Patchwork Breeze

Today is the day!

My Four-in-Art Challenge Reveal

I have belonged to this an online quilting group of 8 quilters for nearly 2 years. 

I am very happy to have been chosen to join the group when they expanded in 2014. 

It has pushed me to try new concepts and techniques, some successfully and others never made it into a blog post. I have communicated with some wonderful and creative people.

Each "new year" (which begins in February) we are given a theme. We are to create a small quilt (12" x 12" is what I have made) every 3 months to interpret that theme. 

This year's theme has been literature. 

I have chosen Children's literature and will be donating my mini quilts to the local library to display in the Children's Area. 

My third quarter reveal is based on the1963 Newberry winning book by Madeleine L'Engle:

A Wrinkle In Time 

This is a science fantasy book for young adult readers. It was written between 1959 and 1960. After a long struggle to get it published, a happy turn of events at a tea party led to Farrar, Straus and Giroux publishing it in 1963.

In my quilt piece, I wanted to reference three of the elements in the story. 

The first is the tesseract, which was able to transport the characters on their quest to save Mr. Murphy. 

In my search of the term, I found this from dictionary.com:

• "A line has one dimension, a square has two, a cube has three, and a tesseract has four."
  (Wait for Weight Jack McKenty)
• There is a very good animation of this quotation HERE (at Wikipedia) under the section on Geometry.
• I designed my tesseract with tulle in order that the viewer could see something of this 4-dimensional object on a 2-dimensional plane. The black background suggests space as well as reference to the first line in the book, "It was a dark and stormy night,"
• In my investigations, a tesseract has 8 sides and 16 corners, so to me it is like two open boxes, with each of its corners connected. After designing this, I found reference that all of the edges of the tesseract are the same length; thus, mine is not true to definition. 

Below is a close up of the zig-zag stitching on the tulle. In some sections, there are overlapping pieces of tulle. It was actually quite easy to sew and trim.  

But I must say at times I was seeing an optical illusion!

The next thing I wanted to represent was the three Mrs. (Mrs. Whatsit, Mrs. Who and Mrs. Which) who happen to be supernatural beings who transport the three children through time and space in the tesseract, the action of which is similar to folding time and space like fabric. I used metallic gold thread to stitch their names as it was revealed that Mrs. Whatsit was a former star that exploded in order to fight the darkness. Their names are around the image of a clock face with a wrinkle in it to reference the title of the book. 

And, lastly, the heroine of the story, Meg, discovers in their attempt to save her father (who is trapped on the dark planet) and later her need to save her brother, that it is LOVE that conquers and wins the day. 

I wanted to represent love a little differently than simply placing four letters on my quilt. 

I drew a heart on paper and drew each letter into a section to be made in a different color fabric. The letters were drawn in reverse on fusible. 

I used a zig-zag stitch to hold them all down.

The backing I found while participating in the Row by Row and could not pass it up. 

I knew it would be the right backing for this little quilt. 

I quilted the layers with straight lines radiating from the corner to suggest movement in space.

Thank you for visiting. Comments are always welcome.

Visit the others in the Four-in-Art group to see what they have done for the third reveal of their Literature themes. 

Betty at a Flickr site: http://www.flickr.com

Catherine  at Knotted Cotton

Elizabeth at OPQuilt.com 

Jennifer at Secondhand Dinosaur 

Nancy at  Patchwork Breeze

Rachel at The Life of Riley

Simone at Quiltalicious

Susan at PatchworknPlay

____________________________

And to let you know a bit of what is in store in September, I have designed a row for the 

There are 20 talented EQ7 designers

and a boatload of sponsors.

To name a few

 EQ7 - giving the software away to a lucky winner,

Fat Quarter Shop - a $25 gift certificate from each blog.

Aurifil - some beautiful thread packs

There will be batting, patterns, classes....

To see the whole list of sponsors and EQ7 designers,

you can stop by here. 

I hope you plan on joining us.