Thursday, August 27, 2015

Contagious


by Lin Hsin-Chen
Contagious
My imagination goes wild. I draw the flowers freely to depict the impressive natural movement and texture. I challenge myself to create a contagious piece of work with simple color blocks.

Making this quilt is like sketching. I use fabrics dyed with acrylic paints to piece the color blocks, making it looks like a piece of drawing. With a sense of retro, I use needle and thread as painting brushes to test the energy of hand drawing and explore the joy of spontaneous creativity.



I love handwriting. I think handwriting is an emotion, an image and a sense of healing. Therefore, I do handwriting and sketching everyday, it’s just like the habit of having a cup of coffee every morning. The stories written in the notebooks are very important. To me, the texture transformed by the strokes and lines of words are truly valuable. Different strokes have diverse feelings. Naturally they become beautiful rhythm and cadence, and dance lively on the paper to evoke creative inspiration.

In this challenge, we are asked to use unconventional materials. To me, commercial cotton is indispensable for creating. I rarely use dyed fabrics in my previous works. This is my first time using dyed fabric exclusively in a quilt. It is a pleasure sewing the flower. Just like sketching happily on the paper, it gives me a non-stop contagious power. For a moment I thought I was a painter. Thank you, Betty, for the challenge!

Materials: fabric dyed with acrylic paints, woolen yarn
Techniques: hand pieced, hand appliqué, hand embroidered, three-layered hand quilted
Size: 24” W x 40” H

5 comments:

  1. just beautiful, Hsin-Chen, the lines are so expressive!

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  2. I hope you will use this technique again! Wonderful! Love it!

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  3. I love this Hsin-Chen! Your painting analogy is appropriate and I think the black, sketchy lines add a beautiful dimension.

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  4. Thank you all for the lovely comments! Betty- thank you for the challenge topic, it gives me lots of things to think! Sue- I will try this again, though it is quite challenging to me during the creative process! To be honest, I had fear of using dyed fabric because I always create with commercial cottons. It’s interesting to try new things, but it’s also difficult to get rid of the old habits. I was struggle with it and found it very conflicting. It’s excited that I finally find a new way to create! Again, I learned a lot from this piece of work!

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