Revisiting Pink

True confession: I have not gotten back to my pink abstract challenge piece. But the last few times I was in the studio and took a glance at them, I was suddenly excited rather than puzzled or frustrated with what I saw. Sometimes you need to give yourself longer time away from a project you feel stuck over than you might think. I'm ready to start gluing down pieces and finishing these up. In the meantime, I've gotten curious about my past use of pink in quilts so thought it might be fun to take a look through my journey with it, starting with its obvious use in baby quilts. The quilt above was made for a nephew's baby, with the mother showing how she was decorating the nursery in pink and green. Green? Not only would I never think to use this color scheme for a nursery, for some reason pairing pink with green was a different concept for me, especially in a baby quilt. But nature obviously pairs pink and green so I embraced the idea and quite like the way this one turned out. You can read more about this quilt and its construction here.

This baby quilt was for one of my godson's little boys, and yes, I really do struggle with breaking out of the blue is for boys, pink is for girls thing, to the point that I worried about my use of pink here. But it was so obvious to use it with the blue fabric I'd chosen. No complaints from the parents, and I was told years later that the little boy was still taking this quilt with him to pre-school. Read more about it here.

One more, made for the baby of a friend who worked with my late husband and was so much help to me after he died. As in the previous quilts, I often use the excuse of a baby quilt to try out techniques and patterns and this one is no exception. It is actually based on an antique quilt so I dived into my stash of reproduction fabrics for this one, and I had plenty of a soft pink for the borders and sashings. Really enjoyed working on this one and love how it came out. Pre-blogging so no post I can send you to for details.

Ok, so verified that pink has always been a go-to when planning a baby quilt (although I was surprised at how many times I chose bright non-pink colors), and since I rarely bought fabric specifically for any of them, it's obvious I had a lot of pink in my stash. Not afraid of buying it, and in the case of reproduction pinks in particular, they are often subdued, muted, pale, and pair well with browns, as many of the reproduction prints of the late 1800s show with their pink florals on brown backgrounds. Here's a case in point, my I turned fifty Crow's Feet quilt. Look at all that pink and brown, at least 4 different prints, so soothing to my eye. I've made more than one antique reproduction quilt with these sorts of pinks. See more about it here.

But there is one I've made with a very strong pink solid bought specifically for it. I wanted to make an Amish-style quilt for one of my brothers, using Quilt In A Day Roman Stripes pattern. It's not clear to me at the moment why I chose this color scheme of pinks, purple and blues, but I suspect I'd seen a real Amish quilt with those colors. At any rate, the fabrics were pick from Hancock's of Paducah's large range of Kona cotton solids on my first trip to the AQS show. Another pre-blogging quilt, but I can tell you it was queen size and hand quilted and took me about 5 years to complete, during which we moved twice, once while the quilt was on the frame. And a bit of an outlier when compared to most of my quilts.

Pink slipped into some of my early smaller projects, like what became a combination applique and pieced table runner. If it weren't for the pink in the green print, I doubt I would have chosen pink for one of the heart rings. I later found a big pink teapot with 3 pink mugs in an antique store that matched the pink in this and couldn't resist buying it.

And this original design wall quilt ended up with pink as a background color, playing off the navy floral print with pink in it and pairing with burgundy. It was definitely the desire to use the blue with pink prints driving my pink background fabric choice, not the other way around. And to be honest, all that pink always has made me a bit uncomfortable in a quilt like this.

As I think about why so much pink in art quilts, I think it is because when one first starts dyeing fabric, Fuchsia is one of "primary" colors you work with. So there it is, so much pink everywhere. And as I started buying fabric paints in sets, the same was true; if not fuchsia, then magenta always included. So as I experimented, I just kept reaching for that color and ending up with more pink fabric to work with. In it went and afterwards I was not entirely happy. But I couldn't help using it and wasn't far enough along on my journey to know how to successfully alter it. Above are three such early examples as I tiptoed my way into making art quilts. The background of the first one was from an experiment Judi wanted to try where we painted dyes on fabric and batched them rather than the immersion dyeing method. I honestly didn't know what to do so just did a bit of spattering. This post tells how I attached those squares of foil. The second one's background was an experiment with paint but I used squares cut from a batik that had a mix of blue and pink in it (more here). The last one I think was paint, at least the green over the pink was paint. I was playing with doing a grid series based on nine patches. A fourth one got made using another pinkish painted background (see here and here.), 

And here's one last one from the painting experiments - a paint and twist and let dry technique which allows for the paint  to migrate to the folds. I could see a tree and an owl as I pressed it and so that is what I did with it, quilting to accentuate what was clear to me, mounting it on burgundy crushed velvet from clothes I made for my mother and me back in the 70's and framed (see here). For posts on some of the paint experimenting, see here and here. So much pink . . .

But, as I continued my art quilt journey, I think I became more sophisticated with my use of pink. The quilt above was on the vierge of being purchased by the young man who would later become my optomotrist, but he eventually backed away and said, "People think I'm crazy enough as it is to live in a house painted purple. I CAN'T add a pink quilt on a wall inside!" Here's where it began, with a kaleidoscope manipulation of a photo of a geranium and a piece of fabric that had been folded before going into the dye bath.

But one pink art quilt I make no apologies for is this one, the background being a surprise when pulled from the bottom of a bin where it had been soaking up dye dripping down through a rack of fabric being snow dyed. It became the "rose wine" to the "burgundy wine" in a pair inspired by Homer's reference to "sailing the wine dark seas" (see here). The squiggles are based on photos I took of sailboat masts reflected in the rippling water. I will never sell this one, and the pair hang over my computer so I enjoy them every day.

As I was scrolling through my photo files, I did run across a few padfolios done with handdyes leaning toward pink (scroll to the bottom of this post) but that's more like accessories in that a little pink or burgundy (or this lovely old rose) is really ok. In general though, my quilts have leaned mostly towards fall colors, a lot of rusts and browns and rich reds as well as ones with more blue and some golds. I've done pink, but again, pink does feel less appropriate for serious art unless used in moderation or to a specific theme. That must be the conclusion I came to, after all that painted and dyed pink!