Description

Nature versus man – who is the winner?
When I received my GREEN pack of goodies I was thrilled to get my favourite colour and to be part of such an exciting project. Where to start was the key issue? I was sorting through some fabrics and came across the last piece of a breakdown screenprinted metre piece I had made and used several times. I made the original piece and it kept drawing me in and say use me. So I made the quilt Urban Decay. https://blog.bernina.com/en/wp-content/uploads/sites/4/2015/11/Urban-Decay-2013_resized-150×150.jpg
This quilt represented the severe earthquakes we had in Canterbury/Christchurch New Zealand in 2010 and 2011. I portrayed the impact of feeling safe and secure on strong land through to after the earthquakes where parts of our city were deemed unsafe to live in a future event. (note 7000 families had to move). https://blog.bernina.com/en/wp-content/uploads/sites/4/2015/11/Urban-Decay-detail-2013_resized-150×150.jpgd This piece of fabric said you have to use me again but in a special related piece.

So I went back to the effects of the earthquake and started playing with ideas around broken buildings, displaced people and nature. Due to the colour nature won out. What has happened to the area of the 7000 displaced homes?
I started with cutting out the male figure in the fabric and used one of the play pieces of wool felt to stencil trees to see how well it would adhere to the fabric. I was amazed at how quickly the whole idea was working out. https://blog.bernina.com/en/wp-content/uploads/sites/4/2015/11/20151026_085002_resized-150×150.jpgdhere

Then I put masking tape around the edge of the large piece of wool felt so that I could get the size right and give myself a straight edge for the stencil. https://blog.bernina.com/en/wp-content/uploads/sites/4/2015/11/20151026_085008_resized-150×150.jpg I stencilled using a Lumiere Metallic Rust paint which worked really well. Next I put the male figure onto the fabric and waited a couple of weeks while I decided how I was going to stitch the piece.https://blog.bernina.com/en/wp-content/uploads/sites/4/2015/11/20151026_085038_resized-150×150.jpg
Being stuck on how to quilt the piece I thought back to what had happened as the people moved out of their homes. Nature slowly started to take over the properties bit by bit. The plants grew into cracks in the houses and the driveways and twisted themselves around anything they could attach to. So at the end of the day if there were no humans left mother nature would just take control again so I couched a silk thread all over the tree and over the male form with my Bernina 750QE and the gorgeous Madeira threads that we were given. Thanks for letting me be part of this group.
https://blog.bernina.com/en/wp-content/uploads/sites/4/2015/11/20151105_070039_resized-150×150.jpg