Revealing Job 3:16

 Revealing Job 3:16

"Or as a hidden untimely birth I had not been, as infants which never saw light."

After a difficult start I really started liking what I was doing and I am happy to show you the end result! For peope who are interested in the process I have written a post on that.

Ponderings and Process Update Job 3:16

 Job 3:16

"Or as a hidden untimely birth I had not been, as infants which never saw light."

I just quote what Matthew Henry says in his introduction of the book of Job:

"The history of Job begins here with an account, I. Of his great piety in general (v. 1), and in a particular instance (v. 5). II. Of his great prosperity (v. 2-4). III. Of the malice of Satan against him, and the permission he obtained to try his constancy (v. 6-12). IV. Of the surprising troubles that befel him, the ruin of his estate (v. 13-17), and the death of his children (v. 18, v. 19). V. Of his exemplary patience and piety under these troubles (v. 20-22). In all this he is set forth for an example of suffering affliction, from which no prosperity can secure us, but through which integrity and uprightness will preserve us."

To be honest I was dreading the idea of having to make a quilt about this verse. In chapter 3, the patient Job becomes the passionate Job. He begins by cursing the day of his birth, following with the question why he couldn't have died right after being born. In fact why wasn't he born dead.

I guess you all will understand why this is difficult to depict. I have been pondering the ideas of a baby, maybe thread sketched in black? But in the end, decided the subject is too sensitive and I thought I might be able to make it abstract and only print the verse.

Till I came upon a painting by Catriona Reid, which hugely inspired me. 

Job is speaking about light a lot. It's mentioned 32 times!

I first started painting on a creamy fabic, but that didn't really work out. Till I found a grey and white marbled fabric in my stash which I dyed in coffee and used bleach to create a stormy and gloomy sky. 

On a seperate piece of fabric I outlined a tree and  thread sketched (free motion) lots of black thread on it and cut it out and glued it on the main panel. Then secured it with lots more stitching and loose hanging threads. 

At the bottom I made a rocky outcrop with a black silhouette, fused and stitched. 

How to put the verses onto fabric is always a challenge. This time I installed a Calligraphy app and played around with it. Till I had a nice font. I tried finding a tool how to mirror image the words and print them onto Transfer Artist Paper, which in turn you can iron onto fabric.

However, I found this piece of silk organza in my stash and stabilized it with steam a seam and used intense pencils and fabric medium (so it doesn't bleed) to handwrite the verse. Using steam a seam means I could iron the silk on my piece.

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Next blog post is reveal time!!

Reveiling Esther 4:1

I already wrote a blog about some of the background of the book of Esther and the design/background research I did. 

Now for some technical details. I decided to make a fabric collage in a neutral palette. So I fused steam-a-seam on several pieces of tonal fabrics and layed it out in a square. I cut some pieces of hessian (jute) and distressed this to give the impression of torn clothes. 

I copied the cuneiform script from the Behistun Inscription, established by king Darius the Great. I took me quite a few hours, I felt like a monk ;)

I preferred it to be an abstract piece (meaning no literal Mordechai with torn clothes), but I still managed to hide a face profile in it. 
Composition is something I think long and hard about and I usually sketch a minimum of 8 different compositions. It's important the whole is well balanced and also has a little tension. Hence the teardrops to repeat the blue and the jute to repeat in the corner. 

I am very happy how my cuneiform script turned out, with the Bibleverse woven into it. It was actually very scary to quilt over it, but the irregular grid is very fitting and symbolic.

Let's show you how it turned out, hope you enjoy it!

Revealing 2 Chronicles 3:16

The finished piece and a  little detail picture.