Tuesday, March 2, 2010

More on Marti's leftovers

I realized, after rereading my recent post about Marti Plager's leftovers, that I should have shown you more pictures of her work.  The one leftovers piece I did show is not at all representative of her work -- it's too simple.  Mostly Marti creates far more complex (and interesting) compositions with her leftovers.

Here are two of her larger leftovers quilts.

I like the way Marti combines larger pieces with tiny shards.  I also like the fact that she has lots of interesting shapes.  That's because the quilts she made to begin with had lots of interesting shapes, requiring a lot of diagonal and even curved cuts. 

By contrast, my own quilts tend to yield only plain rectangular leftover bits.  It's only when I use other people's leftovers that I get to work with odd shapes.  (I suppose I could cut my rectangles into triangles and wedges and then sew them together, but somehow that seems to violate the spirit of leftovers art: you should work with what you get.)


2 comments:

  1. Both of these pieces are very handsome. I am interested to know if after making work from leftovers, if you ever carry what you learned from this exercise into a second piece where you create from scratch shapes or relationships that you found in the previous piece?

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  2. Terry asks a good question that is going to take further thought on my part. I have never taken the concept of leftovers to the level of a major large work. I know I have liked certain shapes and slices and used them again as well as certain colors in relationship. But at this point I need to reflect on examples and get back to you.

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