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Wednesday, 6 March 2013

Journal quilts, February, Cumbernauld

P1000631

We moved to a brand new, 3 bedroomed, terraced council house in a Scottish new town. My overriding memory is of the stark white of the houses with their black wooden cladding. This contrasted with small remains of beech woods, across the pavement from our house where we climbed and played adventure games.

 White sheeting, black cotton stitched into pintucks. Grey linen, machine embroidered with rayon threads, then trapunto stuffed. Machine embroidered ono the trapunto with the post code using the alphabet function on my sewing machine. I like how the lettering has become abstracted due to using the walking foot and moving the stitched line away from the linear alignment. The far left section is a transfer print of a map of Dalmuir, overlaid on the sheeting, with the extending threads representing the memories of one place influencing those of another. I had planned to add quilted circles to represent the bridges, underpasses and roundabouts of the new town design, intended to keep pedestrians removed from traffic and hence safe. I decided against that, as it made the design too busy. Perhaps I also omitted these as it reminded me that the town centre, devoid of pedestrians, was a soulless, draughty, grey, drab, frightening expanse of concrete.

Details of machine stitching and overlaid map

P1000632

Detail of simulated beech tree surface

P1000634

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