New Work - Fireball

Here's the third of my featured new works, Fireball. This is a large -76" x 50"- and dramatic quilt named for a large and dramatic plant. The Fireball variety of hardy hibiscus is a completely outrageous plant. It's got purplish cutleaf foliage, which is gorgeous in its own right, and giant red flowers up to 10" across. I've got a landscape full of native plants and beautiful understated elegance, so this shameless floozy of a specimen plant makes quite a splash.

The centerpiece of the quilt is a cyanotype on cotton that printed up very crisply. The two red leaf panels on the sides are heliographic prints on silk. The smaller prints are cyantypes on silk made from transparencies of photos, and digital prints directly from photos. The smaller prints are hand embroidered to emphasize the stamens:

The patchwork is my usual mix of handpainted and commercial fabrics, in cottons and silks. I am very pleased with the energy and movement I was able to put into the design. There's a lot of quilting, but no beading, as it seemed dramatic enough already. This turned out to be a very cheeful work!

You can click on Fireball under "Labels" on the right to see previous posts about the work in progress.