Sea Change

Sea change - "a profound or notable transformation" (Oxford Dictionary)



This piece of work represents a transformation for the material and for my way of working. The materials themselves have been transformed by use of the heat gun and by the incorporation of the stitches. And the piece represents a transformation in my approach to making a quilt. I am certainly not renowned for making a detailed plan and following it through (easily distracted? moi?) but this is the first time I've made a piece of work without having any idea of what I wanted it to turn out like! I just started with the materials I had that fitted with the colour palette and took it from there.

So first I layered together yellow felt, light blue felt, torn strips of a darker blue plastic bag and last of all a sheer blue gridded fabric. I then machine stitched a grid. Well, it started out as a grid, but I got bored of that and started to make some of the lines wavy or zigzaggy:



Next I got out my heat gun and zapped away, after which it looked like this:



And (a bit more terrifyingly) this:



Trying to ignore the scary face, I pulled out some embroidery floss and pearl cotton and started stitching. I started off just stitching to fill shapes, first with the cretan stitch, then the herringbone. These shapes reminded me of mermaids and fish which started me on the sea theme. And the rest, as they say, is history!

To finish off the quilt, I added yellow felt as a backing and satin stitched round the edges. The edges are a bit wavy, but for me, that just adds to the sea-change feeling ;-)