My fascination with the Earth’s crust stems from my teens, when I began studying landforms and landscape characteristics of the earth’s surface and the processes that produce them. I married an exploration geologist whose work required me and our young children to accompany him on excursions to many different physical environments, so it’s hardly surprising that much of my textile art reflects that knowledge and those experiences.

Many of my artworks could be described as a diagram in fabric and thread. My diagrammatic approach to designing springs from the hand drawn diagrams we had to use in physical geography papers to illustrate our answers way back in the pre-computer days of the 60s. And, doing a diagram first has long been the principle method I use to plan an artquilt –

In my previous post, I mentioned that Mike and I ‘see’ any given landscape differently, and I’m very aware of what on the surface might be quite subtle clues to what lies beneath and would show if you could slice through it like a loaf of bread. Fortunately, there are such ‘sliced’ surfaces in nature revealing linear patterns resulting from pressures within the earth’s crust, pushing layers of sedimentary rock into ‘wrinkles’ over millions of years as cliffs frequently expose such surfaces. Man himself has created countless road and rail cuttings slicing through hills and mountains revealing those patterns too. It’s a process that continues to this day .

I’m currently in the quilting phase of a new work, about 100cmh x 125cmw simply inspired by a normal fault line through layers of rock. It appears as just some kind of line, but it speaks of a dramatic point in the ongoing drama of movement within the Earth’s crust at this location. At many such points of conjuncture important mineralisations occur that can be economically important.

I’ve used the techniques of over stitching (couching) of pieced fabric strips (scraps) that I just love working with at the moment, here chosen for their earthy colours. I put the fault line in first with hand and machine stitch,

I haven’t settled on a title for it, but as I am only about 1/4 of the way through the quilting, there’s plenty of time to settle on one, and I add to a list of possibilities whenever I think of another 🙂