I’ve chosen the images below as examples of how the linear shapes of landscapes and provide me with the structure, or inspiration if you like, to compose pieced and stitched designs in fabric and thread. Many of them have words like landlines, landmarks, tidelines and dreamlines in their titles and statements.

In this favourite beach photo, I edited out a footprint, making the scale quite ambiguous, reminding us that whatever the scale, whether in a vast desert or along the margin of your local beach, such a pattern is formed in the process of erosion.

There are a couple of different land lines in this picture: first are what I call the beach cliffs which I’ve only seen occur 1m or 2m up the beach from the water’s edge a couple of times. In the lower part of the photo, the fine lines wandering down to the bottom of the photo ending with a little lump were ridges of wet sand left by tiny bivalves gradually following the receeding tide as it moved further away from the ‘beach cliffs’.

I used the photo to (1) draw basic lines of the beach cliffs and the pattern left by the little molluscs, and (2) used them to cut and piece a sample of improvisational or freehand patchwork to show students in a class how easy it is to work this way if one wishes, and that there is plenty of potential in original fibreart based on personal observations remembered, drawn or photographed.

In my advanced improvisational patchwork construction workshops, a power point presentation includes some other examples of how we can use patterns observed in nature.

I’ve written elsewhere about machine stitched lines and segments of fabric, and how they inspired me to come up with this almost-railway-tracks pattern.

This is a section of a new piece I’m currently working on in very deserty colours, using the same combination of machine and hand stitching with segmented patchwork that I developed and used in my donation to this year’s SAQA Benefit Auction quilt. The combination of lines and colours suggested strands of green algae, so I called it Spirogyra.

Yesterday I posted that I’d decided to finish my two most recent works with a fine binding on each of them, and one had been hanging on the design wall for several weeks waiting for that decision. Yesterday I swung into action, as I rarely have more than one work in progress, and had realised I needed to totally finish off these two before I could concentrate on the next couple I have in mind! It’s just how I work, a mental process, a mind-clearing thing; and I’m the same in the kitchen, where I just can’t start cooking something until the bench spaces are cleared and clean, the washing up’s dealt with, and any rubbish has been removed.

Perhaps it was a store display that influenced me to buy these little plastic clips by Clover on my last trip to the USA, and although they were new to me, I knew they’d be handy for something the minute I saw them. Of course, I might be the last quiltmaker to come across these handy gadgets, because it took me 18 months to take them out and try them, for some reason! But I’m glad I did eventually, because they’re quite brilliant. Using a few of them dispenses with the need to pin, and tack/baste the binding into place before stitching it down on the back.

The strong spring loaded clip can be moved sideways as you stitch, holding down the turned back binding strip to show the same amount, about 0.75cm or 0.5in, on the front of a quilt. For some strange reason, I didn’t use them until the second quilt, and was so impressed with that result that I unpicked and completely re-sewed the binding on the first one; and it was amazing how easy it was to get a perfect French binding.

If French binding is new to you, do try to get a copy of Mimi Deitrich’s “Happy Endings”, published several times since 1988; there are second hand copies on sites like Amazon and Etsy, and of course there are videos on YouTube too – you can check them out and find one that suits. Personally I don’t ever do diagonal seams when joining bindings as most of the videos do- but you’ll find your way – there is no absolutely correct way in all this, unless you think you might run up against the deaded “quilt police” judges in a prestigious traditional quilt show somewhere 🙂

I was moving forward well on my plans to make at least two new quilts to enter Quilt National 25, (closing date August 31st) and two 40 cm sq pieces to enter Australia Wide 9 (closing date July 12th) but all once it seems, my attention and time were required elsewhere, away from my textile art.

First, it was fabulous to have one of my sisters visit from NZ for a hectic week, and naturally I didn’t even think of stitching anything while she was here. We talked our heads off, played cards, did a couple of tourist things, saw some tango, ate out several times, had a couple of friends around for dinner, consumed a few G&Ts and some wine, managed a bit of shopping and had pedicures.

Also welcome was a couple of days of workmen in the house attending to some urgent maintenance things, and while it is great to have those done at last, that was all time and attention consuming. Unwelcome was the washing machine conking out completely beyond repair, requiring in the purchase of a new one. It is wonderful, but installation and the removal of the old one all took time, too. Also unwelcome were the medical consultations and tests in preparation for hip replacement surgery which suddenly became urgent in the past few weeks, and while I don’t yet have the date I do have fingers crossed that I can at least get one more suitable large work to the finishing and hand sewing stage, and another small one, ditto. It’s a bit soon yet to line up my photographer Eduardo, but from now on I need to focus. I’m torn between hoping the surgery is as soon as possible, but also hoping it’s not for a few weeks yet!

With this in mind, yesterday I edged one small piece for the AW9 entry call. The quilting in orange is finished and really gives it a dynamic lift, but in keeping with my policy I won’t show it in full until it’s been published/seen somewhere.

Today I put a binding on a quilt that has been waiting for this decision on the edging. and the hand sewing can be done some evening in front ot the TV. A few wet days are due next week – perfect for the two pieces I have in mind, and possibly hand sewing in front of the fire… because despite autumn leaves still clinging to some of the trees, everything indicates winter is approaching fast.

Looking back now, it seems my whole adult life has been destined to mostly be spent on flat plains, as I have just realised my personal landscape vision would be very different if I had remained, in my birth place, Tasmania, that mountainous island state of Australia which I left in my early 20s to live in Western Australia and points beyond. However much I have thought about what inspires my art making and how my past has influenced the present (and presumably will do in the future) it surprises me that I have only just realised this fact!!

I’ve moved about a great deal, as my exploration geologist husband’s career involved searching for base metals on 3 continents. The Nickel Boom of the 60’s-70s took us to Western Australia, and, for a few years he was in the search for uranium in The Northern Territory and Far NW Queensland. Gold took us back to Western Australia again, and from there he was transferred to Denver CO, for a few years. He was involved in a successful entrepreneurial search for gold and other metals here in South America for about 20 years until retirement. For the first two decades of his career we lived and travelled across the vast regions of Australia’s Outback, with the characteristically flat, very low profile grassy plains occasionally sporting eroded outcrops of ancient landforms.

The north of the Australian continent is known as The Top End, and subject to monsoon seasons from late November until May. Normally dry river beds fill and start flowing over flood plains as the water makes its way to the coast or low lying central areas that become shallow inland seas briefly before they disappear into the aquifer or evaporate. Besides coming alive with animals, birds and plants, during that season often some areas will become impassable, sometimes for weeks, except where all-weather roads have been constructed. Even as I write, this process is proceeding across the land on a grand scale following excellent rains in the first 3 months of this year, meaning this will be a bumper year for wildflowers, tourism and beef production.

In May, The Dry develops again and prevails until November, by which time vast areas of the essentially flat continent have produced a lot of grass which eventually dies back to leave almost bare the characteristic red soils that are typical of our Outback. But people can once again move around for business and tourism, pastoralists can move their animals around and muster them, and mining companies engage in mineral exploration programs of surveying and mapping, soil sampling and drilling.

In total, I’ve lived about 20 years in the Outback – Western Australia, Far NW Queensland and The Northern Territory – around heavily eroded, round-topped rock outcrops rising out of vast low-profiled plains. Australia is the most ancient, most stable, flattest section of the Earth’s crust. Here I should add that from the late 80’s we spent 6 years in Denver CO, the westernmost suburbs of which are at the very start of the foothills of The Rocky Mountains. Heading East from Denver, it’s a couple of days’ drive on I-70 across the Central Plains states of Kansas and Missouri to the city of St. Louis on the Mississippi River. For mile after mile, there’s nothing of note., just flat cornfields, grain silos and some railroad towns – been there, driven that.

In the late 90s, Gold exploration brought the geologist+1 to Uruguay, a very small, flat country situated in another flat grassy plains region known as the Pampa, This Pampa covers much of S. Brasil, E. Argentina and contains all of Uruguay. A few mesa structures rise out of these plains, too, in the north and east, and the highest point in the whole country is only about 520m.

Exploration geos must move to where the rocks are, and after so many years near heavily weathered, ancient rocks rising out of flat plains, it’s hardly surprising that I see ‘landscape’ in very basic primal shapes of wandering lines and arc shapes representing rounded top hills. If I lived somewhere with active volcanoes or recently dormant ones, I’d probably be more inclined to visualise hills as triangles.

Following are some of my landscape quilts made during the last twenty years. They certainly form a series based on my vision of landscape, which, as I outlined at the start of this post, has been entirely developed over extended periods living on flat plains with occasional rounded rocky outcrops, that is, very ancient weathered surfaces 🙂

My techniques are always very simple and involve any or all of hand applique, machine piecing and reverse machine applique. In recent years I have used hand stitched marks in my surface designs and quilting, where they currently predominate, and I haven’t done any piecing for several years. Except for the first one, Abstract Landscape Textures, all the above were machine quilted. Many Australian Aboriginal artists in particular outline major shapes with lines of dots, and paint filler patterns within those shapes in that distinct style known as ‘Aboriginal dot painting’. It’s something akin to Pointillism, although the coloured dots tend to be more homogenous rather than several colours mixed for the colour blending that characterises the Post Impressionist work of the pointillists like Georges Seurat and Paul Signac. Outlining something in a line of dots by hand, or for example with French Knots, is demanding of time and patience. While I never say “never”, in this case I’m pretty sure I will never fill in shapes with dots or knots… although now I think of it, a filler of French Knots is tempting…