I love taking photographs. I'm so lucky that not only is it my job, but my hobby as well. But it's not all I do. I have other things I enjoy doing to keep me occupied which I think is a really good thing to do.
This morning I took some time off to continue sewing my quilt. You may think that this has little to do with fine art but it has been inspired by art. I wanted to make an arts and crafts - Charles Rennie Mackintosh inspired quilt. I'd visited
Blackwell House in the Lake District and loved the designs and colours, especially in the stained glass windows.
The house was the first source of design for me. White for the background with panels of colour.
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| Blackwell The Arts and Crafts House |
I also love the work of Charles Rennie Mackintosh so wanted to incorporate some of his ideas into the quilt. You often think of his flowing lines in his trademark roses but he was also known for straight, black lines in his ladderback chairs. I saw a photo of the hallway in Hill House where Mackintosh had used purple stained glass squares in black frames which I thought would translate perfectly into patchwork.
I also had the idea to use nine squares of colour as he often did.
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| Cupboard in The House for an Art Lover |
I decided to do this with a black background.
So I had my idea for the two outside panels. What to do in the middle? The arts and crafts movement was mainly based on natural forms, so I wanted flowers and plants. I thought of four panels - winter, spring, summer and autumn. I always think of irises as being stylised flowers so needed that to be the summer panel. A tulip would be lovely and simple for spring.
We'd visited
Levens Hall on the same trip as Blackwell and I had some photos of the fabulous topiary gardens. I used a section of one of them (highlighted red in the photo below) to depict winter as I wanted colour in each of the panels.
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| Levens Hall |
As this panel was a "close up" I decided to do autumn as another close up, of a chrysanthemum.
This left the middle panel. I hadn't quite decided what to do until I'd finished the seasons panels. I decided to do a long strip of all of the fabrics, joined at wonky angles to show off the gorgeous colours. I think this brings together the flowing nature of the season panels, and the geometric lines of the outer panels.
I have yet to attach a border, add the wadding and backing and quilt it all together, but here's a sneak peek of all of the panels together.
Who says fine art has to be a painting or a photograph?
Thank you for taking the time to read this post.
All photographs taken by Gillian Cross.
