Wednesday 4 May 2016

WIP Wednesday - Evolution

I'm not sure what you guys are going to make of this one. 
The Irish Patchwork Society puts on a national exhibition every two years - this year the theme is evolution and it straight away prompted lots of ideas.  I can't tell you why I settled on these two to make, though it took a while to finalise the idea and choose fabric for the first of the 2 quilts I'm submitting.

I decided on some Kona solids in grey tones to make up the background of quilt #1.  Each line represents a million years and they get darker the further you go back in history.  The maximum size for the submission is 50" so, I bought a long quarter of each colour from the Limerick Quilt Centre and Fluffy Sheep Quilting and cut them to 6 3/4" wide.
Trying to get the gradient right was a little easier in black & white but I still think looking at the colour images, some of the greys are a little more blue than the others for a true gradient, but overall in this project I think it works ok.

I quilted the background by echoing the seam lines and quilting text into each of the the million year bands.  Using the latin names I added in as many as I could from our family tree - the Hominidae (the great apes!) I did mis-pell Homo heidelbergensis by leaving out the n - takes a lot of concentration quilt writing in latin!
My favouire latin name is Gorilla gorilla - very descriptive, not too keen on the Chimpanzee name Pan troglodytes but the Bonobo Pan paniscus sounds quite nice!  Pongo is the latin name for the Orangutan and for some reason I find that funny!

Working with black and navy meant lots of wadding fluff and my Ikea lint roller came in handy, by the time I was finished!


To represent our evolution, I used thin strips about 1" of this Lecien fabric bundle I got on Massdrop.  It has tiny scale so I wasn't losing the printed pattern even at 1" and it seemed to suit my theme.  Orange for Pongo, dark blue for Gorilla and pink for Pan!  For our side of the tree I used various colours of green to yellow right up to us with the red dot, with a tiny dancer in it, for you are here!

Our side is quite bitty with no long straight lines.  The fossil record shows lots of homins from Sahelanthropus, Ardipithecus, Australopithecus right up to Homo and some living at the same time, some interbreeding and lots of expansions out of Africa.    I learned a lot doing this - had no clue there were 2 species of Orangutan, quite a few of us have a small percentage of Neanderthal and Denisovan DNA and there are a lot more Homo species that I imagined - was getting kind of crowded in the top left corner for a bit so I included what I could fit in!  This is a juried exhibition so fingers crossed this or the next one makes it in!

My second submission is called Same But Different!  I think its heavily influenced by the workshop I'm giving in June on Traditional Blocks Made Modern.  I took the Churn Dash and broke out the shapes it used for the top block.  Chunky churn dash for block #2, Nested one with a shoo-fly centre and lastly my version of a modern churn dash.

The idea being that evolution can move from the simple to the complex and bringing in a little bit of Darwin and natural selection, a mutation gives rise to the same animal but a little bit different.  The ones best fitted to the environment thrive and may lead to further mutations and so on!  I stopped at 4!

I really enjoyed block #4 so am going to write that one up as well to add to the class.  I am thinking of a bigger version as a stand alone baby quilt.  I think it could be really fun with the right fabrics in a 40" size".  Evolution of ideas!

So here's a little look of my take on evolution in quilt form.  If they get in, the exhibition will run in July so I'll get some finished shots for you.  For now it's onto hanging sleeves and labels!



18 comments:

  1. What awesome projects. I love Churn Dash #4. I think it would be great as a baby quilt. Good luck for the exhibition.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Wow, those are both fantastic quilts, Ruth. The evolution / history quilt is really super interesting and I bet you could write so much more about what you learned.

    The modern churn dash block is wonderful; very nice touch with a chunky plus in the middle!

    ReplyDelete
  3. What a fun idea. I love seeing words quilted.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Wonderful research and output. They both look wonderful

    ReplyDelete
  5. Your take of theme is very interesting. I stock with the first idea came in my head. Both quilts look great too!

    ReplyDelete
  6. Wonderful quilts, Ruth! I love the modern churn dash variation, pity it looks like I will have to miss the workshop that day... I am inspired to try my own version though.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Wonderful quilts, Ruth! I love the modern churn dash variation, pity it looks like I will have to miss the workshop that day... I am inspired to try my own version though.

    ReplyDelete
  8. These two quilts are so different from each other. It's interesting to see where you went with this theme. I really like the last churn dash and the bit with the churn dash components.

    ReplyDelete
  9. I have been wanting to do a geology quilt like this for a while. I like your interpretation of the theme very much!! Glad to hear that Wilbur's test results were normal. What a relief!

    -Soma

    ReplyDelete
  10. I think the words add so much character to these Ruth. How fun!

    ReplyDelete
  11. Wow! I am uber impressed Ruth! So much research must have gone into the Hominidae quilt. I never knew half of what you mentioned. I really love how you created the gradation effect and chose to represent the evolution with bars of color. The script quilting is a lot of fun too!
    Your churn dash quilt is my favorite though, maybe because it shows an evolution in quilting ideas. You put so much thought into these blocks and came up with some fantastic versions!

    ReplyDelete
  12. wow, I really like this design with the ombre background... and quilting words is a very good addition!

    ReplyDelete
  13. wow, I really like this design with the ombre background... and quilting words is a very good addition!

    ReplyDelete
  14. I love your Hominidae quilt - and found the thinking behind it very interesting (I certainly learned a think or two this morning). I like that everything in it has a reason and a meaning, but that it looks good too.

    ReplyDelete
  15. Really love your Evolution quilts. It was really interesting how your creative process worked and I really like the writing in the quilting. I was just trying to decide whether to do some on my flag quilt ....

    ReplyDelete
  16. Great quilts :) I love the way you've illustrated evolution. It gives a sobering perspective to see a material representation of how short a time we've been around. Your quilted words are amazing and I like to think of us all as a tiny dancer! Good luck in the exhibition :)

    ReplyDelete
  17. These are brilliant quilts Ruth, so different but so appropriate to the theme. I really enjoyed reading your explanations for each quilt.

    ReplyDelete
  18. Hi Ruth, I'm also working on a quilt for the Evolution exhibition. I've just recently started my blog and was looking for other quilting blogs form Ireland, so glad I found you! Your quilts look amazing and the theme interpretation is so unique (mine is much more straightforward, I think))

    ReplyDelete

Comments are most welcome! I reply by email or within the thread if you are a noreply blogger so check back. Thanks.

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...