Hope, Promise, Bounty: Reap What You Sow

When the call for entries for the Regeneration:Contemporary Quilt Textiles exhibition went out in mid-2011, it caused a bit of a flurry in certain circles. Not only was there a very short timeframe for lodging entries but, unlike most Australian art quilt exhibitions, the organisers were seeking concept designs rather than completed works.

My textile works tend to evolve on the design wall from the kernel of an idea and I rarely sketch anything out in advance so the notion of developing concept designs for third party review ran counter to my usual modus operandi. Nevertheless, I came up with two designs fitting the “regeneration” themes and both proposals were accepted. This post sets out the background to my work Hope,Promise, Bounty: Reap What You Sow.

After creating small works over several years for the Twelve by Twelve International Art Quilt Challenge, one of my personal goals is to work on a larger scale. Two of my Twelve by Twelve works incorporate karamatsu stitched resist, hand-dyed shibori techniques; a time
consuming but often serendipitous process (download Karamatsu Shibori tutorial – 660KB PDF) forming a circle motif that seemed to fit the theme.

Reap What You Sow was submitted as a proposed triptych of 80cm x 60cm shibori pieces depicting three stages of growth:

• Hope – dark grey overdye small seed shapes
• Promise – brown overdye of chartreuse depicting seedlings
• Bounty – black overdye of multi-coloured fabric denoting crops or flowers.

This digital sketch (created by ultra-manipulation of images of some of my shibori samples) was intended to be indicative only.

I proceeded to experiment with various stitched and bound overdyed resists (my samples are currently on display with the exhibition) but quickly formed the view that each panel should be a saturated colour to reinforce the cycle of growth. For consistent imagery, I also decided it was important that each panel incorporate stitched (karamatsu) circle resists.

These three photos show Hope in progress.

Next came Promise with larger circles and more rings of stitching:

It took me several tries to stitch and overdye the Bounty panel. I liked the touching circles but the overall size did not fit with the other two panels and I wasn’t sure how much latitude I had to depart from the floating circles in the original concept design.


I ended up stitching and overdyeing three more yellow/orange/red panels:


This is a quick audition of the dyed pieces before I commenced intensive hand stitching and quilting:

I started quilting Promise first choosing a sprout-like stitching motif in variegated thread:

As I was travelling overseas for most of November and December, and the works were due for delivery at the beginning of February, I took Hope and Bounty with me to hand stitch on the road. Promise/em> was waiting for me when I returned in January. Having densely quilted one piece, the others had to follow. This detail gives you some idea:

The final challenge was to trim and face each panel so that they were a uniform size (80 x 60 cm – H x W). I succeeded although this composite photograph suggests otherwise. You can see the completed works and a collection of process/progress materials on exhibition at Manly Art Gallery & Museum until 4 June and I am presenting an artist floortalk at 3pm Sunday, 13 May: