August 2015 theme Decay Irene MacWilliam

When I heard the theme for August was decay I knew I had to make something to do with one of my great interests - compost making. Sounds sad but it just lifts me to see how all the decayable household waste can be turned into amazingingly productive soil. I found some old decaying leaves  and various other bits of growth and did the above sun print. I loved it. I was using reds, browns, yellows and a little green, not combinations I often work with. I find brown a difficult colour.  I did not want to cut it up but I had to.

This is the piece I made for the theme. I have printed a photo of the above onto TAP paper and am toying with producing another piece on the theme of  Decay. Again sorry for being late in posting. I also want to do the old and new theme and have an idea for that so again that will be late and out of sequence.

Restless theme

Initially I was a bit flummoxed by this theme and could only think of the song, The westward wind is a resless wind.
Then the idea came to me when I was busy doing something else. I found  a piece of fabric that had been created for backgrounds for my year quilts. I had sort of paint dyed it unevenly, then splodged on some other paint, it had then gone to a workshop where we were doing printing and screen printing but the paints we were given more or less washed out as they were designed for paper printing. I was dubious about their stability though the tutor had said they were fast once ironed.... hence my washing of the fabric; washing fabric is not my usual practice.  I stenciled the rectangles with some old smelly fabric paint from 1995 (smell goes once it has cured). Made a stencil and then using a home made screen and binder with dye colours (Colourcraft) I screen printed the boy images. Lettering is stamped using childrens' foam letters. I then free machine quilted the piece. For wadding I used a piece of old old black supposedly 2 oz polyester, dreadful stuff but it does use it up. I hate throwing out stuff and look at everything with a view to recycling somehow.

October challenge HOT

Here is the second attempt at this challenge.

We recently had Edwina McKinnon to the Northern Ireland Patchwork Guild and among her pieces she showed one where she had joined pieces by zig zag stitch and then turned and cut, stitched and turned and cut. It struck me this would be a quick way to get lots of hot coloured pieces quickly assembled for the background to my piece.

I then came up with the idea of hot springs. I downloaded a tiny image of springs and spent an evening copying it, I kept getting lost in all the coils. When I had my drawing I stitched the outline of the springs and the letters and then filled them with old silver paint by Hobbytex. It must be about 20 years old. I have never used either gold or silver paint in my work so it was wonderful to finally use it. Of course it has evaporated somewhat but was fine. I liked the way it did not totally cover the area so makes the springs look a bit aged.
Irene MacWilliam