Taking the Challenge

I was intrigued by the Take It Forward challenge put forth by Sharon B of In a Minute Ago. And although I did not officially sign up for the challenge, I will be playing with it on my own. Each month Sharon will present a key concept or a color palette to work with, the idea being, if the concept doesn't interest, then work with the colors instead.

For January, the key concept is the feeling of admiration for another. Go here to read more and to see the optional color scheme. My mind went immediately to my mother. I have many reasons to admire her. If nothing else, she was such a beauty, as the portraits in the above picture show. She had great inner beauty and strength as well. And later, I remembered that she was born in January. No wonder I was thinking of her.

As for the color scheme, well, I rather like it. When digging around for something else, I ran across this pansy print fabric. Ah, not only does it contain all the colors for January, it also represents a link between my mother and me. She had a thing for pansies, passed on to her from her own mother who likened them to "little faces smiling up at us." I remember Mom planting pansies when I was young, and I've often incorporated pansies into my various gardens. We wrote to each other on stationary decorated with pansies. I embroidered a small crewel picture of pansies and thought of mom whenever I gazed upon it.

So my thought is a simple one. I've scanned the portraits and will print one of them, probably the one in the center, on to fabric, and surround it with the bouquets of pansies from the fabric. I need an excuse to work with printing on fabric - my past experiences being less successful than I'd hoped. Ditto for the quilting of such a piece. Maybe I can work some of those kinks out on this.

I may then "take it further" by doing some photo manipulation to make a second quilt less simple and obvious. I've already played with trying to "ripple" the image as if looking at a reflection in a pond where a pebble has been tossed. Couldn't get the effect I wanted quite yet. Then I randomly tried out some of the other effects. I got stuck on the pixalation one the way I got stuck on the wave one with the icicles. Below is one of several vertical orientation that hinted at landscapes.