Seymour is Finished!

You guys-  I feel like there should be a party!  Pardon the melodrama but I feel like I've poured all my creativity and time and energy into Seymour and now he's complete and finished and wonderful.  I've never worked so long and so focused on something so personal.  I've had quilts that have taken longer, but mostly because they've languished as UFOs for years in closets.  I checked; my first post on Seymour was April 10th; since then I've focused almost entirely (with only a few small-project breaks) on him.  One of the most startling thing about this project was how challenging each step was.  Rather than taking forever because I needed a million blocks or something, almost ever step required something different; figuring out how to accomplish what I wanted, how to optimize some technique I'd never tried before, or how to tackle something with my particular resources.  There was a TON of make-it-up-as-you-go-along, and I dare say many experienced quilt artists would have known exactly what to do.

In any case, here he is.  For those of you who've been following since the beginning, thanks for sticking around.  And for anyone just clicking through for the first time, I've been posting about Seymour fairly regularly, so for more info just click on his tag in my sidebar.  The final quilt is designed to be laced together to display back to back or unlaced to be displayed as a diptych.

Here's my artist statement:

S is For… #3: You Cleared My Name
24” x 70”, 2012
Shannon Conley

Coelophysis bauri, a carnivorous theropod dinosaur, is the state fossil of New Mexico due primarily to discovery of a large number of skeletons near Ghost Ranch, NM.  Coelophysis had long been the poster child for dinosaur cannibalism until work published by Nesbitt et al. in Biology Letters (2006) demonstrated clearly that stomach contents from mature Coelophysis were not juveniles of the same species or even dinosaurs at all, but rather were unrelated early crocodylomorph archosaurs.  In honor of Coelophysis’ “cleared name” I created this original art quilt depicting him, at approxmately full size. He is shown in his modern-day home (in front of Chimney Rock) on one side and in a more Triassic setting on the other side.  The quilt is made of commercially available fabrics of all types and embellished with twine, trim, wool roving, beads, dryer sheets, polymer clay, and paint sticks.

Here's a close up of the label and the eye and teeth which I haven't shown before.  The label shows a map of New Mexico with the Zia sun symbol over the area where the Coelophysis remains were discovered.  The teeth are polymer clay; I made them as beads and then sewed them to the quilt.

Thanks to everybody in blogland for all your encouragment!  I'm linking up everywhere this week since so many kind people from lots of different places have supported me.