I find it difficult to get rid of scraps. I have boxes of them. They threaten to take over my workroom and then the house. Something must be done. Something was done.
I tipped scraps out onto the floor and started sorting them out by colour family, by temperature, by pattern. Ideas began to flow. Organic shapes, curves, undulating lines. In the motley piles of scraps I began to see woods, forests and trees, as well as hills, fields and paths.
I cut out strips - no ruler or scissors, just a rotary cutter, freely slicing through pairs of fabrics, then another pair, joining up the pairs to make curvy blocks of colour, some in warm earth tones of reds, oranges and browns, others of greens yellows and the occasional purple.
The blocks were sewn together in strips then joined to make a whole piece. Now the question - which way round should it be - vertical or horizontal? I had concentrated on the block and colour placement knowing that I would be pleased with the end result but not thinking about orientation - part of the serendipity of making art.
I played with the piece in all directions, thinking about the irregular shapes of the edges and whether I should straighten them out by cutting them off. But then it would lose its organic feel.... I decided it looked more like a landscape rather than a forest. So a horizontal placement with undulating horizontal lines of quilting
And how to bind the edges? The answer was obvious - just tidy up the edges, keeping their free form and finish the quilt with a facing, not a binding.
The finished quilt - "Red Earth"
