Sneak Peek

 Here's a first look at one of my projects for February: Make something with silk month. I worked on a few things; this is just one of them. It's not completely mounted yet, but I thought I'd let you see so you know I didn't flake out.
To the right, Etta assists in final touches for my mixed media piece entitled  Zero Bound, in Dr. Krugman's honor 
I'm mounting it on a stretched canvas, so I can hang it on the wall. I need another set of hands and more tacks, when I'm finished I'll show you how it's done.

This piece had a long incubation period. I made those teeny tiny log cabins starting in 2002, after I saw an article by Kayla Kennington in Threads Magazine on making miniature paper foundation-pieced quilt blocks. I had never done it before, so I tried it, made these 10 blocks and promptly lost them. (They are very small.) When I was making my January scrap quilt, I found them, and while playing with them, thought they looked like a graph of GDP Growth during austerity in the UK and Europe (I live with Economists)  (This may be the first time in history that economics, art quilts and Dr. Krugman have been in the same blog post.)
The piece includes silk charmeuse, silk dupioni, silk noil, Japanese silk paper, Japanese chirimin cotton, antique kimono bits, silk rayon brocade, linen, cloth of gold, gold lame, silver lame, quilting cottons, assorted other fabrics, and even a little cat hair.
I had a lot of fun playing with silk.  I liked working out of my comfort zone.
I'm now ready to move into border prints for March.
What are you working on in March?