Today I have a camera. I borrowed one for a little while. It doesn't take really great pictures but you can still see what I'm talking about in my posts.
I’ve had a desire to enter an art quilt contest for awhile now. I’m finally at a point where I believe I’m ready to enter one piece into one art contest to see what happens.
I’m starting to doubt my abilities. I've worked on this one piece using lots of shiny threads and contour quilting. The front of the piece looks really nice. I’m only showing one small section of the front for now. I’m so proud of how it looks. It’s my first piece using a combination of thread and fabric to create the look I wanted.
Some might call it thread painting while others might call it thread fusion. Regardless of what it is called, I love creating this way! I believe this style of machine quilting really shows that stitching the layers together is really art too.
Another view.
However…..
The stitching on the back looks horrible! It has pokies, flat lining, nests, eye lashes, railroad tracks, and loopies all over it. All the bad stitching that machine quilters get! See….
I didn’t realize my machine tension was out of whack. Which is why I was ranting and raving in the last post. And; the reason I simply had to borrow a camera to show the problems. I have stitched the majority of it already. I knew I had to stop working on it and do a customer quilt. When I zipped the piece off to put a customer quilt on the machine I noticed the bad stitching. Thank goodness it wasn’t a customer quilt!
There is far too much quilting on there to pick it out. I’m not even sure I could achieve the same look a second time. I can’t start all over to create the same one again because it’s made from an out of date upholstery sample. No way to replace the fabric.
So now I’m wondering if I am right. The quilting on the back doesn’t matter in an art quilt? I’ve always thought it didn’t; but, after reading some art quilter blogs I’m beginning to have doubts. I will still finish the piece and enter it just to see what happens. Maybe the judge will send me a critique with the answer to my question which is….. Does the stitching on the back of an art quilt really matter?
4 comments:
i guess i think depends on what you want out of the art piece. it may get dinged at the show because of your tension issues, but is your objective to share your art or to win a ribbon or sell it? i would hate to think that only "perfect" pieces of art would be shared since we all know we are our own worst critics. however, another thing to consider is if you think entering a piece that you yourself are unhappy with, will have a negative impact on your "reputation". Again, i think it just depends on what your objective is in entering.
maybe you could devise an "art" back that wouldn't impact the front stitching? fabric painting? beading? fusible applieque?
good luck and looking forward to seeing the quilt in it's full glory!
Thank you kayp. Excellent suggestion for the back. I'm actually wanting people to see the ART more than anything else. Thank you for pointing this out to me. Sometimes I forget my objectives.
Oh, bless your heart...how frustrating. I hope you get your tension straightened out soon.
If you really don't like the back you could "pillowcase" bind it. I try to use "busy" fabric on the back so tension issues won't show.
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