Process, Process, All is Process

I said a day or so ago that I'd started a quilt for Glemham Hall quilt show in Suffolk, which takes place in April. As it happens, I read Rayna's blog around the same time, where she suggested, and I quote,

'Everybody works so differently: I think it would be fascinating to see your processes - why don't you shoot some pix and share on your blog the way you think while you are making a piece?'

So, Rayna, this one's for you. And everyone else, of course!

I was really stuck with this theme. I work in abstract, but somehow all these cliches kept coming to mind, like lambs gambolling and snowdrops, and... Finally, though, my brain got past that, and remembered the journey through Cambridgeshire and the flat fields, that beautiful dark brown colour that they are, just at the edge of spring. The occasional sewn field, with shoots carpeting the soil. And the unworked (as yet) fields, with dead foliage around them. And the spring blue sky. And I thought, wool, and I saw landscape. Which led to the first picture. I liked the odd shape, but not so much the blue sky... too big, too dominant.



So, off it came.





And then I thought...hmm. Let's see...



But no, that wasn't it either. Finally...



pretty much back where I started. I have begun to quilt the piece. I'm quilting for texture, mostly, heavy, intense stitch in a dark brown rayon thread, wanting to suggest that shimmer that wet earth sometimes has. I'm not sure that it's enough, though, and am contemplating adding tiny spots of green here and there. Knots, perhaps. Not beads, too alien to the texture. The green 'field' is a cotton damask, the rest of the cloth is guid Scots wool. Knew it would come in handy, sometime.

Process, process, all is process...