SUNDANCE

SUNDANCE  reflects the bright, joyful mood captivating me this past weekend when I completed this art piece.   Anchorage was aglow in sunshine for several days,  the trees are budding and finally all the snow in my yard has melted!  In addition, the completion of a few art projects with deadlines, left me with a heady feeling of accomplishment and lightness.  My previous quilt project, LIBERATION was somber and meditative for me to work on, so the brightness of SUNDANCE offered me a welcome reprieve.  

Sundance (16" X 21")

Those of you who have followed this blog may have recognized the 'sun' is familiar.  I created it in Larkin Jean Van Horn's Shattered Circles class last Fall.  The foundation fabric is a commercial batik print, the sun rays is a recycled bed sheet I hand dyed, and the mask appliqued in the center came from a design I made and silk screened in a Jean Ray Laury class so many years ago I'm thinking hmmmm.... perhaps mid- 90's?  Do I hang onto stuff or what?  ha!

Since the sun itself is rather bright and over powering, I sewed a three inch top and bottom border from hand woven Guatemalan fabric my daughter brought home from a school mission trip.  I liked the horizontal lines which provided a sense of sky and horizon and elongated the overall dimensions of the quilt surface.  Stitching was done in black rayon embroidery thread with a programmed wavy machine stitch I radiated around the blades.  The mask is free motion zigzag stitched around the feather like face ruff.  Originally my mask design was loosely based on native Alaskan dance masks.  Thus the title of this piece --- Sundance.

This small quilt was made for the Anchorage Log Cabin Quilter's annual Small Quilt silent auction to be held in September in conjunction with the guilds show at the Conoco Phillips Atrium, Anchorage.