two lochs quilt

Having experimented with all the printing techniques on a piece of hand dyed cotton 1.5 m x 2.5 m I wanted to carry on working with the fabric in some way.

I knew there had been threads and images coming together from the drawings of bone and shell. The piece of bone, that looked like the drift wood horse's head from Ireland (see my photos), led me into thinking about the history of Loch Maree with its connections with the Vikings. So the Viking ship's head shape was created as a stencil for the fabric. Looking at Viking jewellery from the British Museum archive also resonated with the shapes and patterns of bone and shell. The string mounted stamp brought me closest to these images.

The neighbouring loch, beside which I live - Loch Ewe, also has much history. Ships for the Russian Convoy sailed from here during WW2 and there are many ruins of gun placements as well as cairns and ruined croft houses. Shapes from these ruins, rubbings of stone and historical photos of fishermen and crofting brought these threads together .

Finally as I was summoning up courage to cut the cloth to reconnect the shapes in a new way we were visited by one of those moons so wonderful here as the nights draw in. The reflections on the loch sent me hunting for some silver thread to do the quilting stitch with. The line of a favourite folk song "Come live by the great moon that rules the strong tide" is the title of the small quilt.

I have had , as usual, moments of pure joy and of panic !! But on the whole the journey has been a good one. I wanted to find movement and try and remember what I had read about colour, dark and light and colour related to shapes. Also I knew that this would be the only piece of dyed fabric I would submit so tried to introduce some sense of repetition into the piece.

Maybe there is too much going on but that is probably because the piece began life as a learning piece for all these new techniques.

The greatest lesson for me has been to allow initial drawings to lead me onto into a process that I didn't know the end of ,until I arrived there. I have never worked in this way before and it has been a big adventure.

I also realise that working alone here has advantages and disadvantages. I wonder whether as I start section 3 we could arrange for you - Sarah - to look at the blog entries as I go on and give the odd comment back? I don't want to expect too much from you when you are so busy with your other work commitments and life in general, but it might save me from feeling so clueless Also I think I shall ask a couple of trusted friends if they will also look at the blog and give some constructive comments to help me make progress.