Results in exhibition

Last week I spent four long and interesting days at the Biennale International d'Art Textile in France, presenting a small show of my series 'text messages'. As two of the pieces I have made for the challenges in this group belong in this series, they, too, were included in the exhibition. And they made a very nice pair:

top: text messages 16,
below: text messages 15

Thank you to the group for the inspirations for these pieces. I am looking forward to working on other challenges when the art symposium is over in May and I can think of other things again.

Here is a view of some more of the exhibition:

text messages 16 - Lundstrøm by Uta

Thanks to Maj-Britt's suggestion I made acquaintance with another artist I had never heard about - but although I liked the pictures of his works I could find on the internet, again neither of them inspired me to use it as some kind of push-off for a quilt of mine. So for a while I was rather hesitant about what to do with this challenge, until I had an idea how to make a bit of graphic use of the special Danish letter
ø  included in his name.
 I repeated his name several times in a large script and also enlarged that special letter, overlaying the repetition of the name.

Then I chose a piece of fabric I had once treated to an attempt at shibori - realizing in that process that that is not my kind of technique, but that is an entirely other story - and started stitching.

That took a little while, but experience has taught me to be more generous with myself about the density of stitching needed before I consider the whole thing 'sufficiently' filled.  The letters of the name outside the graphic center were stitched only on the outline, within the graphic center I added a bit of a blue stitching line to mark the edge more precisely. 
Experience has also taught me that the most successful way to dissolve the stitching foil and the stabilizer beneath is to not only pour boiling water over it, but to boil the whole thing for a little while. Otherwise there will always be some residue left. 
Then I dry the piece on the heater - easy enought these days with the kind of temperatures we are having here right now! - and iron it flat.
Quilting around the edges of the graphic center. And this is it. I admit - not bound yet. But practically finished.

text messages 16