Heavy Metal

I just finished another quilt in my Industrial Landscape series - here's a small picture of it above.
There'll be a bigger picture on my website when I can get it up there - at the moment there seems to be some technical difficulty at the server!! always frustrating!!
I became interested again in industrial landscapes after seeing the steel mills in Ontario, but as you can see from the website, I have made quilts about such landscapes before. Growing up in the north of England we would often pass Ferrybridge going up the old A1 and see those giant cooling towers. Also, in York, I lived just round the corner from the old gasworks - you could see the gasometer going up and down - not quite sure why!! there's a greater variety of shapes in an industrial landscape...and the different buildings are often connected together with strong diagonals. As we become increasingly built up and industrialized we must find beauty where we can!

The top half of this quilt is appliqued - I cut out the shapes and applied them to the background with a very narrow zigzag in a rayon thread that matched the colour of the fabric. The bottom half is quilted in a wave pattern - first with a purple thread, and then with silver (Sliver) - that's what the little white dots are! The quilt looks even more interesting in real life because the silver also edges the buildings which doesn't show up in the photograph.
All the fabric is hand dyed, the bottom piece is dyed twice, then over dyed with black after being twisted and tied onto a pole. The purple fabric has a lot of screen printing and painting on it.
The grey buildings are quilted with a zigzag stitch which gives them a lot of texture.
It's 41 x 42 inches...I'd like to have a go and making it again only much bigger!!

and now, back to the sewing machine!
oh! I called the quilt: Heavy Metal - it is derived from an image of a steel plant, making metal is a heavy industry - with heavy pollution, and the sound of heavy metal music fits the visual image of the plant!! there are probably even more meanings locked in too!

And, if you have been, thanks for reading! Elizabeth