Friday, June 7, 2013

Se?alvage Update: SAQA Auction Piece

In my last post, I asked for advice on a quilt that I was making for the 2013 SAQA Auction.

If you read the post you may recall that I showed two images of the unfinished piece:

One with no added elements...

unfinished piece with no added elements



















and a second, with two strips of red fabric.

unfinished piece with added elements

At the time, I was trying to figure out whether the piece needed additional fabric to balance out the dark areas surrounding the "selvage fabric."  And I was also thinking about names for the quilt.

So first, a big thank you to all who responded (on or off the blog).

As far as your comments...here's the scoop:
  • Almost everyone encouraged me to add something to the piece. 
  • Many liked the idea of the red in some form or another;  although some thought the red, as pictured above, was too heavy (I'd call it "clunky"). 
  • A couple of folks suggested using black strips either on the sides or at the edge of the selvage "fabric;"  a very interesting idea --- and one I'm likely to try if I do another version.
  • The majority of folks liked the 3rd name choice:  Se?alvaged.  
          One comment that particularly struck me came from Susan Lenz who made an extremely helpful observation about naming quilts that provides some very interesting food for thought.  Here's a   portion of her comment:
  • "...I have no real opinion on how to best finish the piece but I do have an opinion on the title. I'd recommend NONE of them. Why? Because you will not be able to save a digital file with any of these titles. Most photo programs cannot accommodate the slashes or the question mark. I know. I titled an installation "I Do / I Don't" and had to use a different title "I Do and I Don't" for the images. Although this might not sound like a "big deal", for those who spend time on selecting a perfect title and are really into words/text and the relationship between title and artwork, it is an unfortunate problem that the images cannot be saved by the selected name...." 
          The potential difficulties of adding special characters (slashes, question marks, etc.) had never occurred to me.  Definitely something to keep in mind.  (A sidenote:  I probably would have heeded Susan's advice had out-of-town travel and a tight schedule not forced me to send off the piece pronto). 

I finally did decide to add some elements to the quilt --- in the form of several strips of red fabric - a bit more delicate, I hope, than the two clunkier ones that were originally pictured.  Here's the finished piece (sent just in time to meet the SAQA deadline and with hopes that someone will enjoy it enough to give it a good home):   

Se?alvaged


 Thanks for your input!


Cheers,

Debbie