Sunday 15 March 2009

Travelling Books - 9 January 2009

Close to where I work is a large cementary. Sometimes I take a walk there during my lunch break. In January we had a several days of freezing weather inculding a couple of days of freezing fog that left everything covered in a thick haw frost. I went to the cemetary to photograh the winter foliage encrusted in ice crystals.

While there I spotted a granite memorial with an ironwork surround. The ornate metalwork was festooned with frozen cobwebs. The contrast between the three elements really struct me. The fragile cobwebs, so easily destroyed by the weather, the iron slowing decaying after many years of exposure and the granite, ancient, and seemingly impervious to the elements.


This was the inspiration for the page in my first travelling book. I first sketched a design based on the iron work. I used the grainy fabric that I created on Play Days - Part 2 to represent the granite in the background and the fabric created in Play Days - Part 1 for the iron work.


After machine stitching around the design outline with metallic thread, I carefully cut away the top layer to expose the 'granite' fabric.


I then cut out the design and removed the tracing paper from the remaining areas.


With white Medeira metallic thread, I hand stitched cobwebs onto the ironwork.


Every photograph, every thought is a moment frozen in time. On that ice encapsulated day, even the cobwebs had an air of permenancy.


Happy Stitching

7 comments:

Yoyo said...

This is beautiful finished piece. But more to the point, I love the way you presented it to us. From the top down, this is a terrific blog post!!!

MeganH said...

oh wow! I'm so impressed!

Susan Elliott said...

Those frozen cobwebs are really something. I agree with yoyo -- it was a great post -- from inspiration to original design. And I loved how your page turned out !

KV said...

This is marvelous!


Kathy V in NM

Anonymous said...

I love reading your post it makes me want to go home and stitch. lol Sue X

Marie Alton said...

Awesome rendition of real life!
Love your translation into a stitched piece!

Deepa said...

how on earth did I miss this post???
But glad that I saw it atleast today.
No words to describe this one - will superb do?