Today in Art

 It's a snowy Saturday, and I'm taking the time to finish my first two pieces of 2015.  Both of these two new pieces were begun in 2014, and both are images of sand ripples.  I love the sinuous patterns left in the sand when the tide retreats, and images of those ripples, and of Cape Cod in general, are going to get me through this winter.

Low Tide, Eastham is ready to be put on stretcher bars and sit for its portrait with photographer Joe Rubin.

It's a whole cloth quilt, which means it's one big piece, not made of lots of smaller pieces.  It's one big piece of Pima cotton, painted with Inktense pencils.  I used a technique called thread painting to pick out details in the water and in the background, but you can't see them in this photo. You'll be able to see them after Joe takes a shot.

Eastham Low Tide is based on this photo, which I love enough to use as my Facebook wallpaper:

Until Joe gets a moment to mount and photograph it, Low Tide Eastham waits on the dining room table.

Sand and Sky is also ready to be mounted on stretcher bars:

This piece consists of a small square quilt mounted on a larger felted piece.  The small square quilt is raised, with a technique called trapunto, so that it looks like the actual ripples left in the sand by the retreating tide.

You can see how I made it, pulling puffy white yarn through sewn channels representing the sand ripples:

 
The larger felted piece represents the sky when the patterns in the clouds resemble the sand ripples.
 I just finished adding the last details to the clouds today, using curly roving called curly locks.

I deliberately folded the felted piece, rumpled one of its corners, and left another corner to turn up.

When these new pieces have sat for their formal portraits, I'll put them in the quilt gallery on this blog, where they'll have pride of place as my two newest creations...and the practice that's going to get me through the winter.