Regrowth

Yesterday, I wrote about my textile work Hope, Promise, Bounty: Reap What You Sow. Today, I provide some background to my other work that features in the Regeneration: Contemporary Quilt Textiles exhibition – Regrowth.

Regrowth considers the regenerative power of fire in the Australian bush. For some species, fire assists propagation. Heat from fire causes seed pods to open, dropping seeds ready to germinate in the ash thereby providing a new generation even if the plant that made the seeds is destroyed by the fire.

The proposed composition was based on colour gradations in hand-dyed fabrics from greens, through orange and reds, through ash and browns and back to greens. Here are the concept designs. I created the initial striped image using Electric Quilt software and then added the cross strokes using Photoshop Elements. I prepared two digital sketch variations. Visually, I favoured the second design with the dark strip off-centre but, thematically, this de-emphasised the regrowth imagery so I decided to let the colour/value order play out on the design wall.

First I had to dye a whole lot more green and orange fabrics:

Then I laid out my fabrics and started working on the design wall:

Although the work is constructed in strip panels that I did not join up until later, the interlocking nature of the pattern meant that replacing a single colour involved reworking several panels. In the first image below, I was concerned about the excessive constrast of the pale green strip to the right of the iron. I auditioned a more medium toned green before committing to the great unpick:

My concept design was provisionally sized at 75x150cm (HxW) but, in the spirit of working big, I scaled that up to 100x200cm. This maxed out my design wall and my working space:

Knowing that I had limited studio time before the works were due to be delivered, I opted for a less dense quilting design but there is still 60+ hours quilting in this work.

I divided the work into two panels, quilted them separately and joined them together.
In the end, Regrowth bears a striking resemblance to the original concept design. I prefer the organic lines in the textile work in the cloth. There are aspects of the composition and construction that suffered from the time constraints of this assignment (note to curators and exhibition organisers: if you require works to be delivered nearly three months before the exhibition, you should clearly signal this in the entry documentation) but I am excited by the creative lessons I learned in working BIG and look forward to my next project.

Regrowth © 2012 Brenda Gael Smith - Concept design and final work