Sunday 3 April 2011

Digging for Bait

Made for the Hannah's Room Beautiful Batiks Challenge, this will be at Uttoxeter Racecourse (Quilts in the Garden) from 15th to 17th April.  Based on a photograph taken by my late husband in Whitby some years ago:


Admittedly not my usual style which is probably why I found it so much fun to do (once I got round to it, after much agonising - however the agonising was productive, as it went together like a dream in the end.  Quite a challenge for me too in using the commercially-produced fabrics, having to work with colours already there, rather than dyeing the ones I really wanted: learnt a lot this way!  And I love the way the patterns echo the fossils that you find in this part of Whitby!

Techniques are straightforward - curved piecing, improvised as I went (but only after trying out various ideas in paint and cut paper which is probably what made it so easy in the end), with the figure cut from a fabric also made from curved strip-piecing.  Then overloaded with a variety of free-motion quilted patterns for the backgound, with drawn lines (quilted drawn lines that is) suggesting the figure.  Enormous fun to do!