Thursday 1 August 2019

Quiet counting in the park

 Another quarter, another reveal this time on the theme of "A walk in the park". We are lucky enough to live next to a small park so that was an obvious place to start when thinking about what to do for this challenge.


 At the same time I had been toying with the idea of making a Quiet Book for the gorgeous grandsons, so had the lightbulb moment of combining the two projects to make "Counting in the Park"!



The book has six pages each of which are related to an element of our neighbouring park, so we have one model yacht, two swans, three windows on the clubhouse, four dogs, five flowers and six ladybirds.

 The flip side of the Quiet Book pages are made with blocks of sun-printed fabrics surrounded by numbers.

The sun printed items are also of things that you would find in the park i.e. one feather, two flowers, three leaves, four (paper-cut!) butterflies and five fungi. I drew the line at using dead butterflies for my sun prints so resorted to paper stencils instead! As you can see that did make a difference in the outcome of the final print. The butterflies, fungi, leaves and flowers were all printed for the same amount of time in the same place on the same day but the level of detail transferred from the flowers is much higher than from the leaves, which was a surprise.

My grandson found the feather as we walked in his local park and 'helped' with the sun printing so it is particularly appropriate that it is the front cover for the book.



Head on over to Celtic Thistle Stitches to see the pages in more detail and read more about my quiet book.

Once again, I had great fun planning and creating my Quiet Book for this challenge and I am really looking forward to seeing what my fellow Endeavourers have come up with.  I am sure that there will be lots of " I wish I had thought of that!" moments as I read their posts :)

Thank you Catherine and Janine for giving me the opportunity to push my creativity further yet again!

18 comments:

  1. I think I must always say this but I really admire your adventurousness with techniques! What a beautiful treasure you have made.

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    1. Thanks Catherine it is sometimes more to do with ignorance than adventurousness :)

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  2. What a clever idea! And the fabrics used are so bright and happy!

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    1. Thanks Wendy my sewing supplies are all over the place as I am having work done on my sewing room so I was delighted (and surprised!) to be able to find such apt fabrics đŸ˜€

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  3. Fiona, this is just tremendous! And what a wonderful keepsake for your grandkids to have to remember the time they spent with you in that park. I've always liked the blues of sun printed fabrics. And the number fabric background is perfect. I also like the buttons. Well played!

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    1. Thanks Maureen I was really pleased with how the sun printed fabrics turned out and had fun sourcing those buttons

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  4. Wow, Fiona! What a fantastic book!
    I’ve never tried sun printed fabrics but now I can see that maybe I need to add this to my “to do” list.
    Your were very imaginative, and I'm sure your grandsons will love it!
    Barbara x

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    1. Thanks Barbara, the sun printed fabric was really easy to do. The hardest part, for me in Scotland, was getting enough sunshine, so I waited until I was in France with wall-to-wall sunshine before I tried it out :)

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  5. I love this, and I loved reading more about it on your blog, and finding out the stories behind the objects that you chose. It is like the best "kid" movies -- there is plenty there to interest adults as well. :)

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    1. Thanks Gwen, once I had decided upon the Quiet Book idea the rest of it just fell into place. I had the most fun adding the extras too :)

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  6. This is wonderful, Fiona. An heirloom as well as something to enjoy with your grandsons. I will visit your blog to see more details :)

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    1. Thanks Janine I have been collecting ideas for a Quiet Book for a while so I was delighted to finally have the opportunity to put some of them into practice :)

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  7. This is great. I like to try to make things that are quilted, but not always quilts. You did it! And as a retired elementary school teacher, I commend you for including your grandson in the "making" of the book and thinking of making it for them.

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    1. Thanks Nancy, I did wonder about whether this would fit the quilt definition but decided to go ahead anyway :) I love making things for the grandsons and having the older grandson contribute was an added bonus!

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  8. This is brilliant! I love that you decided to make it into a book rather than a quilt.
    When I first saw you sun printed fabrics on Instagram you got me really intrigued as to what you where going to use them. This is perfect. Such a great interpretation of the them.

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    1. Thanks Martha, I would definitely like to use the sun printed fabric again, although finding enough sun in my part of the world narrows my opportunities down a bit :)

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  9. I knew this was yours as soon as I saw it without having to get to the end to see who posted it. I love it and think this is a brilliant way to show so many elements. I am amazed at the flower detail on the sun prints. Very inspiring to try making fabric as well as a finished item.

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  10. Thanks Ruth, the differences in the details on the sun prints was a surprise and would definitely encourage me to try the technique again with a bit of variety in the timings to see what effect that would have. This was such a fun project to do that even looming deadlines didn't stress me out (too much!).

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