Art Lessons from the Beyond (and the Louvre): Homage to Eustache LeSueur

Do you take loads of photos of museum art? And then they sit forever in your computer?
They make wonderful palette cleansers -- fast projects, low on stress, high on learning, as you study the art, figure out what the artist was doing, and what makes the piece so compelling. 

In a December blog post I showed a bejeweled tribute to a 1763 painting by Fragonard that I photographed in the Louvre five years ago. (Find that article here.) 

Here's the next piece of art I tackled, from the same Louvre visit, and more than 100 years older. It's called "St. Bruno being Carried Up to Heaven," by Eustache LeSueur, circa 1645. (This was one of 22 paintings that LeSueur, a celebrated painter and art professor(!), made about the life of St. Bruno.) (Who was St. Bruno? Born in 1030, he too was also celebrated, for rejecting worldly pleasures, and establishing a monastery in the Chartreuse Mountains of France.)

I was just taken with it -- first, the luminous blue and gold, and second, the drama, beauty, and optimism of his ascent, not to mention the weirdness of the underdressed rotund angels. 

The first thing I did was trace the drawing, which I do in my CorelDraw graphics design program, but could have done by hand with my lightbox.

With a painting that's out of copyright, and a photo taken by me, there shouldn't be any issues about using, tracing, or interpreting it. (It would be a different story if it were modern art and/or still under copyright, and/or I was using someone else's photo -- then I would have to seek permission.) Here's what my tracing looked like. 

Hmmm. That's a heckuva confusing clump. To understand it better, I cut everyone apart. Below is the saint, minus the arm of one angel under his arm on the right, and minus the front of another angel peeking out between his legs.

All of them were cut up here: 

Those two angels entwined with him were problematic -- especially since the top one is headless!

So I decided to banish them, fill out the saint to close those gaps, and then bring the two lowest angels inward, to just touch him. 

I did it all with raw-edge applique, and it's only about 7" square, so this was a one-evening project. I zigzagged everyone in place, surrounded them with quilted gold energy lines, crammed in two clouds, and all in all, had a wonderful time reveling in, learning from, and celebrating an intriguing work of art. Professor LeSueur is still teaching! 

Homage to Fragonard, or, Fun & Learning with your Favorite Museum Snapshots

Need a fast holiday gift? How about turning your favorite museum art photos into mini-quilts?

 Before:

After: 

UPDATE!

Backstory:

Do you take a ton of photos at art museums? I sure do, because I see so many art lessons, about color, composition, creativity, and courage.

These photos are fun to revisit from time to time, but not much happens with them. 

Until a couple of  weeks ago, when the Notre Dame Cathedral was reopened, five years after the horrific fire. 

Days before that fire, we were visiting Paris, including Notre Dame. (I blogged about it here.)  

We also went to the Louvre. We had no plan, but wound up spending a lot of time in the 15th-19th century French painting galleries (blogged here.)

One of the dozens of photos I took was this. Titled "Rinaldo in the Garden of the Palace of Armida," it was painted by Rococo artist Jean-Honore Fragonard, circa 1763. 

It's an over-the-top decadent scene, which is the point of Rococo. On the right, nubile, pale women are escorting a soldier (You can tell by his massive golden helmet, adorned with...feathers? Do the feathers make the enemy laugh so hard that they're immobilized?)

On the far left, another tantalizing pale  women emerges from a cave to look on. 

At first sight, I admired the pastel palette, which I almost always avoid. Pinks! Yellows! So not my thing, but, WOW! I also loved the  fluffiness. And the artistic skill here is fantastic; so few strokes convey so much, especially semi-transparent drapery. Fragonard is the man! 

So thinking about Notre Dame two weeks ago got me looking at my photo of this painting, and that got me doing a little research. 

The soldier -- Rinaldo -- was a Crusader, and his troops were about to invade Jerusalem. But a witch named Armida (I assume that's the gal on the far left?) wanted to stop the invasion, so she kidnapped him. She took him -- in her magic chariot -- to her magic garden, where she planned to kill him. Instead, she fell in love with him; he never returned to war and they lived happily ever after.

This ostensible history was told in an epic poem called "Jerusalem Delivered," by Italian writer Torquato Tasso, published in 1581. 

The story was performed as an opera in Paris in 1761. Historians postulate that Fragonard either attended or heard about it there. 

I decided to celebrate this piece, and learn from it, without stressing myself out. I did a cross between copying and riffing. 

Step 1. I started out with a 9" x 7" piece of stiff interfacing (I like Peltex) with the fusible side up (or use two-sided fusible interfacing and put parchment paper on bottom when pressing). 

Step 2. Start cutting triangle-ish pieces -- I was going for a "low poly" look so I picked triangles. (You could choose rectangles, ovals, hexagons, or anything). I used batiks for a painterly effect, and tried to approximate colors and shades, and location. Studying the painting closely to do this is where I learned the most, including understanding the artist's composition and how he created the two focal points, with the white-skinned people and Rinaldo's sash. 

Step 3. Keep adding fabric until all the interfacing is covered. Fabric pieces will overlap. If the fabric isn't touching the fusible on the interfacing, use a glue stick to adhere it.

Step 4. Press everything in place. The hot iron will also dry any glue. 

Step 5. I first machine-stitched about 13 diagonal straight lines across the scene, at 3/4" intervals. This held everything in place a little better than just glue and fusible. These are light-colored lines of stitching that you can barely see in the photos.

Step 6.  The most fun part: hand stitching. I used embroidery floss and added long stitches to mirror the implied or actual detail lines and brush strokes of the original. Since this is a small piece, I think I did all the stitching in about 2-3 hours while watching tv. 

I used a lot of variegated embroidery thread skeins. On Rinaldo's gold sash, the browns and golds are from just one thread. (The white thread on the pale people is not variegated). 

Step 7. I glued/fused a piece of fabric to cover the back. 

Step 8. Trim all the edges even and straight. Then I did a corded edging, something close to a satin stitch all the way around, with metallic gold thread on top and in the bobbin, enclosing a gold embroidery thread as "cord". (If you look up "corded edging" you'll find it's easy to do and helps make raw edges like this neater than just doing a satin stitch without a "cord.")

Then I went back to my original picture to study the frame. The painting's golden frame is almost as over-the-top as the painting. I figured I could get that effect with lace.  First I auditioned white lace....

Definitely not -- the frame is now competing with the white figures, who are the focus of the painting. So I decided to paint that lace gold, same as the actual frame. 

I used acrylic Lumiere paint, mixed with a bit of fabric medium. (Any acrylic paint should work, and if you add fabric medium it will thin it a bit.) I first let it dry bumpy like this, and basted it in place, but I didn't like the look; The ruffles drew too much attention. 

So I undid the basting, pressed the lace as flat as I could, and resewed it in place. I like it much better this way. 

And that's my happy-ish ending! True, now I think my figures look like Halloween ghosts (or, much worse, KKK refugees? Oh no!!! Too late for me to fix that!) But it's still a relatively happy ending, compared to that of Fragonard, who, in hindsight, had picked the wrong clientele. Along came the French Revolution, and most of them were executed. His work was ignored for years, before he was rediscovered. I hope he's looking on and forgives me for my lazy, yet respectful tribute to his work. He opened my eyes to new composition, focus, and color ideas! Merci, Jean-Honore! 

UPDATE (12/27/24): My kid (who is an artist) saw this piece and decided it needed something more. So they added jewelry! That's the photo you see at the top of this page! Now we're talking serious Rococo! 

 

Four Windmills, 55 Years

Ever since moving to Southern California 30 years ago, I have marveled at the region's windmills, especially the miles of them between my Los Angeles home, and the "Road to California" quilt show in Ontario, CA, that I visit annually. They look like this:

Sometimes they spin in unison, sometimes out of sync, but they always make me happy, a majestic miracle of alternative energy. 

In February, when I was playing with a raw-edge fabric-covered-with-tulle technique to make Valentines, I thought of those windmills and decided to make some. I pulled all the pieces from my batik scrap bag.

The highest scrap was a failed experiment with stamping circles of gold paint on fabric. (below, left). The planet on the far right is a different piece of batik. 

For the centers, I used decorative buttons, because: Why not?

A friend saw this on my Facebook page, and bought it for a friend of hers who works in alternative energy. I was thrilled, but sad, because now, I thought I didn't have a windmill quilt!

So I made another one. This has fewer windmills, and instead of buttons, I sewed hex nuts to the centers. 

Then it occurred to me that hex nuts are probably the last thing you want holding rotating blades, because they will unwind eventually, right? But I didn't want to take those nuts off, because they're so darn cute! 

And it wasn't until after I'd finished the piece, that I remembered I'd made windmill-themed fiber art more than 50 years ago. This thing has been lying on a bureau in my bedroom for so long that I almost never notice or think about it.  (Note what's happening in the upper right corner when I tried to photograph it.) 

It's felt and embroidery thread, made from a kit, in the 60s, when I was in elementary school. I cut the pre-marked shapes out of the felt, and followed the stitching directions, which included zigzagging leaf veins, and square stitches for the windmill blades. It's clever and adorable, and none of this was my idea -- I just followed  directions, which is how so many of us begin our fiber art adventures!

After I finished it, it followed me around. I found it in a box and laid it out in my bedroom a couple of decades ago.  

So after making the quiltets above, I noticed it again, with new eyes, and decided to take its picture. My grandcat loves when I get laser-focused on taking a decent photo, and as you can see, she wants to help. 

So not only is this piece worn by age, sun, and never having been washed, but now it's also embedded with cat fur.

And now, I thought, I own TWO windmill fiber art pieces. But wait, there's more! Writing this blog post I remembered I had  another windmill, in my quilt "Nonsense Town," which is only about year old.

It's in the top row, center. 

It's sort of a cross between the Dutch technology in my Sixties sampler, and the sleek newfangled California model. Newsflash: This windmill, on this quilt, is now a puzzle on The Quilt Show, because of my recent episode! Find the puzzle here. 

So now, if any one happens to ask me, "What is the recurring lifelong theme of your quilts?" instead of answering, "Um, I'm not sure, probably nuthin'," I  have a concrete answer: "Windmills!"

Was a sampler your first fiber art? Do you still have it? Have you taken its picture?

For more about the relaxing confetti-raw edge applique technique, go to https://gefiltequilt.blogspot.com/2024/02/stress-relief-with-confetti-valentines.html

Epic Rhyming Quilt: Just Attach Trash!

SAQA, the Studio Art Quilt Associates organization, recently hosted a "Rhyme or Reason" challenge, and entries closed at the end of February. Here's the piece I entered. 

If you like crossword puzzles, Scrabble, and other word games - and sewing tiny random things to quilts - you might want to consider making a variation of this kooky, obsessive project. It's a brain teaser for the maker as well as the giftee. 

I started by sewing 100 1.5" squares together. 

(I'm hooked on running up and down the value scale and all around the color wheel, brightest values in the center - but you do your thing. You can also make all the squares the same color!) 

Flip to the back. Press all the seams open, to create partitions. This is your new front. Add batting and backing, and finish the edges any way you want. (I did a pillowcase turn.)

Now fill the squares with tiny junk which rhymes, and which, for optional additional eye-exercise, has a color that sort-of matches its square. Every one of the 100+ objects on this quilt rhymes with at least one other object. Some rhyme with two or more. I've counted 70+ rhymes, which I track in a five-page document attached to the quilt.  

Here's what I'm talking about. (I'm not going to yell; I'm going to capitalize words that rhyme.) 

The blue CAR button below rhymes with the JAR button under it (I usually placed rhyming pairs far apart, but this rhyme occurred to me after the quilt was finished.) The CAR originally rhymed with a STAR elsewhere on the quilt, and the jar I initially thought of as a VASE which rhymed with a FACE and piece of LACE elsewhere.

The word FAST above, right, rhymes with a FORECAST, below.  The thread SPOOL rhymes with a JEWEL elsewhere; the cake-decoration baby above I'm calling a TYKE, to rhyme with a silver BIKE charm in the photo below; or, call him/her a DOLL, to rhyme with a soccer BALL.

The purple guitar PICK below rhymes with a CANDLESTICK tie tack elsewhere; the seaSHELL, left of the pick, rhymed with the toy wishing WELL, on the middle right of the same photo. In the left middle, there's a fluorescent green PEAR that I rhymed with a red BEAR and rocking CHAIR. The DICE will soon rhyme with MICE.

Above, in the upper right corner, is the needle THREADER, that I rhymed with the soccer ball HEADER below. Next to the pink ball, the SQUIRREL rhymes with a PEARL (fake).

The BELT, next to the clown, matches a piece of purple FELT.  Here are the MICE (glued to a shank button) that rhymed with the DICE.

In the middle of the next photo, the bright triangle, can you see the etched PAGODA, in what was my Mom's solo glass earring? 

I rhymed that sucker with a teeny can of SODA (top left in the photo below.) Next to the soda, the red BEER/CAP rhymes with a tiny DEER or SNAP. (Punched a hole in the top side of the cap with a hammer and nail.) The pot of GOLD with a rainbow, on the upper right corner of the photo below - goes with a denim bead that's ROLLED; it also represents LUCK to rhyme with a DUCK.

The pink creature immediately above gave me three rhymes: PIG (SPRIG); HOG (DOG) and BOAR (DINOSAUR). Above the pig, the mini-credit CARD rhymed with a can of LARD (below, middle).

South of the Crisco is the pink glass DOG that rhymed with HOG; I also used his MUZZLE to rhyme with a piece from a PUZZLE; and PUP to rhyme with a CUP. Above, lower right corner is a metal FEATHER that rhymes with the WEATHER badge in the photo below, plus green LEATHER. Above in the upper left corner is the Big DIPPER that I embroidered, to go with a ZIPPER;  the blue dog TAG in the rightmost column above rhymes with a handBAG and a STAG.

Below is a RATTLE (SADDLE), the WEATHER (FEATHER, LEATHER); DUCK (LUCK); FLAGON (covered WAGON) or CUP (PUP); and FLOWER (Eiffel TOWER) or BLOOM (MUSHROOM, BROOM).

Below, on the upper left, is the orange CHAIR rhymes with BEAR, HAIR, and PEAR; a DINO (RHINO); an oval shisha mirror signifying YOU, which rhymes with....

...the number TWO (below, a Brownie patch), plus anything BLUE. Next to the number is the piece of FELT, which I rhymed with the BELT....the DOLPHIN, which I rhymed with a safety PIN (or PORPOISE which I rhymed with the alien CORPUS).

Below, a peace SIGN (FELINE, TWINE) or just PEACE  (FLEECE, on a lamb). Under it is the swatch of LEATHER (FEATHER, WEATHER).

Below, the sew-in SNAP that rhymed with the Kona beer CAP. There's also a broken HEART/FIBER ART (is that cheating?) There's the PUZZLE piece that rhymed with MUZZLE.

Below, there's a broom (which I made from pine needles and a chopstick); it rhymes with MUSHROOM and BLOOM. The FROG rhymes with the DOG and HOG, the pink BOOT rhymes with FRUIT, and the ALIEN rhymes with the SAFETY PIN and DOLPHIN. (Except when he's a CORPUS, to rhyme with PORPOISE).

And so forth. This was so freaking much fun, so obsessive - and so challenging. I'm a professional writer - but never of poetry - and I had no idea it would be so difficult to find rhyming nouns, especially if they have to be depicted in toys, beads, and other tchatchkes, in randomly pre-selected colors. 

In fact I literally started dreaming about this quilt, jubilantly discovering new rhymes. Tip: Keep a notepad nearby, even when asleep. As soon as you think of a rhyme, write it down, because it's amazing how fleeting they can be. (When you wake up, you may discover the rhyme doesn't exist.)

It didn't help that my sewing room is at the opposite end of the house from my computer, and I don't have a paper rhyming dictionary. So I didn't consult an online rhyming dictionary until late in the process. When I finally did start using (this one), it wasn't a huge help - the reason I couldn't think of rhymes is because there often aren't many - especially not rhymes that are memorialized in tiny objects. 

Take octopii. Please. Despite owning several adorable octopus buttons and charms that I would have loved to put on this quilt,  I never found a common noun to rhyme with OCTOPUS (autobus pronounced the French way?)

I have a lovely charm in the shape of a THIMBLE, but what does that rhyme with? Dimple? RIPPLE wine? And the plastic BABY drove me CRAZY. BABY/RABIES? I have a ton of bellydancer COINS, but what is there beyond LOINS?

Not to mention my ceramic button in the shape of a sewing MACHINE (Fabric that's CLEAN? Meat that's LEAN? Clown that's MEAN?). 

A friend gave me a cute little fabric applique of a rotary CUTTER that I really wanted to stitch to the quilt, but the only rhyme I could come up with was UDDER and none of my cow toys or buttons had discernible udders (Grrrr, why are toy manufacturers not making anatomically correct cows?) 

And does anything rhyme with ROTARY besides a miniature NOTARY? 

I have a pendant that is a  resin-encased aspen LEAF, but all I can rhyme with LEAF is good GRIEF!  My stray Monopoly piece - the IRON - will only sorta rhyme with the Life of BRIAN (Monty Python buttons haven't been invented.) And surprisingly few words rhyme with my hex NUT and wing NUT. SMUT? HUT? BUTT? Please, this is a G-rated quilt. 

In short, this project has given me new respect for poets and songwriters, although of course, unlike quilters, they can use abstractions to rhyme with LEAF, like GRIEF, and difficult-to-miniaturize NOTARIES in their POETRIES.

I think this thing would make great decor for a pediatrician's office, or a kids' room.  Frame it in Lucite, so a child doesn't break the glass to get to the toys. 

Want to make one yourself? If you're in a rush, you could just shop the novelty button section of the craft or fabric store. But if you have a little more time, diversify.  

STAGE I: Upcycle your junk. Look in the:

• Household junk drawer
• Sewing basket(s) Along with the safety PIN, needle THREADER, SPOOL of THREAD, and ZIPPER, I also attached a giant blue plastic yarn NEEDLE to my quilt, to sorta rhyme with a metal BEETLE.
• Fabric stash I used SILK, LEATHER, LACE and FELT to create rhymes. 
• Bathroom cabinet I used a sweet little BARRETTE from my daughter's childhood, to rhyme  with BRACELET. I could imagine using a Q-TIP, to rhyme with a computer CHIP.  A hair ELASTIC could rhyme with something PLASTIC. Although PILL rhymes with TWILL, I don't recommend gluing prescription medication to the quilt.
• Rock collection MALACHITE/SATELLITE; HEMATITE/KITE; OBSIDIAN/Joan DIDION, never mind. (BTW, nothing rhymes with PEBBLE. Feel free to correct me.) (OK, maybe REBEL.)
• Costume jewelry 
• Button box
• Carpentry or metalwork workshops Rusty SCREW goes with Barbie's SHOE; a bent NAIL, goes with a PAIL, a BOLT goes with a COLT. 
• Recycling bin You can use cardboard - this quilt will never be washed. Cut out the chart of Nutrition FACTS, pair them with candle WAX? You could laminate cardboard, too. PROTEIN/SEWING MACHINE! Eureka! CARBOHYDRATES? Anyone?
• Toy boxes  Pay special attention to Shrinky-Dinks, Creepy Crawlers, Polly Pockets, Littlest Pet Shop, etc. 
• Scouting badges Ask permission before cutting them off a uniform. The ones I used were all flea market extras.
• Old games Scrabble tiles, puzzle pieces, Monopoly pieces. The older they are, the cooler your quilt. It would be fun to come up with an all-vintage version. 

STAGE 2: Make Stuff

• If you're good with polymer clay, you can make an awful lot of recognizable object. If you're good at drawing or painting with permanent markers, you can draw on shank buttons. 
• I didn't - but could also have glued details cut from novelty fabrics onto cover buttons or shank buttons. 

And if those doesn't provide enough rhyming objects, move to Step 3, shopping, at:

• Thrift shops An especially good place to find old games. 
• The gumball machine Fascinating crap, including my collection of miniature plastic rifles and guns (why do they sell these to children?)
• The music store  I found brightly colored guitar picks with ready-made holes; consider other musical supplies like clarinet REEDS (WEEDS? SEEDS? BEADS!) Our local music store also sells instrument charms. (GUITAR/STAR/CAR/crow BAR). 
• The cake decorating store - the baby, squirrel, clown's head, and more on my quilt were cake or cupcake decorations. Cake decorations are some of the campiest, funniest stuff you'll ever find outside of a gumball machine.
• The bead store - Not just the metal charm department - also check out the glass and ceramic novelty beads, like the trompe l'oeil brown glass coffee bead below, which I mounted on a square cut from a foil coffee bag. (I could not find anything to rhyme with coffee. The rhyming dictionary suggests Qaddafee, but that's in poor taste. Instead, I used a rhyme for coffee BEAN - a piece of window SCREEN.) 
• Other hobby stores; the model train store (trees, people); the dollhouse store (home furnishings), and of course the hardware store (screen, nails, etc.)
• The liquor store. Buy beer with colorful/interesting CAPs. I couldn't find a suitable rhyme for CORK, but you might. (Wait, I just thought of one! A pig - it's PORK! Why didn't I think of that sooner?) Also, this project might drive you to drink.
• The craft store, of course. Along with bead and button sections, they may have a miniatures section. And they also sell findings that you can use to attach weird things to your quilt. 

HOW TO ATTACH WEIRD THINGS to YOUR QUILT

• MELT A HOLE:  If it's plastic, go to a well-ventilated area and use a pointy crafting heat tool or a soldering iron to melt a hole in the back. For example, the clown above - I used my craft tool to melt a hole through the back of his ruff. 

• GLUE IT TO A SHANK BUTTON. If it's not meltable, or it's too small to safely melt, glue it to a shank button. I like Liquid Fusion glue. If you use a fabric-covered shank button, the hold will be better than with plastic.  Here's the mini soda can on a green twill-covered shank button: 

GLUE IT DIRECTLY ON THE QUILT I didn't do this, but some people do. The only thing I don't like about this is that you can't switch objects around. Once it's glued, it's staying right there. 

WRAP IT IN TULLE AND SEW IT ON My friend Marion told me this worked for rocks. And speaking of rocks, you can also,

WIRE IT ON Below is a polished ROCK (rhymes with HAWK, CLOCK, CHALK, BLOCK) that I wrapped with wire. I made a small wrapped loop at the top to stitch to the fabric.  (Also call it a STONE, which I rhymed with a button BONE). 

BUTTON COVERS and FINDINGS - Remember, those bulky things you slid onto buttons, to jazz up a shirt?  I think they were big in the 80's. I bought an extravagent collection from a thrift shop 1990s - lots with holiday themes, like the St. Patrick's Day pot of gold and the mini-credit card you saw in the quilt above.

Browsing the web, I can't find many button covers except vintage ones on ebay and etsy. But if you google "snap-on button covers" you can find blank ones. Glue your object to the front, slide it onto a regular button, and snap it shut. 

TIE TACK FINDINGS  These findings are like stud earrings. Instead of sewing it to the quilt, poke a hole through the quilt, and hold it in position with the rear finding. 

Have fun with this idea! And/or send rhymes! I had so much fun with this quilt, I might do it again! What have you made that rhymes?

Look, Up in the Sky! Eclipse? Fruit Cocktail?

For the NASA eclipse art challenge, discussed in my last two posts (1,2) I planned to do something serious and dignified, in keeping with cosmic awe, science, wonder and all that. Inspired by austere NASA photography, it would probably involve discharge (chemically removing dye) from black fabric, which creates this kind of a mood...

...(from a years-old stamping-discharge experiment stuffed into my stash), except less wrinkly.

But a funny thing happened on the way to austere dignity, and I wound up making this:

It all started when I started to create the patchwork background, inspired by my friend Anne's photos of the eclipse reflected through tree leaves on tiled Atlanta sidewalks, which I showed last week.

I figured I would discharge the moon shapes onto a pieced sidewalk. But blacks and greys seemed too dull. Instead, I cut shadowy brown and purple batiks into 1 1/2" strips. I also cut strips of used packing paper to 2 1/2" x about 15". (Never throw away packing paper - it's also great for drafting freemotion quilting designs). Pieced the fabric strips on the paper at an angle - half had the strips going from upper left to lower right, and the other half with the strips going the other way. In process, it looks like this: 

 Cut off the tails.

 I wound up making five.

Stitched the rows together. (I wanted it rectangular, like a sidewalk, so I only used four).

 Then tore out the paper. The background was done.

Time to bring in the moody moons.  That would require rummaging through my craft supply closet to locate my jar of preferred discharge agent, Decoulerant. (no financial affiliation). But I happened to be at my cutting board, where there were some batting scraps. Just for fun, I cut some crescents and strewed them on.

Below is the next photograph in my camera. I'm not sure what happened between these two photos. Maybe I blacked out. Or maybe there was another eclipse. When I awoke, I'd done this:

OK, I didn't black out, there was some logic that got me pulling colorful scraps from my batik scrap bag and raucously cutting them into moons, planets, telescopes, eyewear, sidewalk leaves, etc.

I viewed the eclipse from the Caltech campus in Pasadena, CA, where my husband works. It didn't get very dark, so, at least as impressive as the teeny waxing and waning crescent in the sky was how it drew people together, joyfully grooving on the vibe. In 1967, when I was 10, I went with my parents to a Be-In in Central Park. The eclipse was like the Be In, but without the cannabis, protest, or big hair. People were getting high on astronomy.

So, dang the cosmos, I let myself quilt a colorful celebration. 

After looking at what I'd made for about ten seconds, I was a little bummed to realize that my crescent suns look just like bananas. 

I can't think of a cure for that. (Ideas welcomed.)

On further reflection, one might argue that there are also maraschino cherries and grapes.

Oh well. I added batting and backing, and freemotion stitched everything down. I hand-embroidered the location and date on the telescopes. 

I do still have one extra strip - maybe I'll try some serious bleach discharge on it.  

Or maybe I'll just throw on some more bananas. 

 You have until September 15, 2017 to complete your eclipse-inspired art work, take a picture and upload it to social media using the hashtag #EclipseArtQuilt.  There's no judge, no jury, no voting, just sharing!  It's a cyber-Be-In. 

• To learn more about the Eclipse Art Quilt project, go go.nasa.gov/2qoqTis.
• To see pieces that have already been posted (including fiber art pieces), use the #EclipseArtQuilt hashtag in a social media search engine, especially Twitter and Facebook. 
• Machine quilting guru Leah Day has a tutorial for making her cutaway eclipse applique pattern, here. 
• And here's a gorgeous, serene video of the event, with a lots of people oooohing and aaaaahing in various languages.