7.20.2007

Mother-daughter improvisation

collageUnquilted
This morning my three year old daughter asked if she could make a quilt. We went downstairs where I gave her a 10 x 15" piece of white cotton fabric and a small box of hand-dyed cotton scraps. She spent about twenty minutes with them and came up with this vibrant collage.
While I quilted, she monitored the work closely from a perch on the table next to my sewing machine and periodically requested a change in the thread colour which she selected from my box of threads. She favoured the neon pinks and oranges, though I managed to convince her to choose some nice variegated cotton hand-dyed threads as well. I have quite a collection of these, made by Linda Palaisy. Linda's 100% cotton hand-dyed threads have beautiful saturated colour and are a dream to quilt with.

I played around with some different free motion stitches including a stipple done on the zig-zag setting. I think I read about this in Libby Lehman's book Threadplay. I'm not real pleased with the bottom half, but it was fun to play around on something that I wasn't scared to death to ruin. I think I'll do more of these smaller pieces and practice lots of free-motion machine work and see where it takes me.


collageQuilted

Textile collage
Hand-dyed and commercial cottons
Free-motion machine quilted, 10 x 15"



DSC03710
Detail


7 comments:

arlee said...

Looks likes she has a fair eye already for composition!

juanita sim said...

Yes, it reminds me of something Picasso is reported to have said. 'When I was twelve I could draw like Rafael, but it has taken me my whole life to learn to paint like a child.'

Michelle said...

She did a lovely job - I love it!! :)

Nikki said...

I love it!!! How wonderful to create together.

momma helen said...

What a beautiful quilt! My 3-year old son will come to me when I'm Trying To Get Something Done and we'll end up working on something together. But I've always encouraged him to "do it like mommy does"

What an exciting idea to just give him a box of scraps and let him at it!

Your stiching is beautiful. It inspires me to want to focus on learning more or playing more with stitching.

Thanks!

Kucki68 said...

Clearly an artistic cooperation. Great work from by both of you.

artmixter said...

What fun! Your daughter clearly has a good eye, must take after her mother.