This is my quilt, "The Black Box." It's 55" x 81" and it is completely original, designed by me, Lynne Tyler. It is completely "free pieced," which means it was made without patterns, templates and it is NOT paper-pieced.
I wanted the brightest areas of the quilt to emanate from the box, so the only pure white in the quilt is the opening in the box and, the white and silver rays and the fallouts of the letters O, E, and B. The words OUT OF THE BOX are presented in a rainbow of colors, to emphasize the concept of creative potential.
The idea was the box was magical, so I wanted the box to make you think of a magician's hat, but still look like an open box.
BEFORE ideas came out of the box, the world was bland and boring, so BEFORE is dull and gray.
Magical explosions are always accompanied by confetti, so just beyond the cloud of "OUT OF THE BOX" there is confetti blasting around. The wavy line quilting coming from the center of the quilt also gives the effect of shock waves.
I had to find a way to make the black box show up against the brown background, and tell you it was a magical box at the same time, so the box is surrounded by rays of white and metallic gold.
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Explosions, even magical ones, produce chaos and shock waves. My way of communicating that was to make "made fabric" from the background striped batik fabric.
The narrow parts of the letters are 5/8" finished and the lower case letters are 4-1/4" tall. They are NOT paper-pieced. I kept the background fabric of these letters running vertical to emphasize the staid, traditional world "before" out of the box thinking.
I work for a living, and hear this phrase "think out of the box" often, and I can't stand it. I made this quilt to thumb my nose at those who are always asking for "out of the box" ideas. Ideas don't come out of the blue, they come from somewhere, usually when things get juxtaposed against something unexpected.
You can see more quilts from the online festival here:
Quilt Blogger's Festival:
http://amyscreativeside.com/2014/05/16/bloggers-quilt-festival-spring-2014/
The Black Box is in the Original Design category, which can be found here:
http://amyscreativeside.com/2014/05/16/bloggers-quilt-festival-original-design-quilts/
Don't forget to vote for your favorite.
7 comments:
Lynn, This is truly a wonderful quilt. I followed along as you worked on it and admire your amazing creativity and the way you are willing to make changes and do things over until you get it the way you want it.
I LOVE THIS POST (you already know how I feel about you and the quilt).
HUGS!!
Love all the fun details, and how you thought through all of it. Absolutely gorgeous quilt!
This is a Rembrandt. Picaso would be jealous. Sargent would throw his brush in anguish.
This is really fabulous! Great design and execution. I love the little peaks of metallics shining out.
Very creative.
You got my vote!
Have a great day.
Always, Queenie
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