Friday Finish...on Saturday...

I got delayed yesterday in the Friday Finish...but after 2 years, what's one more day... 

This is a tiny piece, 12"x12", that was made for a challenge I'm sure some of you remember...it was the 12x12x12 Challenge...12 quilts in 12 months measuring 12 inches on a side.  I never did produce much for that challenge but had such fun ideas...ah well...anyway, my theme was actually 12x12x4...12" on a side, 4 months of partcipation, and I called it 4 Artists and Me... um...I did 2 artists...Paul Klee and this one, Vincent Van Gogh.  This is called "Starry Sunflowers" and is an interpretation of "Starry Night" and "Sunflowers"...um...really?   It was a lot of fun but I must have gone off on a trip or something and never got back to it.  All it needed was the bead trim on the bottom and then I got a wild hair yesterday and put the silver triangles and trees on it, too.  I took it with me when I went to see Rian at BGM...but it wasn't finished and, anyway, I was a little intimidated after seeing her INCREDIBLE work hanging in her house, so I quickly showed it and stowed it...(You probably don't remember, Rian, it was that quick! hahaha!) Plus, we were focused on my Jane Stickle top that day, also.  Anyway, here it is:

The star/sunflower had another life; it was a block that I rescued from another project from another challenge for a group on the old Compuserve quilt forum.  We were given a word as a prompt and a piece of fabric which we had to use in our interpretation.  The fabric was the yellow one with the numbers on it and the word was "positivity."  So I, of course, had to make a sunflower block because they always make me smile and smiling is happy and positive, etc., etc., etc.  Yeah, anyway... I made a sickly sweet, happy sunflower, and appliqued a very sweet, very happy bee on the back ground, and just could not bring myself to do anything more with the silly, sweet, upbeat, thing...Actually, I had achieved my goal of making a sunflower block that laid flat (I did it by hand, the only way to make a circular block lay flat, at least for me) and that is really all I was after.  So, all these many years later, when we had our 12x12 challenge and I wanted to do a Vincent piece, I thought of that block and decided to cut it up and use it...yes, I cut up a handpieced block...it was ok, it really was...very freeing...And I machine appliqued the star and the leaf to my background, as well as the spirals and some other diamonds I had that I liked for the trees on the left, and went hog wild machine quilting spirals and circles and sewing on beads...very freeing, indeed...I loved the process of taking a very traditional, hand pieced block, cutting it up, raw-edge machine appliqueing it and a bunch of shapes onto a hand dyed and wildly printed fabric base and then covering it with beads and free form quilting...ahhh, the juxtaposition of eras and methods (hahahaha!  Actually, just plain fun is what it was!)...  Bonus question: can you find Mars in the starry, starry sky?

The back:

The base fabric of the back I found in my mother's stash.  She had made a tablecloth for her little patio table with it years ago and it really was so typical of her.  I liked the flowers and it makes me think of her.  The spirals were rejected ones for the front...I am so into spirals in my life, I couldn't not use them even though they didn't go well on the front. The label with the original inspiration paintings was transferred with Bubble Jet, though the Sunflower painting got a little washed out in the rinse even though I used Bubble Jet Set, too.

Oh, here is the original incarnation of the star/sunflower...you see what I mean...too sweet and contrived...ahh, how our tastes change...I still like that bee...his wings were made from a lace print and I drew the lines on his body with pigma pen...I saved him, maybe I'll use him for something else...or not...

                  

Happy weekend, everyone!

D.