My regular readers know my familiarity with basic landforms and structures, and my questions are easily answered by the in-house geologist here 🙂

I showed in recent a post how this work was inspired by rock strata, and showing how I’m representing the lines, shapes and colour of a formation featuring a normal fault using the particular techniques I’m favouring at present. It’s nearly finished and pretty much only the edge treatment needs to be done once I decide which technique to use for it. Options are a very fine binding in black or a facing.

Pieced fabric strips chosen for their earthy colours were fused to the black fabric, and linear patterns of stitching added to convey the impression of a layered, sedimentary rock formation split by earth forces into sections that over time were forced to gradually move along the faultline in opposite directions – standard textbook stuff, and in that post are links to images of some striking actual examples.

‘Strata’ seems a fairly popular starting point for fibre art design, and looking around I came across a website for an artist Caroline Burton with art inspired by geology , and of course, to anyone who works with fabric strips, those images of layered rock sturctures are bound to suggest using fabric strips in some way. I myself made a smallish piece with that title twenty years ago:

Checking some of my pins on Pinterest today, I was a bit startled to find an image I recently pinned of some cliffs along the UK coast that looks incredibly like the piece I’m working on right now. In fact I hadn’t seen the photo until the work was well under way, but I find it interesting to realise exactly why it was so appealing to me. Obviously that includes the lines and shapes, but equally important are the colours, which I carefully chose for their earthy quality, thinking particularly of some emblematic Australian Outback landscapes that I’ve lived and travelled in that are forever burned on my consciousness. But of course rocks anywhere can be in those colours – they’re not uniquely Australian. If you’re interested to see how uncanny this likness is, do go to the photographer’s website https://www.robertharding.com/preview/847-179/sandstone-rock-strata-waterfalls-sandymouth-beach-sunset-near/ Although I admire Robert ‘s beautiful photos, and I’d love to put that one up here for comparison, it would cost me over US$30 to do that, and my pocket just isn’t that deep! You could purchase a print from him but even better would be to purchase my unique wall quilt, which I’m very close to finishing, with just another hour or so of quilting, and as I said, just finish off the edge. Easier said than done sometimes, as either method requires care.