Photographs to Fabric Class - Textile 'Quilt' piece

Well, I did promise to show you all this when I finished it so here it is.

It may no longer be quite obvious but the photographic areas are of a shingle beach with wooden breakwaters in the near and middle distance plus various bits of flotsam and jetsam including sticks, fishing yarn and some rag-like fabric (could be some dried form of seaweed).

After sewing the printed pieces together and/or on to the backing fabric – mainly with zigzag stitch, I sewed round some of the breakwater posts and stuffed them from the back (as we have been taught). I then made some machine cords with the threads from the backing fabric, the pale blue linen and the cream open-weave scrim that I had frayed. These cords have been used to edge parts of the pictures and, with couching stitches, to make the circular texture bottom right. I have done some free-stitching into the circular image on the bottom left, used a automatic machine faggoting-style stitch to add texture to the blue linen frame at the top of the main picture and added a piece of soft, frayed, open-weave cotton to echo the rag-like seaweed.

I have learned a lot from doing this; that it’s fun to play about just for one’s own satisfaction, that it would have been better to do more stitching before backing the piece and to make sure that the stitching I did was properly finished off. I had to make some repairs after the wadding and backing had been attached and I didn’t always place the various elements down in the right order. But I am quite pleased with the result and may well do some more.