YIKES!!!!! I'm late!!!!

I'm Late

From "Alice in Wonderland"

Music and Lyrics by Sammy Fain and Bob Hilliard

I'm late!

I'm late!

For a very important date!

No time to say "hello", goodbye!

I'm late!

I'm late!!

I'm late!!!

No, no, no, no 

I'm overdue!

I'm really in a stew!

No time to say "goodbye", hello!

I'm late!

I'm late!!

I'm late!!! 

I probably shouldn't be smiling! 

My apologies for my extreme tardiness
but it seems that I have been bogged down by a variety of obligations
 and unexpected circumstances... 

and I'm almost out of gas!!!

I have to admit that I did get a (very) late start 

(my days of punctuality seem to be a thing of the past!)

and after pondering...

 and hemming and hawing a lot, 

I went with an idea that Brigitte had suggested (in jest?!) in an email exchange we had

 after this challenge was announced!

It was really a literal translation of "artistic license".... 

as in that which you might have on the license plate of your automobile!

(I still have to add some brads and perhaps "New York" to the license)

And...

while my piece is late,  

not done,

 and seems to be never-ending,

it was time to reveal what I have to the group.

"I'm Late!" is a  true mixed media work..

watercolor crayon/pencil on canvas

with free-motion stitching

collage,

Transfer Artist Paper (TAP),

hand embroidery,

rubber stamping on painted Lutradur

 and more!

And thanks again to Brigitte for the idea!!!

vertigo

I tossed with lots of ideas for the balance quilt, like a poem about two tightrope walkers that I would have loved to translate into an image, but got me really tangled. Then there was this saying: ‘Balance is the visual weight in design’, right down my alley! After I had sketched some designs they all were very colourful and balanced, but I wanted to dig a little deeper into this theme and try some new techniques. Then I tried to work on a feng shue like quilt, I worked out the idea of Audio Balance, a technique to feel balanced again after a burn out, which is all done with a computer programme, but none of the ideas did see the light.

So the pondering and procastination started all over again. Both my husband and I have been diagnosed in the past with vestibular neuritis (caused by a viral infection in the ear) and experienced an extreme balance disorder. So, there it was, my theme for the quilt! Vertigo! *

I painted fabric and lutradur with blue and yellow inks to obtain that (not so nice) green colour, that you get when you have vestibular neuritis. I printed a drawing of the ear and the inner ear (equilibrium) on lutradur, fused it to the fabric and stitched it down after I basted the quilt layers. With red shining paint and a thermofax screen I printed lines on the lutradur. These lines stand for the ‘short circuit’ that takes place in the equilibrium.

I used a variegated thread and elongated the screen print lines with the quilting. I was still missing the dizzy factor, so I quilted circles with another thread (no quilt without circles for me he?)

When you have this severe dizziness your eyes move rapidly from the left to the right or in circles and it feels like the world is spinning, so you can’t focus. You might experience problems with speech and sight. I stamped the words balance, giddy, tumble, woozy, speech, fuzzy, nausea and blurry in one of the circles, and stamped them again with a darker colour, to make it all a bit more blurry. Then I stamped little stars in another circle but the effect was almost nill, so I embroidered over the stars.

I wasn’t too happy with the overall result and needed something to lighten up the greenish background colour (green is my least favourite colour you know... ) and made a yellow binding with some red fabric pieces that I had painted with the SG paint.

I allowed myself too short a period of time (5 days) to make this quilt, so I miss my happy colourful self a bit, but well, you win some, you loose some.

Thanks Judy for this interesting theme that should have allowed me to work like I love most, simple and balanced but also challenged me to look further.

Nicolette

*(Vertigo (from the Latin Verto, ‘a whirling or spinning movement’ is a type of dizziness, where there is a feeling of motion when one is stationary. The symptoms are due to a dysfunction of the vestibular system in the inner ear. It is often associated with nausea and vomiting as well as difficulties standing or walking. There are three types of vertigo: objective − subjects are moving around the patient; subjective − patient feels as if moving himself; pseudovertigo − intensive sensation of rotation inside the patient's head. It can be caused by vestibular neuritis which is probably caused by a viral infection of the inner ear.)