Crossing the line

I really like Art Deco - one of my assessment quilts for the City and Guilds was based on 1930s stained glass windows. To accommodate my theme of the year, fences, I checked out a lot of Art Deco inspired railings, bannisters and fences, but most of them relied heavily on symmetry. Somehow, they weren't going to express anything I felt in tune with. So I turned to travel posters, which have that graphic quality I am frequently drawn to explore.

This worked much better. I found an art deco style font, called Kaikoura. This was especially apt, as the town of Kaikoura is only about 2 hours drive from me. Kai means food, and koura means crayfish. The ocean is particularly deep, with the Hikurangi Trench just off shore. This brings a lot of seafood to the area, crayfish (a kind of lobster), paua (abalone) and other fish, which attract seals, dolphins, whales and orca. Kaikoura is a whale-watching town, with boats and planes going out any time the weather is good enough. It is also unusual in having mountains coming right down almost to the sea.

But Kaikoura also has a race course, which I think only has one race a year. I took a liberty here, as the racing in Kaikoura is harness racing,  not gallops.  But I like the simpler outlines of the horses and jockeys. Here I could incorporate my fences in an art deco setting. I was happy!