Bleaching Map

Last month our topic for the Waverley Art Quilters was Maps.

I struggled with this at first as I was looking at maps of my suburb but it wasn't inspiring me and then I thought about doing a map of the places where I've lived but still I didn't feel any enthusiasm. I started to wonder how I could do a map that tied in with my coral reef series and suddenly I felt a stirring of interest. I was Googling maps of the Great Barrier Reef when I found an article and illustration of where the coral bleaching was occurring up in Queensland.

Apart from being dismayed at the large bleaching area I knew I had found an idea for my map challenge.

I found a perfect hand dyed fabric for the water but didn't have a hand dyed fabric with enough interest for the land so I decided to do some sun printing and make my own fabric.

Here is the first layer of sun printing. I used a black Sun dye called Currawong.

When it was dry, I heat set it with the iron and sun dyed a second layer with magenta and orange.

That made an interesting fabric but would have been too distracting and obvious if I used it as it was, so I cut it up into squares and rectangles and pieced it together.

That made it more interesting.

I painted some Lutradur, which is a polyester cross between fabric and paper, but it is more fabric like and takes paint very easily and doesn't fray. I wish I had taken more photos but I was rushing to get this finished before AQC.

I left some Lutradur white and painted another piece two shades of orange to represent how good or bad the bleaching is.

Over the top of the Lutradur I free motion embroidered some star shapes to look like coral.

Finally I added some stamping and thermofax screens with some fabric paint.

Bleaching Map

You can see how badly the coral bleaching is in the north of Queensland and down in the south where the temperatures are a bit cooler there is no bleaching.

It is very distressing when I see how beautiful the coral reefs looked 20 years ago compared to what they look like now.

I can't think of what to call this little A3 quilt, Bleaching Map doesn't seem very creative!!

Bye for now,
Linda