Posts Tagged ‘beach’

Arcs Are Everywhere, Take 2

Thursday, April 19th, 2018

Yes, they are everywhere around us ,  and I love the technical fit with the freehand cutting and piecing I use in many of my quilted textile statements.

Lately I’ve used strong bright colours with black particularly, and just felt I needed to go into something soft and neutral – signifying mood change or looking for balance, perhaps?   And lo and behold, last month New Zealand friend Doris MacGibbon arrived with a gift of some lovely fabrics I might very well have chosen myself if I’d been anywhere near a fabric shop that stocks such things – not in Montevideo in a million years, I think.  Several fabrics made me think of wintery beaches in various places – too cold for sunbathers and swimmers, and perhaps windy, like lots of memories of Greens Beach, northern Tasmania, or this selection from the Falkland Islands trip I took a few years back:

Confession: I did not realise I had ‘breaking wave action’ until I took these photos of the pieced top!

 

Texture On The Beach

Friday, February 14th, 2014

20131215_080645 copy

This morning as I was hunting for something totally different, I came across this pattern in the ‘Sand Patterns’ file I hadn’t looked at for a while, and wondered how on earth I could have forgotten about this stunning pic?  It’s not the Namib Desert from the air or something like that – it’s in the wet sand not far above the low tide line.  I normally take care to avoid including shoe prints in my pics of sand patterns, but they do provide a perspective, and in this case there is a faint shoeprint just above the LLH corner of the pic.   When I took it a couple of months back, I didn’t check to see which little creatures made those little lumps at the ends of those lines -and I’m just presuming either tiny molluscs or bivalves, but they may be little crabs, though I rarely see any crabs at all on the beach I usually go to.

inspirations

And these photos show what was behind the Tidelines group of quilts in the Golden Textures exhibition last year – in the upper RH panel of the collage is ‘Tidelines 10’

Sandlace – Free Form Lace Continued

Thursday, November 21st, 2013

sandlace sample 1

 

Some sample making continues for some ‘Sandlace’ works,  inspired by pics such as this one above.

  • Something I’ll do more is place one of the ‘lacey’ sections over some of my own freeform piecing/patchwork.
  • Another possibility is ditto over some much more muted fabrics,  closer to each other in colour and intensity.
  • Also to be explored are some texture printed backgrounds ….

 

sand lace 3 web

sandlace3 detail

  •  I very much like raw edges, so this  is being explored, too.

 

 

Sandlace – First Samples

Tuesday, November 12th, 2013

sandlace sample 1

Well, although I could go on for a long time in PSE, drawing lines on photos of sand ripples to explore the idea of holes making a lace pattern based on the brights and darks, once I began to think of it as ‘sandlace’,  it seemed time to pick up needle and thread and start working with the idea !!

My first sample, the grey and cream in the upper right corner, below, was of the cream, bonded on one side, holes cut out and the edge shaped, then ironed on to the grey background.  Although I did a little stitching, and I liked it, it also seemed too flat, too ‘neat and careful’, I felt.

sandlace 5_samples

The grey and brown on the left is also heat bonded, and really, the small cut-outs feel too small to do much about – so I am just leaving that as is.  Which is what making samples is all about – its certainly not about finishing anything off, unless you specially want to, of course.

The third sample I did was cream, sewn to grey and then cut out after the orange stitches, which worked well – can you tell I’m keen on the florescent thread?  And, the dark grey stitching is actually attaching the whole thing to one of those painted stretched canvases I have around, its 20cm sq. – and I have several 30cm sq, so I will mount them as I do them, because that worked well, too.  On larger pieces there will be room for several French knots or other textural stitches if I want them.

 

 

 

Patterns Of Holes – Current Exploration

Monday, October 28th, 2013

These couple of beach photos show why I find patterns on the sand inspiring – although I have only just connected them to my current ‘holes’ focus.  They are of sand ripples and drainage lines of course; but to each photo I have added some sketch lines to highlight the potential of such patterns as ‘holes’, which to me mean ‘lace’ of a freeform kind.

In this first one,  I sketched in some lines to show how I see irregularly edged fabric with cut holes, and stitch on patterns suggested by the drainage lines, and knotty things of some kind like the little lumpy bits on the sand.

sand lace 2 web

 

And in the second, I have quickly sketched around shapes to show you why I am thinking ‘free form lace ‘ of a kind.

sand lace 3 web

And, if I made some holes with a crochet hook or knitting needles,  both those would provide additional textures …hmm, possibilities.

I’ve already hacked various sized and shaped holes into a variety of fabrics this morning, and now they and some of the cutout bits (these in a mesh bag) are all  swirling around in the long wash cycle.  After a spell in the dryer I hope some interestingly frayed and inspiring pieces of fabric will take me to another step in what I have in mind.

 

 

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