Today I completed this year’s contribution to the SAQA (Studio Art Quilt Associates) benefit auction.  Come Monday, I’ll ship it off to SAQA. I hope it’ll find a good home and give someone a giggle, as well as raise some money for SAQA’s programs and exhibitions.

A slightly larger version of this piece, as well as a closeup of the main fish, can be seen here.

This piece is a result of a longstanding conviction that certain paisleys look a great deal like fish. The seeds of this obsession were planted during early childhood, when I wore a good many hand-me-downs from the late 60s and early 70s. Paisleys figured large. (I was a weird kid anyhow; my idea of a good time involved wadding up a crazy quilt and rolling a marble through the contours thus created. Wearing paisley-imprinted jersey cloth was probably a “straw that broke the camel’s back” sort of thing. That, or my aunts managed to impregnate the clothing with intoxicating rock concert fumes.)

The paisleys in this image are based on the Paisley and Paisley II fonts offered by House of Lime. After doing basic layout sketches, I rendered the piece with a Frankensteinian combination of Inktense pencils, Neocolor II pastels, and Tsukineko ink, then went nuts with the thread.

It was a fun piece to make. May it bring joy and color to whoever winds up with it.