For Galskapen heng i det grøne, og Eplet er raudt utan synd

When the challenge came, I thought this was just my thing. I love letters and writing, and often try to incorporate it in my work. So I looked through my sketchbooks for inspiration, and at once found my quote. It is from a poem by the Norwegian author Jon Fosse and in Norwegian it goes: "For galskapen heng i det grøne, og eplet er raudt utan synd". Translated to English it says something like: "For the madness is hanging in the green, and the apple is red without sinn". I had already a rough idea of how to interpret it, and for a long time, I had wanted to try to embroider lettering in the style of Lorina Bulwer. I had found somewhere on the internet a tutorial of how tom make letters like hers easy, and decided to use it this time.

What colours to use were easy to pick, I needle-turn appliqued  the apple, machine quilted the piece simple with free straight lines before I embroidered the lettering and finished it all with some simple hand-stitches. And framed it all with the colour of the apple.

Because the quote is Norwegian, as my native language is, I decided to keep both the text in the quilt and the title in Norwegian.

and a close up:

Der Hexenstieg

The Witches Trail

Gabriele Bach - Der Hexenstieg

In this quilt I wanted to try many different possibilities to use lettering. In the end I used only three, the size and my design decisions limited the number.

Der Hexenstieg - detail

Mainly I wanted to use handwriting, and that reminds me on diaries. Years ago I walked the Witches Trail  in the Harz mountains, 100 km in four days. This adventure I wanted to record in the quilt.

The handwriting gives information about the Harz mountains. Since ever Harz and witches belong together, in Walpurgisnight the witches fly to the Brocken, the highest mountain in Harz, and dance there.

The little witch I used in the quilt, leads the trail. In the big block of my quilt I appliqued the form of the Harz and embroidered the Witches Trail. The trees are typical for the Harz.

Der Hexenstieg - detail

At the light fabric on the left side I wrote the names of the main points from the trail, it is similar to the trail markers.

The main colours of the Harz are blue and green and the orange witch is just the right complement to it.

Der Hexenstieg - detail

Scandinavian Runes & Greek Letters

During my 2 years as a member of this group, this theme "Lettering" was the most challenging for me, even if I earlier had made 2 quilts containing letters, Every Day and Marks.

The idea of letting the Scandinavian runes and the Greek letters come together in a quilt come to me
as I often pass a couple of  rune stones when out walking in Sweden (Mariefred) and in Greece (Messinia) where I often pass a small "Monument" with Greek text reminding of the war.

For the Greek theme I chose to use different shapes of urns and fig leaves together with Greek lettering.

For the Scandinavian runes I just embroidered letters by hand saying, Latitude Quilts November Two Thousand Fourteen and after that 3 extra letters (X,Y and M) just in order to fill up the piece.

The Greek background fabric is a Procion dyed linen whole cloth stamped and stenciled with gold and white textile colors, discharged paste and oil paint sticks. The urns and fig leaves are machine embroidered with Metallic and Rayon threads.

The runes are hand embroidered on a piece of sturdy cotton fabric painted with a gold acrylic paint.

The main colors of blue, white and gold was chosen with the colors of the Swedish and Greek flags in mind, even if they do not exactly correspond to the true blue and yellow colors of the Swedish flag and the blue color of the Greek flag.

Lettering and Bookmaking

I was thrilled when I saw our new challenge: Lettering. This, because I am so fascinated by the shapes of letters, from the earliest Cuneinform and Hieroglyphs, up till our time with thousand different fonts.
And comming from Norway, I am so fascinated by the exotic elegance of Arabic and Asian writing.
I have used lettering many times in my quilts, like here in our challenge: Every single day, where I used the Chinese sign for Tea:

But, the earliest form of lettering in Scandinavia, Runer, are just as fascinating. I used them in one of my quilts about our Viking-ships, here is a picture of my Design-board, where I'm trying out different texts.

And this brings me to my second topic, bookmaking. 800-1000 years ago, at the time of the Runes, there were no books in Scandinavia that we know of. Writing were done in Runes on stones or wooden sticks, Runepinner. A few of these have survived, one of the most fascinating is one tiny piece of wood, about 12-15 cm long, where the row of boats you see at the bottom was engraved. At the back of this piece of wood, were the text you see to the right. These dates to around 1250, while the text at the top left was found at the Oseberg ship and is from around 820.  

Bookmaking.
In 2010, Laura had a show in DMTV, where she talked about bookmaking, and this show opened a new world for me.  So I made my first sketchbook, filled with many kinds of paper. 

On the covers, I've used Silk paper I had made . On the front, I had laminated in a leaf from a plant from my garden,

and on the back, I tried to use some golden flakes:

Later, I've made this one, a concertina book

 The cover is lino print on cotton rag paper, and it is, as all of my books are, filled with decorated paper, photos, prints etc.

 The next is a long stitch binding, the cover is hand made paper with embedded leafs:

And this last one I made, with soft leather cover:

If you want to have a try, the videos from DMTV are in Archive Two (you have to subscribe to DMTV to get access). You can also find a few instructive pages here:

http://crafts.tutsplus.com/tutorials/bookbinding-fundamentals-long-stitch-leather-journal--craft-10754

http://www.ruthbleakley.com/blog/2011/09/mini-book-photo-tutorial/

http://www.philobiblon.com/tutorials.shtml