Inspiration – Time and tide wait for no man. A quote by Geoffrey Chaucer

Delving deeper into the, alleged, meaning of this early proverb has shown that it didn’t previously relate to the actual tide, ie the continuous movement of the sea , but to a period of time, eg eventide, Christmastide etc.. Whatever the sense, the message is clear no person can delay the passage of time or interfere with nature. Keeping to the theme of the sea, as in my first two quilts in this series, I have used the tide and a copy of a tide timetable to demonstrate that even if the times are written in black and white they won’t hang around and in this case the surfer is too late the tide has gone out leaving him standing on the sand where even the small pools of water are slowly disappearing, the form of which will also change with the next high tide. The printed times are becoming harder to read as they too are changing day by day. 

I started with an old linen table napkin which was printed using earth pigments. I hand stitched around the shapes which appeared to give more relief and then coloured in pools of water. The surfer and his board were appliquéd, the board with a batik and the surfer’s suit in a blue upon which I wrote the proverb over and over again leaving no spaces between my words. The tide timetable, for this month of May, is photocopied on to Extrav Organza and then stitched into place.