Time for another blog.
Spent this morning out with my OH and my grandson on a photo shoot. We went to one of our two unique famous bridges - The Transporter bridge. I prefer to take odd angled images so I didn't take a full conventional view of it to show you.
When I was a teenager in the days of tight pencil skirts and winkle picker stiletto heels and backcombed buffon hair - a few of us decided to cross the bridge the hard way - up and over the top. And yes, we were dressed in pencil skirts, stiletto heels and backcombed hair with lots of hair spray. We looked a bit hot, sweaty and wind blown - in spite of the hair spray - by the time we reached the other side. These days, this climb and walkway have been closed to the public - sadly because of suicides. It is a long way down to the river below. I shudder at the thought of it now.
The weather, at last, was glorious even down by the river quayside. My GS took his usual huge batch of images which we managed to whittle down when processing them. He is becoming more discerning about what he keeps now. He has always loved this bridge which he called 'blue ferry' and we used to take him across regularly when he was younger. It has a cradle which you drive onto and it travels across hanging from the span.
Between all the photography sessions, I have managed to do some textile work.
I mentioned the Stone Queen in the last post. I printed the image onto white cotton and then highlighted areas with metallic acrylic paints and then free machined it.
I have also created another art quilt which started out as a photograph of some leaves on one of my house plants. I put it through a serious of special effects in Photoshop and the results triggered an idea for an art quilt.
This is the first panel. I loved the colours.
This is the second panel.
I used these two to create a composite.
The panels were printed onto white cotton. Obviously the colours would not be as vibrant as on the screen but I made them as strong as I could by sliding the saturation level higher and also the red and magenta to get the purple I wanted. I always test print on a piece of the same fabric and adjust accordingly. The panels were printed so that I could stitch each one individually.
When they had been printed, I painted some areas with metallic acrylic paints before free machine quilting them.
Once all the panels had been stitched they were trimmed and butt joined together. I used a wide zigzag machine pattern to join the panels and a narrow zigzag to edge.
I decided not to give the piece a border.
The final quilt is less vibrant and I still haven't decided on the black four petal crosses over the windows and over some of the joins. I made some mock ups and laid them on but could not decide which I preferred. So as I always say - 'If in doubt, leave it out'. So I have for now. This is a close up of the top set of four panels
The final quilt is about 50cm long and I used one of those furnishing samples I mentioned in my last post. They make excellent backing for quilting.
I am now ready to begin thinking about what I am going to do next so cheers for now everyone.
