Map quilts after Alicia Merrett

I may no longer be able to go to the Festival of Quilts but thanks to social media and people's blogs it is easy to see some of what I missed.  I also decided this year that as I am saving a lot of money by not going, I can afford to buy new books.  So I have bought three to start me off.

First up is Alicia Merrett's book to go with the exhibition she had at Festival.www.aliciamerrett.co.uk  This book is a brilliant idea.  It combines a catalogue of the exhibition, photographs of other map quilts she has made and a short workshop on how to make map quilts. And of course there are more in the galleries on her website.   As I am a map junkie I have loads of ideas for subject matter but it is a good idea to check out the techniques first.  I have studied with Alicia in the past so I am familiar with her method of curved piecing but I decided to make a trial piece to remind myself of the method.  A good idea this as it is very easy to lose track of what you are doing and that means you will not have a real map.

I began by going to my 'sweetie jars' of small scraps and found plenty of pieces for the houses.  It was a really good way to use up lots of leftover two inch pieces from bindings.

Then I turned to my large basket of green scraps to choose pieces for the fields.  I have done lots of work in green in the past but I realised that a lot of the scraps were patterned or had too much contrast of colour for this exercise.  Also I seem to have much more yellow green that blue green.  However, I was determined to make this piece from what I already have.  Following Alicia's instructions I laid all the pieces out, having done a drawing of a mythical village.

Then I promptly lost the plot of the design as I sewed them!  Finally I told myself firmly not to be such a perfectionist and remember this was just an exercise.  So here is the top.

I need to tidy up the edges and then it will be fourteen inches square.  As the weather forecast for the Bank Holiday tomorrow is dire I hope I can do the quilting tomorrow.  In my head I am asking how I can take Alicia's principles and make the technique mine.  This one would be instantly recognisable as 'hers' and I think that is one of the main problems with taking workshops.  I am wondering whether I should do something from an old map in 'old' colours.  I have plenty of rust dyed fabric which might work.  We live on a crossroads which is one of the oldest parts of the village and I know it was there well over a hundred years ago, so perhaps that should be my next one.  There are also the two villages we lived in before moving down here.  Then thee is the area where I spent the second part of my childhood which is now a suburb on Wellington but was originally a farming settlement and which has a wonderful straight road going right down the middle of it!  I can see I am not going to be short of subject matter.

I also noticed on Amazon that there are several books on map quilts so I am wondering if it is a bit 'flavour of the month'.  Certainly having access to things such as Google Earth and various map apps. means you could tell the story of your life in this form!