Breaking The Rules For Off The Wall Friday

One of my resolutions this year was to play with Nina-Marie more often with her Off The Wall Posts. 

She is an incredible artist.  And when she started her Off the Wall connections I was really excited about being able to connect with some other great artists and quilters as well.

Her post this week is about Breaking The Rules.  In Your Art.  (Not by speeding and flipping off the officer and landing in jail!)  You need to read it. 

So here is my Rule Breaking piece and its story.

I started it maybe 8 years ago in a class by a local quilter named Sherry.  I really like Sherry, who sometimes pushes the envelope herself.  But she never really really breaks out.  One of the things she does is takes interesting quilts and designs them as miniatures.  Her work is impeccable. 

Sherry was doing some radical (for Baton Rouge anyway) work with the Angle Play templates.  And I was way ready to move out of the old ways and into some new and exciting stuff.   She took me for a few steps into that journey!

The Angle Play blocks are interesting, but they are so labor intensive!  You have to have the right template, on the right piece of fabric at the right angle and in the right universe.  So many rules.

And I did not use the traditionally accepted fabrics.  In fact, I even cut  up a skirt that i had made for Carrie that she hated and never wore!  It is the flowers to the left here.  Psychedelic!

The blocks from the class sat around for a while hoping for more blocks to join them.  When that seemed unlikely, at some point in the timeline they got put together into a center and an inner border.  And I found a neat little batik print that  framed the whole thing.

Then further down the timeline, I finally chose a backing.  So now it relocated to the dining room where the long arm resides. That is one way to move it out of the quilt room!

So when I had a wild hair to quilt something, I wanted a simple piece.  I grabbed the Angle Play Stars and snapped it on the frame.  (Love those Red Snappers!)

And I stared at it.  Nothing.

I ended up with a straight line uneven quilting all the way across the quilt.  When I took it off the frame last night, I found it still needed something.  

So I pt it back on in the opposite direction this morning.  I like it now.

In anyone else's hands, it would be gotten curves to offset the straight angular blocks; the thread would have blended with the pieces; and it would have precisely matched to make sure each line was perpendicular every seam.

Well, you know me!  I broke those rules! 

And I have named it Breaking Bad!