Archi-texture

Today is reveal day for our third challenge over at the International Quilt Challenge Blog and for the first time I am actually at home for the reveal.  The title of the challenge was 'Archi-texture' and I reproduce here the post I put up on the blog this morning.

 I'll start from the end which is the piece I've reached by today's reveal date.  At the moment it's  called Archi-texture I as I've forgotten the name of the building that inspired it but it is all about decaying surfaces and is only one of the directions this challenge took my thoughts.

After enjoying the process of the Pojagi in the last challenge I was keen to carry on exploring layers and the idea of looking through. On a train journey from Cornwall I had plenty of time to let my mind wander and notes I made at the time include suggestions of monoprinting on cotton; building up layers of print on top; sponging; painting over stitched, quilted fabric, discharging, painting again; scribbled stitching.  As the train slowly approached London we passed a Macdonalds' with its iconic arched logo and that turned a light on.  Having recently seen Karen Turner's work I thought about layering fabrics over a textured basecloth and cutting the arches through to reveal the texture below.  I think that would have been a fun way to go but when I got home and started looking at my photos of texture and architecture I found an image I had taken in Leicester near the New Walk Museum of a very decaying building.

As you can now see the image at the top caught my imagination and I decided to explore that with surface design on fabric.

Using my own printed , dyed and discharged fabrics I cut and bonded the pieces to batting layering one or two sheers with text on them below the dyed net curtaining that forms the 3 neutral columns.  My free machining/quilting skills are distinctly lacking but I used a variety of stitching to describe the cracks that you might see as a building deteriorates.  The 'quilt' is A3 size and there is no binding, the backing was turned through and the edge closed with top stitching all round.

I have to admit to several influences while I was working on this piece including the work of Shelley Rhodes that I saw at Alexandra Palace last year and work by Mary Hettmansberger that had featured in Quilting Arts magazine.  Having linked to Mary's work here I wonder now whether that is what drew me to my photograph although I took the photo about 5 years ago.  Subconsciously the colours may have been a strong factor in remembering that image of the building.  Another piece of work that got me very interested was a piece hanging at the Beetroot Gallery in their open exhibiton.

This is 'Traces' by Lesley Bohanna and I love the texture she has brought to the surface with mediums and printing.  The piece is very tactile with layers produced by added mediums, fabrics, printing and stitch. As far as I can tell from Google Lesley is a member of Dewbury Art Club. While preparing the fabrics for my own piece I applied some acrylic texture medium to the fabric before printing but I want to go back and play more along these lines. 

The beauty of this challenge, as with the preceding ones, is that it has opened my mind up to so many possibilities and so many ways to interpret the texture in architecture and I could, and hopefully will, carry on exploring for many months to come.  I am hoping that the next challenge will lead naturally into related areas of work and I still have to come back to thinking about how pojagi and archi-texture can come together.

PS if you can't enlarge the images by clicking on them go and have a look at them on the International Quilt Challenge blog.