I wrote a little while back that this wall quilt had been accepted for a Studio Art Quilt Associates juried online/virtual gallery, but showed only the detail in that post, because my quirky policy is to never show the full image of a new work until it hs been published or exhibited somewhere. As the “Geometric Expressions” gallery went live this week, here is “The Shimmer Effect” in full:

I love concentric squares, and I love the traditional Nine Patch quilt block. so beloved of quiltmakers – and here both elements are blended into the design for this work.

My artist statement about this work reads – “A square symbolises balance, solidity and stability.  Hand stitching over concentric squares in gentle neutral colours calmed my unease at current disorder and chaos in the world.  Metallic threads in my work signify value or importance, here referencing tradition and hope.”

I posted about it while making this quilt as it was such a long project. It’s about 1m square, with each concentric square unit being ~6cm, with a total of 121 squares of fused nylon organza strips oversewn by hand in metallic thread. The fabric used in the squares has a subtle glittery texture. The grey background is plain cotton.

This blog is really my artist’s diary, or the nearest I will ever come to keeping one, but I also post on Instagram, @schwabealison, too, and that tends to be where things pop up, sometimes from the archives, before they are eventually bound into a post on this site. Cheers!