are to whether we are impulsive or neurotic. If this is true, then biometric data collected from iris recognition systems could potentially be used to generate personality profiles which is kind of spooky.

All I know is that, in the late stages of this challenge, I had occasion to visit my optometrist to remove the remains of a torn contact lense that was stuck under my eyelid. While I was there, the optometrist shone a bright light into my eyes and took some photos. The magnified images of the iris and blood vessels obviously made a big impression on me. Later I was looking through the painted backgrounds I had made for rose window quilts with new eyes and was compelled to make this quilt even though I had already completed two other window themed pieces that I will display on my blog.

*See Associations between iris characteristics and personality in adulthood by Mats Larsen and others in Science Direct.

I also couldn't help trying different color combinations of windows. Each provides a different feel to the view outside or the mood of the viewer.