Revealing All....

So.... did you have any thoughts as to what the theme of the quilt I made for the 100 Fundraiser?  Here's the whole thing...

It is entitled 'Natural Graffiti', and measures 23" by 32".  It's a bit of a steal, for the price; it would sell for a bit more than the $100 that is being asked for it.  It was inspired by a number of things.  I've always been interested in marks in nature, where natural phenomena like erosion cause unexpected effects in the landscape.  And I love looking at graffiti, of the manmade variety; there's a lot in the area of Norwich that I park in when I go shopping.  And several years ago, I took photographs of two different buildings, one a church, one a cathedral, where copper had changed the colour of the stonework, as if something had been poured down the walls.  That's what inspired the discharge dyed centre of the quilt.  It was pieced using a variety of dye printed, dye painted and discharge dyed fabrics, in a single piece.  It was then folded to find the optimal positioning and stitched together, which is why it has no edges (I hate binding, and it wouldn't have been appropriate for this work). Finally, it was discharge dyed and a little drawing added, before finally stitching by machine.  The stitching is minimal, because I think that in this piece, the fabric does the talking.... so I stitched to support the patterning and give a bit of texture.

I do hope someone likes it enough to give it a good home; I love this piece, personally.    I've come as close as I can to the colours of the original in the photograph.  The 100 deadline is Wed 4th Feb, and full details are available here.  There is a lot of amazing work available... go check it out!

More on the 100 Quilt...

Another detail image for you.  I wanted to show all the different surface design techniques that are present in this piece.  Batik is something I rarely do, but thoroughly enjoy whenever I do it.  This piece has one of those elusive batik fabrics in there...

The cloth on the right hand side is the batik piece.  It started out as a piece of white cloth; you can see the bright white marks of the original cloth really clearly.  It was overdyed in orange, and finally in blue, to produce the brown background.  The piece next to it was a double dyed piece, which was then discharge dyed; once the quilt itself was assembled and stitched, it was discharge dyed again, across both pieces of fabric.  You can quite clearly see on the left hand side piece that it is lighter in some places, where it has been discharge dyed twice.  There are a few places at the top where I've allowed it to return to the original white, but by and large, I've used the discharge technique to alter the colour, not to remove it.

So... any closer to establishing the theme of this quilt?

ps more about the 100 here...

Time Is TIcking On...

...and the 100 fundraiser for the American Cancer Society is approaching (Wed 4th February, to be precise). You can find all the information you need on here,  and a quick selection of the work that's on offer (for only $100 dollars per piece) can be seen here.  I'd intended to post more often, but have been overtaken by events and illness.  Hope this makes up for it...


I thought I'd show you some close ups of the work I'm submitting this week, unveiling the whole piece on Saturday.  The first image has already appeared on Facebook, as a taster...or is that a teaser...?  Either way, here it is.

The work is made from pieced, hand dyed cotton.  This section features a discharge dyed section, delineated in ink, and is closer in colour to the original to the version on FB.  The next section is below:

This section is much more complex.  The top section is discharge dyed, the right hand side, a section of a monoprint, the middle section is made up of dye painted cloth, some of which has drawings on it.  I still work in this way, but on a smaller scale, usually.

So, as I asked my friends on Facebook... can you pick out a theme here?  There have been a few answers already, some of which capture part of the story of this quilt, others which tell the stories that others see in it.  There is, of course, no real right or wrong.... but it's fun to wonder....

more images soon...