I am prepared for the worst, but hope for the best.― Benjamin Disraeli, British politician and author
Life has turned upside-down and in circles for the past couple of weeks, and I'm taking a moment now to steady myself and find my feet before the ground shifts again. We've had to deal with family emergencies, long illnesses, and transatlantic travel, so my mind has not quite been in the right space to sit down and write.
And yet, I've been yearning to share my latest finished project that I am ever so proud of. It's another illustrated mini quilt made from another piece of my own hand-dyed fabric. If you'd asked me ten years ago if I'd ever be making quilts, let alone illustrated ones, and never mind ones made from my own hand-dyed stash, I would have asked you what planet you came from. And yet, here we are...
This piece is a result of rust dyeing, where you literally use rusty bits of metal to create the patterns on the cloth. I did this at a workshop last year, but because the process takes a while (I left mine a couple of days), I had no idea what the result would be until I opened it up. I decided to use a rusty old drill bit and a few pieces of rusty wire:
After folding and wrapping and twisting the fabric with these bits and pieces, it was soaked and sprayed with vinegar and salt. I decided to wrap mine in a ziploc bag and tape to keep it all really tight. After a couple of days, I took a deep breath and unwrapped it all... and I gasped at the result:
To me, it looks like a dried-up landscape on an African plain during drought season. Every time I looked at it, I wanted to see an elephant making its way through the terrain. And so, I finally taught myself how to draw an elephant:
I've learned that transferring my drawing onto tracing paper is a good way to move it around the fabric so that I can find the perfect spot for it:
Once I know where to place it, I tape the sketch to the window, then tape the fabric over top of it. I do some tracing of the outline so that I can orient where the drawing should be, and then I take it off the window and fill in the rest of the drawing freehand:
After that, I cut the backing fabric (I used another old bedsheet), some binding (also bedsheet) and some batting, and then I pin-basted the layers together and settled in for a lot of hand quilting... but I honestly enjoyed watching the texture come through as I stitched. I was very happy with the result:
I really liked stitching around the rusty parts, as it really made them look like the raised parts of rough terrain:
I'm really proud of this piece. I can't believe such a thing came from my own hands. It's beyond anything I believed was possible.
Now that I've finished this, I have been working away on trying to finish a weaving project because quite honestly, it's embarrassing how long it's taking me to get it done when the actual weaving takes so little time compared to knitting/crochet/quilting. My vision for what that project will look like has changed so much that I'm a little worried that it might be a bit of a train wreck at the end, but here's hoping I can make it into something worth looking at!
I have to head off an get a few things organized for the next upcoming upheaval. I'll let you know when I land back in place. Take care.
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