January’s journal quilt
Looking from my window down to the Severn, I can see the river has flooded onto the fields in several places. I attached all the pieces with bondaweb. The fabric is all hand dyed, with some addition painting and the trees stamped on.
February 6th
I went for a walk on one of the rare days when it wasn’t raining, Sunday January 26th. I picked some bracken, teasels, empty seed head stalks of rose bay willow herb and some stems of old man’s beard, wondering if I could use them to print with. The result is this quilt, A Winter Walk:
I printed on to hand dyed and rusted fabrics, using acrylic paint and zigzagged the pieces on to backing cloth. The wall at the bottom was printed using a collagraph block I had made some time ago. The teasels were photographed and transferred on to organza using TAP paper through an ink jet printer. I appliquéd red silk shapes to represent the red berries of woody nightshade that were twining around plants and trees. Finally I added stitching.
February 17th
February’s journal quilt
I lived in Finland for five years and I always remember an image I have of travelling on the train in February and seeing beads of snow sparkling like pearls – February is named in Finnish “helmikuu”, the month of pearls. No snow here this year, but the snowdrops are sparkling like pearls against the moss in the garden and I wanted to reflect this in February’s quilt:
I used screen printed sateen as the base cloth, bondaweb to apply the ivy leaves and for the snowdrop petals – one layer of polyester satin and one of sheer fabric. I painted an ivy leaf with acrylic as a stamp for the additional leaves and dyed and painted scrim for the moss and folliage. The snowdrop flowers are stitched with silver and a sparkly green thread.