On the Design Wall

 I was a geology major in college.  And as such I spent many happy hours in the Mineralogy lab, poring over microscopic thin sections of rocks and minerals.  I found the colors, the shapes, the, well, “flow” of the thin sections to be fascinating.  It was my favorite course ever.  

As part of our course requirements, we had to sketch the thin sections we examined.  So armed with a small sketchbook and a large box of colored pencils, I spent day after day drawing and coloring the different slides.

I recently was cleaning out the closet in my studio and found a box of old notebooks from college.  Most of them I consigned to the recycling bin.  But the gem of the collection was my sketchbook from Mineralogy.  And I was inspired to try to turn some of my sketches into quilts.  

This is my first try.  It is a metaperidotite crystal in a dark matrix.  I pieced the crystal first, and have spent the last week or so adding background piecing.

First, I auditioned backgrounds.  I needed to decided whether I wanted to go dark or light:

I decided dark.  Next, I started piecing the "matrix" or background mineralization, in dark shades of navy, gray, black, burgundy and green.  I used commercial solids, commercial prints (subtle/mucky tone on tone prints) and my hand dyed solids.  The background looks very blue in the pictures, but it really isn't:

Once I got the background placed, I started to piece it to the crystal.  Here 2 sections of background are pieced to one end of the crystal:

 As of 5 pm Thursday.  Three sides of the crystal are attached, the fourth in progress:

 I will build the four corners and then trim it down.  Hopefully before the opening in Finland.  I'm pretty excited about this quilt and hate to leave it!

I'm linking this post to Nina-Marie's Off the Wall Friday, Friday Fabric Frenzy and Confessions of a Fiber Addict. Go see all the wonderful work there!