Wednesday 25 July 2012

Second wall hanging on subject of Gwithian

All the wet weather we have had has meant that I have finally finished a small wall hanging that I started months ago.  This is the second in an occasional series on the subject of the beach that runs from the mouth of the Hayle estuary to Godrevy point and lighthouse.  I have used my imagination and various photos taken over the years as inspiration.  It is quite a wild part of the coast although in the summer when the tide is out there are miles of golden sand.


This quilt demonstrates how you can use fabric that has been in your stash for years.  The piece on the left is indigo dyeing from the workshop I did at Easter 2011 but the rest of the fabric is pieces that I made when studying with Committed to Cloth in 2005.  The top piece was space dyed.  The bottom strip was an experiment in printing.


I have had great trouble in photographing these close-ups, I suspect because it is very bright even in the house today.  The bottom strip is blue and green thickened dye.  I was attempting to give the idea of surf rolling in but you cannot really see this in either photo.



The five circles on this piece were also done with thickened dye.  From memory, they were made with a small scrubbing brush of the sort you use for peeling potatoes.  I cut them out and bonded them onto the space-dyed fabric.  I then repeated the circle motif in the quilting and used some orange thread to pick up the colour from the bottom.



The colours have come out very badly despite my fiddling with the camera.  You will just have to believe me when I say the overall background colour is a dull Wedgwood green with blue.


I finished the first Gwithian quilt in September 2011 and did a post on it but as I think I may have just deleted this by mistake, here is the photo of the first one again.



This one incorporated rust dyeing.  I have just ordered some new business cards using a close-up photo of the border on the right.  I hope they come out!  It is not that I need business cards as I am not in business but
I find having them useful, not just for textile friends and contacts, but also to use more generally.  However, times have moved on since I and my husband made my last set.  These days I realise that you only need to put your e-mail address and mobile number.  I can no longer read the full address etc. I had on the old ones as I had to use a very small point size in order to fit everything on the card so I hope these will be better.