Gothic Pattern

The theme for March at Unlimited Textiles is Gothic Pattern.
I love arches and ceiling bosses in cathedrals and I remembered a visit we made to Fountains Abbey a few years ago. In particular the vaulted ceiling of the Cellarium.
The Cellarium is only inhabited by bats now. Another Gothic feature maybe but no bats here on this quiltie.


I used purple satin for the background and cut arch shapes from dark green velour.
I wanted to continue the arch theme on the background hence the shadow quilting between the arches.
A close zig zag stitch in gold outlines the arches and golden beads represent ceiling bosses.
OK, I know there aren't any ceiling bosses in the Cellarium but let's just call it artistic license.

Close zig zag stitching finishes the edges. The quiltie measures 5ins square and will be on its way to Sandy in USA very soon.

Moon Goddess

My very last arch of the year long swap at Textile Challenges is for Carol Rowland.
Carol likes fantasy figures so a Moon Goddess came to my mind.

The background is calico painted and stamped with acrylic paints. The detail on the side is drawn with pen and ink.
The goddess herself is one of my drawings that I scanned into the computer and printed out on to cotton.

I get the printable cotton from Crafty Computer Paper. You print the image, cut it out, peel off the backing and iron in place.

I wanted it to look like she is gathering energy from the moon so I used metallic thread to sew the energy lines and added seed beads for sparkles.
The edge is satin stitched with metallic thread.

Stone Wall Inspiration

This arch is for Hannah.
One of the themes she chose is Nature and she likes blues, green, golds, and purples.

Well this isn't strictly nature but is inspired by the walls in Devon.

We have lots of lovely dry stone walls and cob and stone walls.
Cob is a mixture of earth and clay.
I love the texture of these walls and the way moss clings to them. I have enjoyed seeing the rain sparkling on them this year too.

I think of these walls as part man made and part nature and a what a wonderful combination they make.


I started out making this arch by painting bondaweb and bonding it to organza. I blasted the fabric with the heat gun and allowed it to bubble and go quite hard in places.
I cut up this fabric into pieces I thought could represent stone slabs and stitched it down onto cotton velvet. I also put some strips of gold organza on and stitched them down and zapped with the heat gun again.
I added little beads to represent the raindrops, we have had a lot of them this year.

What you don't get here is the texture. It has a rough feel and I think feels a little like the stone wall it is made to represent. I hope Hannah thinks so too.