After a final push to get the last four Journal Quilts completed, they are done.
The ninth in the series shows the River Arun south of Amberley where it flows through a tree lined valley. With no particular landmark, I decided to print the OS map and highlight the wooded areas with embroidery stitches. I first outlined each area in backstitch, laid a ground of cross stitches and then topped with French knots. Finally I embroidered the river with chain stitches.
Each area of embroidery was then outlined with machine quilting.
River Arun passes through Arundel in the next section so I printed the gatehouse of the castle onto the quilt so the river flows through the gate. I printed it using a freezer paper stencil and added a few brick shapes with a foam block. I decided to put the river on to the fabric first and print over the top of it so the line of the river still shows. Regular readers will know that the only stipulations for this year's journal quilts is that a line must pass from one edge to another.
I then outlined the "castle" with machine quilting. I also quilted the edges of the river, going over the top of the castle, again to keep the integrity of the line. There was a large area with no quilting so I tied some cotton perle to give the impression of riverside plants.
The next section again had no particular feature to highlight. I did consider a design with barbed wire as the Ford Prison can be seen on the edge of the area but I didn't really think it was that much of a feature of this particular section. I then realised that the whole area was criss-crossed with railway lines so decided to use them. I machine couched some black thread to show the lines and then printed so train carriages with a foam block. I then printed some signposts to add to each line.
The final section sees the River Arun flow in to the sea at Littlehampton. Those of you familiar with the town will know that it sits on the east side of the river, whereas the west bank of the river is mostly undeveloped. When I was at the Knitting and Stitching show I bought a stencil of London so I used this to print an arrangements of roads and buildings to show the town of Littlehampton. On the other bank, I quilted a few streams and also added some to flow through the town. For the beach I sponged an area of brown and yellow on each side and added French knots and beads for the pebbles at the top of the beach and then a few pieces of shell on the "sand". Finally, I machine quilted the edges of the river bank out in to the sea and added a few quilted waves.
One of the main reasons for choosing the River Arun as my "line" was because I have always been fascinated with maps and wanted to produce a series of work based on maps. The series is entitled "Seen From Above" and although I have on just started to work on pieces, I have used this series of Journal Quilts to try out some ideas. So keep reading to see which ideas and techniques appear as larger pieces in the coming year.
