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"Cracked Ice" Surface Design - Part 2

11/30/2022

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Picture
冰裂紋窗 Cracked Ice Window, by lienyuan lee, CC BY 3.0 , via Wikimedia Commons
I continue my investigation into the Chinese surface design called cracked ice.  Last time I introduced it and tried to answer the question: What principles or method underlie its design?  Today, I ask the same question, but in copy-pasted Chinese. 

I do not speak or read any Chinese dialect... this is me swimming in dark waters.  But since I can't find the information in English, I have to do my best with Google Translate and luck. 
As for pictures, if I'm not using my own work, I seek photos under free public licenses.  In today's post, however, I use one photo without permission (because I have no idea how to get permission).  But then I mangle it beyond recognition in the pursuit of design, so I'm not sure where copyright law falls on that one!  Nevertheless, I still do my best to credit the originator and link back. 

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"Cracked Ice" Surface Design - Part 1

11/28/2022

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In mundanity, complexity.  A sheet of ice, cracking as it thaws, inspires artists, woodworkers, scientists, and me!  Today's post is a deep dive into a surface design pattern called "Cracked Ice", which is common in traditional Chinese art. 

COPYRIGHT & PERMISSIONS

This post uses some photos that are available under free public licenses.  I put the attribution and copyright details under each borrowed picture; clicking on a borrowed picture will open its source page in a new window. 

A few of the pictures are my own, and I label them as well.  As a blanket rule, the pictures, writing, and other content of this blog are my property unless otherwise noted.  Feel free to link to, pin, or share these pages online, as long as you credit me (Karen Roy), preferably with a link back.  Please ask my permission before redistributing or reproducing my work in any other way.  ​
Picture
Cracked Ice, by Timo Noko from Helsinki, Finland, CC BY 2.0 , via Wikimedia Commons
Picture
冰裂窗 Cracked Ice Window, by lienyuan lee, CC BY 3.0 , via Wikimedia Commons

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Tiles and Tesselations

11/26/2022

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Now that I quilt, I see quilt patterns everywhere. Like in the pebble-mosaic walkways of the Lan Su Chinese Garden in Portland, Oregon!  Incidentally, that garden is beautiful, but in the interest of isolating patterns for blogging, I took some very boring pictures of it when I visited on November 15th, this year. 

A Pretty Picture

Picture

A Boring Picture

Picture

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Labeling and My Acid Trip Quilt

11/22/2022

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Labeling quilts is an interesting topic for me.  Historically, labeling quilts was not the norm.  Some modern interpreters assume that the women of the past didn't think their work deserved credit, as this quote from Womenfolk.com exemplifies:
Most women of the past simply didn't think that the everyday or even "for best" quilt they made was important enough to sign. Some even felt it would be too prideful to sign their quilt.
 -- America's Quilting History: Did She Sign Her Name?
     The History of Quilt Labels, by Judy Anne Breneman, 2001
I hesitate, however, to argue motives from a lack of evidence.  We have positive evidence of makers marking their quilts in several instances, such as when making signature quilts as gifts or community projects, or when labeling a quilt for laundry purposes.  Even the source cited above, which claims women failed to label quilts because they thought their work unimportant, then goes on to describe an uptick in labeling when indelible inks came on the market.  Did women suddenly find their quilts important then? 

Unsigned quilts were exhibited at county fairs, shipped across the ocean as gifts, saved for generations, and described in letters.  Clearly they were not unimportant, even if they went unsigned.  So maybe there are other explanations for not signing.  Maybe the makers lived in smaller communities than we do today, and within those communities the people who mattered knew who made what.  Perhaps the makers didn't care about a hundred years down the line because they never expected their quilts to last that long! 

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Should my Lioness be a Cheetah?

11/17/2022

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I am not happy with my lioness, for two reasons.  First, I think she's too plain.  Her yellow colors are similar to each other, and their saturation is similar to the blue sky.  And second, I already have a lion, and I want a greater variety of species.  So I look for stock photos of leopards and cheetahs, to see if their silhouettes and face shapes are similar enough to give my lioness a change of species.  What do you think? 
(Unless otherwise credited, I took all the pictures in this post.  The lioness paper piecing pattern is available on Etsy.)
Picture
Paper piecing pattern from JoeJuneandMae, sewn by me.
Picture
Photo by Jean Beaufort. License: CC0 Public Domain; click for download page.

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Memories of Africa - 'Round the Twist

11/16/2022

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Picture
You may recall my biggest design concern about this quilt is how to use the West African wax print fabrics without overwhelming the quilt with surface design.  I have a yellow blender fabric and Foundation Paper Piecings (FPPs) of East African animals to place between the busy patterns.  But how shall I put them all together?  I google "quilt patterns for large scale prints" to get ideas, and decide on a block called " 'Round the Twist".  I have drawn it here in Christmas colors.  It's simple: just two units (A and B).  The block is meant to be in two colors, but obviously I'll be doing it with lots of prints. 

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Lion and Lioness FPP

11/10/2022

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Where can you see lions?  ONLY IN KENYA! 

Remember the Weebl's Kenya flash animation?  It's on YouTube now, but I prefer it with the endless loop, for that original dorky charm!  When I was in Africa with my mom, I felt that song!  We were on the "Holy Crap.  Lions!  Tour"!  The funniest part was when I'd burst into the Kenya song, and my mom, thoroughly out of touch with the enthusiasms of the youth, would give me a baffled/amused look. 
Picture
My mom giving me "the look". Behind her-- holy crap! LIONS!

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Memories of Africa Quilt

11/8/2022

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In 2010-ish, my mother and I decided we wanted to go to Africa.  I had worked with people from Kenya, and dated a man from Liberia.  My mom knew lots of Africans through her work.  We wanted to see the countries our friends came from!  So we opened a joint savings account and arranged direct deposits from our paychecks, in the same amount, so we were contributing equally.  At first, it was $20/check, but we kept upping the amount, as our excitement urged us to go sooner rather than later!
Picture
Agama Lizard, Lake Nakuru National Park, Kenya

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Superb Starling FPP

11/2/2022

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Picture
Various birds, Serengeti National Park, Tanzania. 2012.
Imagine me in a Serengeti campsite, taking this picture.  Behind the camera, my mom and I have just washed our clothes in a shared fountain and wait for them to dry over rocks.  As we sit and talk, we admire the birds.  The blue ones are superb starlings (Lamprotornis superbus).  I don't know what the smaller, brown ones are, nor what to call the bossy-looking fellow with legs like a Clydesdale horse!  In fact, it's the bossy one that prompts me to take the picture, because we've never seen him before.  However, the superb starlings are the ones which stick in my memory a decade later.  They are native to East Africa, where they gather everywhere in big groups.  The Xeno-Canto website collects their calls, so you can hear them sing! 

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Acid Trip Quilt Top DONE!

10/27/2022

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It's too heavy to stay up on the design wall, so I have draped it over the table... which means you'll have to take my word for it that it's quite nice!  Ha ha!  However, I am too delighted to wait for a perfect picture to post.  So here we have the Acid Trip quilt top, finished, pretending to be a tablecloth:
Picture
Now I need to have it quilted.  I have decided that the black pieces need to be quilted with stripes that mimic the stripes they would have if they were pieced like the colorful ones.  That means paying the long-armer to do custom quilting.  So it will have to wait until I have more money!  But it's ready to go as soon as my finances permit!

Previous posts for this project:

First post, about string piecing
Second post, about patterns as the blocks are tiled
Third post, about the layout
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    Karen Roy

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