Opposites Attract: Sol Mates

Sol Mates, by Alida

Dimensions: 40'' x 14'' (each)

Inspired by the work of Sol Lewitt

Marian (seamstobesew) is hosting a fun blog hop and I decided to join with my recent piece "Sol Mates"!

I made this piece for a recent blog hop I myself run on this blog (Art with Fabric) and it is a piece completely outside my comfort zone!

Let me tell you more about Sol LeWitt.

LeWitt is regarded as a founder of both Minimal and Conceptual art. His prolific two and three-dimensional work ranges from wall drawings (over 1200 of which have been executed) to hundreds of works on paper extending to structures in the form of towers, pyramids, geometric forms, and progressions. More on LeWitt, links at stories can be found on this Wiki page.

You HAVE to watch the amazing timelapse video of the artists painting "Sol LeWitt at the Met - Wall Drawing #370, Installation: Days 15-17" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5OJ36NbGU2c.

If you want to hear more about his approach to art and how amazing artists put together his conceptual work (which is the text instructions on how the piece should look like) listen to the stories in this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tpi5OBv6ZMU.

"The artist and the draftsman become collaborators in making the art" -Sol LeWitt.

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Now about me :)

If you ask me what kind of art/paitings I do NOT like I would say something modern, simple, minimalist... something with few colors...
If you ask me what kind of fabric I absolutely do NOT like to work with I would say solids... and white in general...

That's why I was super surprised when I first looked at one of LeWitt wall drawings (the X) and I instinctively thought "I NEED to make that into a quilt" :)
That's what I LOVE about art... sometimes a piece moves you so strongly and so deeply that it goes against all the "rational" likes/dislikes that you have always had.

So while I knew that I wanted to reproduce the X painting, I also knew that I had to put my spins to it.
First of all I decided to make just half of it, and then I decided to add a pop of color (purple).
I made that half and then I start starring at it and I kept thinking "I really like it, but something is missing".
Of course the other half was missing :) and that's when I decided to make the other half and the name "Sol Mates" came in the picture. Because the first half represents me (my favorite color is purple) and the other half represent my significant other (his favorite color is blue).
And if you look closely the finished piece you would notice that it is covered in cat hair :) so here you have it, the entire family in one quilted piece of art :)

The two halves are complementary in the quilting (quilted in opposite sections) and the quilting is not perfect... because we are not perfect...

Detail on the quilting.
The two halves are quilted in complementary ways: straight quilting on the white sections of the X (and black sections on the background) for the blue half, quilting on the black sections X (and white sections on the background) for the purple half.

Thanks for stopping by and feel free to help yourself in the following giveaway offered by Marian (seamstobesew)!!! :)
Go and check out the other participants of the hop from Marian's blog!!!

June 1 

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Quilt In A Not-Shell

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