Where the Walls Have Eyes, Part 11

Where the Walls Have Eyes, Part 11

I was looking for a way to more literally and visually show the loss of privacy when I remembered this expression.  So I decided to put eyes on the insides of the walls, and ceilings, and floors of the project.

How?

I tried a few things, but this is the one that stuck! (ha ha!)

Mistyfuse (to the rescue again!) on the back of white fabric.  Draw the eyeball with a pencil.  Outline it with the black posca paint pen. Yes, it can leak through the fabric, so I put a magazine under it.

And then cut them out with scissors.

I did not have perfect cutting technique, so after the center circles were cut out, I touched up any of the black edges with the black posca pen.  I used this magazine cover to keep from getting paint on my table.  It used to be a frog...sorry, frog!

There were never enough eyes....

Here's a few of them with the centers cut out, one on a white table background, and one on a green fabric background. 

                                                 

I had fun arranging these shapes into patterns before I used them for my project!

Time to add them to the little quilted squares. All it takes is an iron and a few teflon goddess sheets (so they won't stick to the ironing board cover should there be a slip up). 

I love how the irises of the eyes lines up with the holes in the blocks! Also, these are the fronts of some of the blocks that need eyes, but there were also many times when the backs of the little quilts needed eyes.  

This gets more interesting as I begin to build the blocks into their cubes and you look inside, through the holes, to see eyes there!!!

Next week, the problem with the holes and the eyes, and how I almost didn't build this thing! Stay tuned!

Untitled, Part 10

Untitled, Part 10

It began with a concept, the loss of privacy.

And morphed into a big project.

I started forming a very long list. A list of events, places, and ways to loose privacy. I drew a distinction between ways to loose privacy in public, and ways to loose privacy in your own home where there is supposed to be an expectation of privacy. There are so many privacy losses related to the internet that I knew that was the focus of my project. I had to question: who is doing the 'looking'. Is it friend or foe? It kind of haunts me.

.......Cambridge Analytica, algorthims, hot mics, third party cookies, social media, doxing, hackers, cyberattacks, hot webcams, malware, spyware, data mining, backdoors, trapdoors, the dark web, etc......

I started seeing my computer as a tiny little window that has the potential to let an entire world of unsavory characters into my home. Scary thought!

That started with....wondering if I could build this:

Ah, yes! It works. This was constructed from leftover blocks from previous projects. It is quite structurally stable, but I noticed that the overcast stitch made the pieces slide out of alignment. 

My final project will be a giant cube made up of these tiny cells. Visually my project vaguely reminds me of my first computer, the Apple Macintosh cubey thing. My structure will be composed of 7 x 7 x 7 little cells. I debated about having individual cubes sewn together, or having the little cubes have shared walls. I opted for the shared walls. Also, the big cube structurally references the myriad of links we follow when we are on-line. And the holes in the walls, and ceilings, and floors remind me that if I can look out, someone else can look in.

I also did not know if the little fabric quilts would be able to hand the weight of a BIG cube. Would they collapse in on themselves? So, I decided to build another prototype, a 1 x 7 column. I could stand it up and see if it could handle the weight, and the force of gravity. This also gave me an opportunity to test a different joining stitch for all the pieces. I opted for the ladder stitch. 

This is the bottom, (or the top), with 4 sides attached to the base.  Next, I will fold them up and sew the sides.

Previously, I was only attaching two pieces at a time.  Now, because there is a floor/ceiling on each cube, some of the seams will require attaching 3 pieces at a time. I came up with an altered version of the ladder stitch which worked quilt well.  Unfortunately, I am using 6 strand embroidery floss, which means a needle with a big eye.  And, I am hand sewing through layers of thick quilted blocks, 3 of them. It is physically difficult to have the hand strength to poke all the holes and pull the needle through. I am limited by how much I can do in a day without causing tendon injury.

But, the colors! The colors are fun! And the column is beginning to take shape!

I finished the prototype, and stood it on it's end. Success! It was able to hold the weight easily! Sadly, it was not stable as a single column, but this will not be a problem for the actual project.  All the columns will be sewn together, and they will give each other structural support to not fall over. My questions have been answered by these two prototypes and I can proceed with the actual project! I am also fully aware that the REAL thing will have many, many seams where I am joining 4 little quilts together in a single seam. I am not looking forward to that part!

With all those holes, you are probably wondering what it looks like inside? Yes?

Next week, I reveal the title of the piece, and add the last artistic element that pulls everything together!

Untitled, Part 9

Untitled, Part 9

This week, I show you one of the less glamorous stages of the work, but very necessary.

I have now cut the sections into ONE block wide strips.  From there, each block will be trimmed to a 3"x 3" piece. Keep in mind that each of these blocks is already quilted, cut, and embellished with thread work, a complete LITTLE quilt, if ever there was one! Only, there are a lot more than ONE of these.   In fact, over a thousand!

The rotary cutter makes my shoulders ache. So I limited how much time per day I could work.  Very slowly, all the pieces got cut neatly into little blocks.

After working for so long on this project, it was nice to see the fruits of my efforts, and know that the real work of building the thing was coming soon!

You can also see a bucket in the background.  I kept all the trimmed off edges.  I am not sure why I did that.  Partly to see how much waste the project generated.  And, also, I might use them later in a different piece.  

One more step was to finish the edges of each little block so that the newly cut threads do not unravel into an unsightly mess.  I opted to use Fray check on the edges.  I grabbed a stack of blocks, and applied the glue with a paintbrush to the all the edges of the stack.  Then I quickly peeled them apart and let them dry on freezer paper.  My hands got so sticky. Yuck! And, for those of you who are curious....it took 4 bottles of Fray check to do all the edges.

Here are some stacks waiting to have their edges finished, along with some in the background that are finished and drying. 

Note: Next week, I will talk about the meaning of my project and show you a prototype or two of the build. Cool!! Stay tuned!

Untitled, Part 8

Untitled, Part 8

Finally a title has emerged!! Unfortunately, I am not sharing it with you yet. Ha ha! Sorry!

This stage requires me to deal with a giant mess of tangled embroidery floss. I did not take a photo of the giant pile, but this is what it looked like after I pulled the threads out carefully, one by one. Wahhhh, so tedious and not fun!

I learned to wind yarn around my hand to make skeins back when I was a weaver.  So, I tidied these up the same way.

And, then stored them in color coded boxes, a yellow box for the warm tones, and a blue box for the cool tones. And while this pile of thread looked like a lot to me at the time, I think I purchased embroidery floss at least 4 more times because I never got enough, and a future step required even more and more floss.

Now, I am all set to begin the cut work. I usually cut a small section at a time, 8 to 10 circles, to prevent my hands from getting tired from using the scissors too much. Here I am with some, working out on my deck on a beautiful morning. (Yes, all 1000+ circles were cut with hand held scissors.)

Making thread selections for the hand stitching of the cut holes.

I also discovered that having the blocks in narrow strips, only 2 motifs wide, helped with thread management.  I could attach my thread choices to each block and have work that could go anywhere with me. So I carefully cut all the bigger pieces down.

When I got to the blue ones, there were so many.  Over 700 of these to do.  I wanted to maximize diversity of thread colors with the thread from the satin stitching, the color of the batik, and the color of the background.  So, I made thread color choices in mass.

Here is a sample after stitching.

All the holes...

And, after many months of work, the completed stacks of nearly ready blocks.

I am thinking that it doesn't look like much yet, but in my head, so much wonderfulness, it's hard to contain!