When this theme was suggested I bought myself a copy of "Stitched Photo Mosaic Quilting" by Timna Tarr. I found a video of our granddaughter that was going to provide a still photo for the basis of my first mosaic quilting. Then I promptly dithered over the whole process of translating the video into a still photo, (finally achieved!) and working out how and where to get it printed at the optimum size without bankrupting myself in the process (!).
Whilst this thought process was still rattling about in my brain, I came across some photos on Social Media of the Mosaic of the Provinces at Ostia Antica, an ancient Roman city and the seaport of Ancient Rome. As you can tell from the title of this post the Photo Mosaic quilt idea was swiftly jettisoned, to be returned to later :)
Being inspired by the photos to delve further into the history and nature of the Mosaics at Ostia Antica I discovered a line drawing from 1912 of the full mosaic, which you can see here The drawing just looked like a quilt pattern to me, so I decided to base my quilt for this quarter's theme around one of the mosaic squares from the drawing of the original.
The original mosaics were made in black and white tiles and I did consider making a monochrome quilt, but in the end I decided that this quilt was inspired by not a copy so went with fabrics that looked liked tiling instead.
The cream fabric has a tone on tone check on it which you can't really see in the photo and the pink fabric reminded me of Venice so was a shoo-in for the central square :)
I found a length of this lovely fabric in my stash and thought it would be ideal for the backing fabric.
The blocks were fairly straightforward to put together. The cream squares within the purple strips were 6.5" squares, the purple strips were 1.5" wide, the pink squares were 2.5" and the cream borders were 2.5" strips too.
I wanted the quilting of the piece to reflect the Roman part of the inspiration for the quilt so I quilted straight lines in the purple strips - Roman roads, even in the hilly North of England and Southern Scotland were straight.
My centre block was the ideal place for some cross-hatch quilting that resembles rows of the Roman Numeral - X :)
The original Mosaic of the Provinces has four fish swimming at the centre to represent the port, so I decided to quilt the open cream blocks with a fish. I ordered some dolphin templates to use for the blocks but they did not arrive in time, so I hunted through my many craft magazines and found this needlelace template to use instead.
The circle quilting in the remaining blocks is a nod to the shields portrayed in several of the other sections of the Mosaic. Some wavy lines to represent the sea were added to the border strips.
I used a New to Me binding method, using the backing fabric as the binding and finished it off with a zig-zag (now known as Roman Numeral V!) stitch to attach the binding to the front of the quilt:)
I was tempted to call this quilt "A port in the storm" as I was working on it (before the power went out!) whilst Storm Eowyn was flinging waves up to our door and rattling our windows till we were sure they were going to fall in! Thankfully, the sea eventually calmed down, the windows withstood the ferocious winds and the power came back so it was all fine in the end.
Once again, I have enjoyed meeting this latest Endeavourer Challenge and look forward to seeing the wonderful ways that my fellow Endeavourers have interpreted the theme!
Isn't it interesting where how we start out with one idea and end up going down a whole new path? Your quilt is lovely, and I think you captured mosaic square well. Glad you weathered the storm, as well!
ReplyDeleteI am glad that I am not alone in veering way off course on these challenges Wendy :) If we were still living in Northumberland I could have taken my quilt to a Roman ruin to photograph but the Romans didn't quite make it this far West or North!
DeleteYou put so much thought into every little detail, and then you executed them so precisely! The Romans would be proud. :) This is a very nice capture of the theme!
ReplyDeleteThanks Gwen, I really enjoy working out how to get all of the different elements of my projects to reflect the theme, sometimes more successfully than others :)
DeleteInteresting we both went for the work of Timna Tarr. I what you ultimately chose. Nice work on this and a great interpretation.
ReplyDeleteI really liked Timna Tarr's approach and will definitely give it a go in the future. I think that I was so set on using the photo of my granddaughter but knew in my head that it probably didn't have a strong enough contrast between the elements. So, it was an easy decision to take a different tack :)
DeleteThe first thought that popped into my head on hearing Mosiac was Rome so I was really intrigured to read about your piece and your inspo from Ostia. Eowyn blew out a window in our shed and some of our fencing but I am counting my blessings as my mother in law lost her whole conservatory - we had hurricane speed winds so very lucky at the end of the day all sage and sound. Looking at your dolphins I'm wondering how they fare in the atlantic storms...
ReplyDeleteThe photos of the mosaics at Ostia Antica just popped up in my feed at the perfect time! The mosaics are stunning, definitely worth checking out. Our fencing was a casualty of the winds too, but it sounds like your mother-in-law had a really scary time. I hope she is sorted out quickly.
DeleteI enjoyed reading all about this quilt. It's a great design and I love all the details you've included. The storm sounds quite terrifying. I'm glad you came through it unscathed :)
ReplyDeleteThanks Janine, there is definitely a whole quilt to be made out of that mosaic layout :) We often enjoy watching the storms whipping up the sea from our window but Storm Eowyn was just a bit too intense for us. We were very lucky to have minimal damage as some of our neighbours were not so lucky.
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