As soon as I got home and went to start blogging again, I couldn't. I couldn't get into my blog to update or to post new entries. I can get in to look at it and read it but that is all. So after all this time, I have decided to start again with a brand new blog and move on.
Tuesday, March 26, 2013
Message in a Bottle crazy quilting challenge 2013
At last I have finished my entry for the Message in a Bottle Challenge organised by Thearica Burrows from Crazy Quilting Supplies.
I wanted to make something that would appeal to adults as well as to
children and consulted my seven year old grandson Jesse who is learning
about ecology in school for advice. The end result is a concertina style
book which slides into a presentation box for safe keeping.
Here is the story in Pages.....there is a thin gold dotted line sewn
across all the pages that tracks the journey that the bottle undertakes
from being thrown into the sea to when it is washed up on the beach.
Page One
The bottle was thrown from a sailing ship by a sailor who was afraid of
the approaching storm and the rocks below the sea. I stitched the
sailing ship masts and hull first before attaching each white felt sail
with tiny blanket stitches and finished off with the rigging. I thought
that the two birds were not "flying" birds because they had no wings, so
they are seagulls floating on the waves.
Page Two
Before it reaches the surface, the bottle is taken over the top of a brightly coloured coral reef.
Page Three
As it travels the world for one hundred years, the bottle is caught up
in swirling currents. I found this block challenging because part of the
kit was a piece of turquoise net on which was stitched these three
ribbon roundels. I unpicked the roundels from the netting and
re-stitched them back again onto the circular swirling current. The kit
also included a ball of beige coloured Perle cotton which I used to make
the length of tatting on the sandy sea-bed.
Page Four
The bottle is eventually picked up by the waves and carried by a huge
surf towards the shore. In the block, I included the netting that was
the background of the roundels and also included some of the sequins
which were also attached to the netting. I enjoyed creating the waves
out of lots of pieces of white lace, some of which were included in the
kit and hopefully I have captured the movement of the surf.
Page Five
At last the bottle is thrown up onto a beach.........a beach polluted
with dead sea creatures such as the turtle trapped in rope, the duck
with a rubber band around its neck, dead fish caught in a piece of
wayward net, more bottles, a rubber sandal, a tin can, beaded oil slick,
plastic and now, our bottle. The message spills out, a simple S.O.S.,
no longer for the sailor whom we assume sailed home safely but for our
own Planet Earth.
Eventually, people arrived who understood the problems facing our
environment. They cleaned up the ocean and the beaches and educated the
general public to respect our world - the water as well as the land.
Page Six
The last picture shows the results of this campaign to clean up our
environment. There is a pristine clean beach with butterflies fluttering
over fresh sea grasses, there are dolphins playing in the sea and clean
water lapping on the shoreline, all under a bright, warm sun. Two
surfers have propped their surfboards in the sand while they take a
break and their boards reflect the message. The most time consuming part
of this block was the surfboards as both are cross-stitched onto 27
threads-per-inch canvas.
I can only hope that I have helped to spread the message.......let's keep our world clean from pollution!!
