Now for Something Completely Different (and silly of course)

When something is out side of your comfort zone, it doesn't happen quickly. In fact this took almost 3 months to gel.
My Fibre Arts group is gathering of about 10 very different women who each bring something different to our gatherings. We try some of the ideas and have a lot of fun together. I think that's the real the point of our getting together. Last fall some examples of MAP Quilts were displayed and we decided we should each try that. There is no such thing as a typical Map Quilt. There are lots to be found on the internet and they are for the most part. Maps. (Not doing much for me here.)

I did nothing and now it was one month till the piece was due. I thought about fantasy places and looked at maps of Neverland and Middle Earth. I didn't want to just copy something. As I looked at some of the old illustrations of childhood books I came across these two. If you're old enough you will recognize them. I decided somehow to incorporate these.

 

I wasted a week trying to make a quilt of a quilt. That I threw out.

I made a gel print of both. If you have not done this, its an alternative to duplicating a picture on cloth with a photocopier. Golden Gel Medium is applied to a standard photocopy and overlaid with the material you want to transfer your photo to. After its dry you remove the paper with moisture and friction (a fancy way to say lick your finger and rub off the paper.) It takes a little while.

 

 

With a little perseverance, a plasticized copy of the picture is transferred to the cloth. But where does the map come in.

A woman on a quilting board I frequent, was bemoaning the accuracy required to make a QR Quilt.

This was something I'd not seen and when I looked at her work I realized A QR CODE is a BIT MAP.

I could make a QR code for a map. When I found a QR generator I was disappointed to realize if I wanted to reference the book from which those pictures came I needed a QR code about a gazillion squares. That was impractical so I played with the generator and came up with a simple title for the pictures and a code only 25 squares in each direction. Hummmmmmmm. Using "inchies" (one inch pieces of cloth) that would workout to a final size for about 13 or 14 inches. Much more usable. That took 2 days of steady sewing.

 

So the code above is ironed (inch by inch) onto fusible interfacing, the lightest possible. This is now sewn by folding along each "line" and stitching about 1/4 inch from the fold line. 25 times.

This shrinks it's width by half. Now repeat in the other direction.

 

Now its size is roughly 14 inches square. I checked it with a QR reader several times to ensure it still read true. The final part was to marry the picture and the QR code on the same piece. I ended up using the larger and plainer of the two prints. Both items were framed in white and mounted on (what did I have in my stash?? ) some Sailor material.

 

 

Just a little more finishing and this rather anachronistic pair of items will be finished for my next meeting. An altogether silly piece but it was interesting working with the QR Code generator. I can see me doing that again. ( PS. use your QR app and read the tile of this fun piece.)

 

 

February 4th

 

I looked at this piece hanging on my design wall an knew it wasn't finished. There were gapping holes. So it decided to applique and enlarged version of the sail boat.

Much better balance. I'm not sure now about the upper right corner, but that can wait.