Continuing on with my progress in the “Working In Series” class.   I did numerous sketches of fractured circles, split circles, etc.  I went looking for photographs of circular things, and walked around with my camera taking pictures of circular things.  I printed out some shaded circles from my drawing program.  I made some very uninspired sketches and mockups.  A few seemed promising, but didn’t get me excited.

Finally, I found some photos of some interesting old circular gears by searching online.  I printed out the photos and sliced them up, reassembling them into a collage of sorts.  I liked the feel of it and decided to pursue the idea.  I am not showing my cut and paste mockup here because the original photos are copyright protected.  But I will show you where I went from that mockup.

Here is my first mockup, using a watercolor painted background and some shaded spheres printed out from my drawing program:

Sliced blue spheres on white strips

You will see the quilt I made from this mockup in a later posting.

I began working on this quilt (I did an earlier post on how I used paint to shade the spheres) but at the same time I was working on variations of the design.  Following are a few sketches that I decided show promise.  Some of them ended up as quilts, and others are waiting to be developed further.

Fractured Circle Study 3

Fractured circle study 4

Fractured circle study 10

After these sketches I did some of the designs with turned applique and some with fused raw edge applique.  Stay tuned for the finished quilts!