Lines- Seams Waiting To Happen

I’ve previously blogged about my approach to planning  https://www.alisonschwabe.com/weblog/?p=1010  and in that particular post used a collage of diagrams on pages from it:

Collaged sketch book pages

One was a snippet from a diagrammatic sketch of a man wearing heavy outdoor clothing featuring a fisherman’s rib neck on his sweater.  I saw it in some ad in an Aussie newspaper back in about 1995, and clearly remember it but can’t find the actual pic.  It inspired me to sketch the pattern of knitting and the use those lines and shapes in a commissioned quilt for a book “Quiltskills” 1997, published by the Quilters Guild of NSW.  Each chapter featured particular skills useful to contemporary quiltmakers, illustrated by a quilt made especially to go with the article.  Mine was chapter 2, Irregular Shapes.

Anyway this morning I found a very old and poor image of that quilt, Waterweave”,  the colour of which somehow seems stuck at ‘too green’ but anyway I’ve put it alongside that line diagram to show how for me a basic diagram can lead to an actual quilt.  Its typical of my planning that I work things out as I go, and usually know when its time to stop.

Waterweave quilt and sketch blog

 

As a student and then teacher of geography, illustrating whatever I’m talking about with a simple diagram is what I naturally turn to, so my designs in fabric and thread tend to develop from that kind of mark making, too, and I’ve mentioned before that I see almost any line as a seam waiting to happen.

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