February: Love (Lost)

There is a large farm pond on the property adjoining mine which attracts all sorts of wild water birds - ducks, herons, the ubiquitous Canada geese, along with domestic ducks and geese.

One year they got a pair of black swans (cygnus atratus). Native to New Zealand and Australia, the black swan is basically monogamous, and mates for life. I was entranced with them and spent a lot of time photographing the pair as they swam together.

After some time, there was only the one swan, and sometime after that, there were none.  I have no idea what happened to either of them.  When our current word of "love" was offered, my mind fixed on lost love for some reason or another, and then I remembered the swans.

This one is based on my own photos, which I scanned in (those swans were there a long time ago, back in the film camera days), and then enlarged so I could trace the swan shapes on a lightbox.  The "ghost" swan is of tulle, glued just enough to hold it in place until I could applique it.  The fused "live" swan is of commercial fabric, as is the background. The red beak was done with Portfolio oil pastels and threadwork overtop. The writing and feather are drawn with a pigma pen, with further machine stitching on the feather. Everything is machine appliqued, machine quilted.

remember the day
when we danced on the water
you lost a feather

HAIKU ART..: Blue Moon Over Paris

HAIKU ART..: Blue Moon Over Paris
http://kriss2011-aphotoaday.blogspot.com/
http://krisbishop.blogspot.com/

Blue Moon Over Paris

My love is calling...
Rendezvous under the moon...

Paris in the spring...

Chanel

First love, my life's love...
Chanel dancing on my tongue...
Steal my breath away...

Faultlines of the Heart

When presented with the February word: "love" I thought of many ways to go with it - parental, romantic, physical, familial - even love of music, nature and so on.  But what I really wanted to deal with was loss of love - specifically loss of loved ones.  When my Mom passed away last year I had to deal with the sadness of her loss plus the fact that she was the last one. Her passing followed my Dad's (by many years) and my brother and sister's deaths more recently.  I reflected on how we all suffer loss of love - or loved ones - then have to face our publics as though everything was completely right in our world.
Here you have a heart that has been fractured into many pieces along the faultlines that were there all along.  And floating over the pieces of the heart are a tangle of ribbons attempting to hide the tears underneath.

detail:  Faultlines

The Haiku

Letting go of love

Hot salty tears flow freely

Bruised battered heart cracks.

My 'Sweet Peas'

When I read our prompt word, I immediately thought of my husband and my girlies and it was hard to choose which direction to go since I love them all so so deeply. Then a conversation about our military transfer this summer brought closer to the surface all my feelings about my daughters and how proud I am of them and that they will be ok when I move away. SO....

I have kept you safe

My wondrous little Sweet Peas

All my dreams alive!

They both have birthdays in April and the April flower is sweet pea which I also called them growing up. I used colored pencil to sketch out my arms in a heart shape along with the flowers. Then I thread painted the whole piece minus the background where I just added the heart garland.

Robin Koehler, NESTLINGS by Robin

Feb. Haiku

Here's my February haiku and quiltlet on the subject of love. My grandmother and her house were very important to me, but the house was torn down and all that remains are trees and her wild roses growing on the fence. I did a free cut sort of chaotic background and printed a small, favorite picture of my kids when they were young.

Out of the chaos
Grandma took me in her house
Her spirit in me

Linda Jacks

Love Haiku by Marga

"My darling sweetheart

I give you my open heart

release yours to me"

techniques: hand-painted cloth, silkscreened (human shape), paper (heart) and transparency transfer

Love kills dreams

Hi :) My haiku for this month is:

A child has big dreams
grow with great projects in mind
then love comes. Dreams die.

And this is my quilt:

My haiku may seems not well related to my quilt, but if you look well at the quilt you can see there's a hole in the heart. It's a black hole, that kind of hole that swallow all things... stuff, light, dreams.
In this context you can understand that the bird is a dream that fly away from a grown child's hands

Love, by Michele

A grandmother's love
Stitching through the threads of time
Unconditional

When I thought about the theme of love, I thought about romantic love, then the love of a dog, then about other types of unconditional love, which led me to my grandmothers, Grandma Dunaway (Goldie) and Memaw (Opal). My grandmothers were the fountainhead of my love for crafts in general and fiber in particular. They were generous with their scrap bins and button tins, my love for which continues to this day.

In keeping with my personal goal of challenging myself to try something new with the challenges, I decided to weave the background. I didn't obsess about color and deliberately limited myself to the two small bags of strips I had in the dining room when I started. Well, almost - I picked up a couple of other strips while searching for other needed stuff throughout the house.

As usual, the design changed along the way. The original plan was be to machine FMQ and bind. I had the strips woven and pinned, and the hearts cut out, and decided there were too many pins to FMQ, so I started closely hand basting around the edge. I liked how it looked, so I just quilted the rest of the piece by hand, in big stitches. The more I quilted, the more the edges didn't want to be bound! While I was working on it, both the quilter in residence at the Arts Barn and my daughter the artist asked me if I was going to bind the edges, both with that unspoken undercurrent of "Don't bind it! Leave it uneven!"

The two hearts are my two grandmothers - the commercial gold for Goldie (Grandma) and some snow dyed fabric for Opal (Memaw). The embroidery floss I used to blanket stitch the hearts came from Memaw's stash, as did at least one of the buttons.

Haiku: (Romantic ) LOVE

After attempting "PATRIOTIC" Love,
I thought that I would tackle "Romantic" Love
and finally settled for two versions:

a.... Love's sweet melodies
Bliss filled days and nights
Valentines for ever.


b... New love flourishes
Blissful days and nights
Soulmates forever.

Using a piece of pink Lutradur, highlighted with Lumiere Pearlescent Magenta paint as the background,
I appliqued three solid floral hearts and one heart outline to the background.
I also painted with the same Lumiere a structured heart shaped card.
Trailing over the open heart is a green vine trimming.

Using a gold ink pen I added the two haiku----one in the quilting lines above the heart,
the other inside the large heart.
Unfortunately, the gold writing did not photograph clearly.
I also include the scribble page of my journal, where I played with words.

Maureen Curlewis

Romance.. ever the romantic...

Being the romantic that I am, I just had to do the 'romance' thing....Love , one of the strongest emotions known....I used a collage technique which include personal drawings, magazine cutouts, plastic rings and ... as promised... fabric. No stitching this time.
It is so hard to properly photograph a book, no matter what I do, it is never quite right!! Bear with me, by the time my year is up, I just may get it right.

Haiku:
Profound! A sweet bliss
Aflush with roses and rings
Hearts become entwined

OK... start counting... I left out one syllable in the first line on my pages!
It will be fixed.... also I photographed the two pages that make up each of my monthly Haiku Art, also, note I gilded the 'lily'... the word 'LOVE'.. I used an 18K gold pen. I love it!!

To My Valentine

Twenty winters shared

And still my heartbeat quickens

At his slightest touch

I usually try and get at least close to finished before I post a piece but I am making an exception this time for a number of reasons:
- It took me several days to "make" the fabric I wanted to use
- It is much bigger than I have been working lately (40" wide x 36" high)
- I am headed into Yellowstone tomorrow and will be totally out of touch for the next week.
I plan to print the haiku to my husband in the center valentine and then quilt the heck out of the whole thing. I will add photos once I return and get it finished.

February Haiku

I chose to interpret "love" as love of one's country:
Patriotism.



And here is my journalled page

butterfly kisses

The touch of a wing
some butterfly kisses
first love remembered

This piece is 15 x 23. There are no unusual techniques involved only hand dyed butterflys.

Love Will Prevail

Will the Earth survive

these catastrophic events?

Love, life will prevail

My technique for this quilt was, first, burn holes in your fabric...LOL I explained the story in the yahoo group. The 'holes' are filled with pieces from a silk tie, fused around the ragged edges. I used some aurora boriallis foil to add to the oil slick. It measures 13"x26"

Cherie

Love

Classic poetry or tired cliche? You decide!
The word for this month is "love".
Use it as your starting point, create your haiku and accompanying artwork and share with the group. Be sure to read Carole's posted files on how-to-haiku if you have questions.
And enjoy!
Kathy L

after the big bang

sorry the photo didn't go thru with the post

Anonymous She

Here's my January Beginnings haiku and small quilt. It's done on fabric that I stencilled with oil sticks. The woman and baby are made of fabric I've dyed or painted in various ways. The face was made by free-motion embroidering on hand-dyed habotai silk.
Thousands of years of iconic anonymous women have been on my mind.
Linda Jacks

Anonymous She
Speaks Mitochondrially
Began Begat Me