We are very lucky with the light in this beautiful part of the West Country and the golden sunrises and purple sunsets can be absolutely stunning
I love moody, stormy skies too. Skies heavy with dark greys and plummy mauves. The light in the bay of St. Ives is truly amazing and I really wanted to feature this element in my art quilt for Festival of Quilts
A few of you have asked to see my quilt so I thought I would share a few photos of how I made it and a little about what inspired it
I started by thinking about the elements of St. Ives I wanted to incorporate and the colours I wanted to work with. I spent some time gathering together inspiring fabrics, threads, beads, shells and images of cottages that I collect
St. Ives cottage inchies
I decided to work in layers of colour and the fabric I used is dupioni silk which I dyed myself. I made some colour samples first before selecting the colours I wanted to use to dye the pieces
The back
This is the front panel. The four pieces were dyed separately then stitched together. There is also a border around the back and front panels in variegated dyed silk
I washed the panels on the front so they are lighter than on the back
I appliqued a row of Cornish cottages as though on a brow of a hill, using many different fabrics such as silk, cotton, painted and monoprinted calico, crocheted lace, scrunched tea dyed cotton and painted bondaweb
The roofs were made from textured fabrics such as linen, hessian, three types of scrim, furniture fabrics and salt dyed cottons which I distressed with mustard gold ink for the look of lichen, which is very distinctive on the roofs of St. Ives cottages
The clouds were made from wadding bondawebbed to the silk and later quilted with pearl seed beads. I added a snippet of text to one of the clouds "from a pale grey sky"
Next I prepared a backing layer for the cobbles. I used a natural backing fabric and snippets of many different fabrics which I bonded together with bondaweb
Snippets
The photo above shows the backing fabric, a layer of bondaweb and the snippets of fabric. I used hessian, polyesters, cottons, silk, metallic threads, metallic fabrics and cellophane sweet wrappers. I covered this with a sheet of baking paper and ironed the layers to fuse the snippets to the backing fabric
This is what it looked like after peeling the baking paper off
The cobble panel was tacked behind the front panel below the cottages and then I free motion stitched "cobble" shapes through all the layers and quilted the cottages
I don't have any more pictures to show of the next stages as I started to run out of time and needed to spend every spare moment stitching
I quilted ripple patterns on the layer of sand and hand stitched heat distressed chiffons decorated with real limpet shells, mussel shells and beads
The seaweed layer was lightly quilted and the bottom of the quilt was embellished with seaweed shapes which I made from heat distressed chiffons and ribbons and also melted plastic carrier bags. I added lots of beads, shells and eyelash yarns for coral
Finally, I cut through areas of the cobbles (reverse applique) to reveal the fabrics behind the front panel, added a binding in salt dyed cotton, water drop crystals for rain drops and window details to the cottages
So, that's it! I ran out of time in the end! It had to go in the post on Thursday to arrive Friday 30th (the Festival's deadline day!). I only just made it! I was still stitching it at 4.30 and really could have done with another hour, but in the end I just had to call it a day and managed to get it in the post at 4.45 (Next Day Delivery). Phew!
Elements of St. Ives
If you are visiting Festival of Quilts at Birmingham in August I do hope you enjoy seeing all of the quilts. If you look at mine, please be gentle with me and bear in mind that it's far from perfect, that I only started stitching it on 14th July and that in my own mind it needs "titivating" when I get it back! I thoroughly enjoyed stitching it, I just wish I'd started much earlier!
August rushes in ... and it's going to be a busy month but I'm hoping it will feel more relaxed than July did while I catch up with my other projects and blog buddies
Hope your week ahead is a happy one
Carolyn ♥