A Sign of the Times - Grandma's Clock

My Grandma had a very odd looking clock when I was a child, with all sorts of wheels that moved although I never knew what they did, I was too young!!  This is my interpretation of it.
 I firstly made a sencil, with Bondaweb and ironed onto calico, cut it out and stuck it onto the background fabric. The dial that holds the numbers was covered with "hot spots" from Nid Noi, with a sheet of Transfoil ironed over and then pulled off to leave lots of very small bronze circles. The wheels were part of the original stencil as were the fingers and these were painted before being stitched around. I had a real problem trying to add the numerals and eventually gave up and bought some stick-on ones from a craftshop!

August theme

The theme for the coming month is: Decay. Good luck everybody!

NO ENTRY

For 'Seaside' Theme.

Yes, this really is the seaside!  Well, almost!  It is, in fact, a creek which goes into the sea but one can surely stretch a point.  (I cannot 'do' buckets & spades, seashells, beach huts etc).  The blue surround indicates the euphemistically called 'migrant activity'' as they try to come in by boat.  (As I write this there has been an unprecedented attempted invasion of the Tunnel & 'Operation Stack' is back in place).  We feel that we cannot go anywhere in North Kent at the moment.  There are references to barbed wire, arrowheads and surveillance whilst the crosses are self-explanatory.  Access denied!

The quilting emphasizes the problem by putting up barriers in each section whilst the random quilting on the sea represents a turbulent crossing.  I particularly like the effect created by the random quilting on the outside sea area.  When I look at the original before me the effect is very textural & interesting.

Whilst the work is inspired by the current migrant problem I am not taking sides and it does not represent my own view as to what should be done.  I do not know the answer.

MAELSTROM

Not exactly a giant whirlpool with eddies and strong currents off the coast of Norway - more a wimp of a ripple on the River Tyne on that rainy day I have portrayed before. The ripple's movement is restless, however, and this is the response to that theme.  I have tried to emphasise this by dividing the work and quilting in spirals.

It has been an enjoyable piece to do.

Sorry for the late arrival but it was designed some time ago but I have only just made it up due to unexpected happenings.

Seaside

I did a posting a few days ago about my ideas for the Seaside theme. I discarded them as I got the urge to paint some fabric so that is how my piece evolved. For both the sea and the land areas I painted off-cuts of the gorgeous fabrics in the Empress Mills bundles. I then made four simple stencils from freezer paper but only used two of them, the yacht and the fish.
For the wadding I herringboned two strips of wadding; no idea when I bought it. It is horrible as it has left a texture that is probably suitable for both the sea and land areas but I do not like it. I sat on the finished piece while watching Wimbeldon and drinking copious mugs of tea. It has not flattened it very much but storage may well rectify that. I still have some of the wadding left so no doubt I will use it again as I can not bear to throw it out.

theme July

The coming month we have a rather difficult theme: Sign of the times. Good luck everybody, I have no clue what I am going to do with that theme.

Seaside

Last year we had the theme Life at the Beach and this month it is Seaside. Two themes which can be similar, but I think that the piece I did this month looks differently :-). I decided to have a more abstract view of the seaside:

All fabrics used are my own hand dyed ones, with the exception of the sailing boat, that one is a commercial one.