Creative Silence

 

This has been a hard quilt to complete. So many ideas were discarded as problematic.  It came together in a week by combining two elements:  reading, for me a solitary and quiet pursuit and taking pictures of buildings on a recent trip. The church that the window is based on was closed and silent as I walked past but the walls were full of rich detail and from the notices it has a vibrant life at other times.

 

 

In keeping with the theme “Sounds of Silence” I tried some hand work: Hand appliqué ( not such a silent pastime as the little pieces kept wriggling around in spite of the liberal use of pins and rulers), hand embroidery and hand quilting. I did use some machine work but aimed to keep the machine quilting “quiet” and understated. The book pages came from two books I have had for many years, rereading them until they are falling to bits. These were scanned and printed onto fabric using Bubble Jet 2000. Other techniques: Raw edge appliqué using Bond a Web, piecing and embroidery with perlé cotton

Rocky Crossing

I found the sound of silence during a busy walk a few weeks ago.   Friends invited me to the World Heritage listed Barrington Ranges to discover their favourite getaway,  Rocky Crossing.   It offered me the perfect image to present for our current theme, Sounds of Silence.

From my vast collection of photo's taken that day, I selected this one to profile my piece.    It was printed at home on prepared fabric for printing.

I wanted to bring you, the viewer, a sense of encountering the sound of silence.   So I framed it with my self-dyed cotton & silk fabrics, organza, and some needle-punched fabrics to bring in soft texture of a forest.   The printed image was enhanced by hand sketching with ink pens, just a little.  Leaves were machine stitched by using water soluble fabric and wool/silks, then raw edge applique stitched to the background.  Colours selected aimed to reflect the richness of the forest atmosphere.

Time was of the essence due to my other priorities - this piece was completed from start to finish within 2 days - the fastest piece I have made yet!   I hope it brings you a sense of peace and reflections of your  own forest-walk experiences.

Rings on water

After having had a lot of thoughts for the current theme “Sounds of Silence” I decided that I would like to interpret it with some kind of water. For example silent waves rolling up on the beach, a light rain falling down. Although at the end I settled for drops falling on a water surface  expanding and then disappearing in silence.

The piece is a wolecloth of natural colored linen, circles are rubbed on with a blue Shiva Paint stick and then the circles/rings were quilted by machine with cotton and gold metallic threads. The rings and drops in different sizes and values of blue cotton and silk fabrics were raw edge appliquéd with cotton, rayon and silk threads.