Those indigo fabrics

This week I have finally got round to doing something with the fabrics I made at Janice Gunner's indigo dyeing workshop.  It is inspired by walks between Hayle and Godrevy lighthouse, an area with very interesting geology.  The quilting is going to be an important part of the whole design but here is the top.  It is approximately 28 inches square.  I am not making it for anything in particular which is why I can show it at this   stage of its development.

The centre consists of a piece of fine cotton that was folded and clamped with bulldog clips.  It is collaged onto a piece of linen that was simply scrunched.  The left hand panel is a piece of rust dyeing and the strip below it is commercial batik with a piece of sateen that I had dyed and then pole wrapped and painted, collaged in the centre.  I plan to quilt that section to represent the ridges you find in the sand when the tide is out.

The right side is space dyed cotton sateen that I made some time ago.  Is is supposed to represent the rock faces you find in this area but I do not seem to have a photograph of them.  The top and bottom panels are the piece that was anchored with clothes pegs.  Fortunately there was enough to cut and piece this.

I still have several pieces left from the workshop.  Here is the stitched grid.

It is also linen which I can see is going to be a bit tricky to stitch because it is quite a loose weave.

Tomorrow we are off to Launceston to collect the wedding present quilt from the longarm quilter.  I rather fancy visiting Launceston Castle if the weather is OK as I have never been there although I have driven round Launceston numerous times.  I am reading a fascinating book: The Making of the British Landscape by Francis Pryor http://www.amazon.co.uk/Making-British-Landscape-Transformed-Prehistory/dp/1846142059 and today I got to the section on Norman castles.  Launceston is a particularly good example of one.  As I have always had a great interest in 'reading the landscape' as I think it is called, I used to say I would take Hoskin's Making of the English Landscape to a desert island. This book is really its successor and illustrates how much archaeology has developed in the last half century due to all the high tech. equipment and techniques that have been developed.  Highly recommended and it has recently come out in paperback.