The broken fence and dry stems

For my third quilt in the decay series, I have focussed on a dilapidated fence and the dry and withered plants that surround it. We often pass fences like this while walking in the moorland near where we live. The vegetation is at the end of its lifecycle at the time of year depicted.

The fenceposts have tilted and rotted and the wire between them is broken and drooping. I like the patterns that this makes and the feeling that the fence has somehow become organic. In contrast, the dried and dead stems of hogweed are tall and stately and also make their own patterns which I find to be more structured than the fence. It somehow feels that the sold has become natural and the natural has become solid. I chose to position the fence in the foreground with the background depicting the fields and moorland waiting to burst into life as the seasons progress. This hints at the fact that where there is decay, rebirth follows.

The background is raw-edge piecing of fabric scraps, set against a wintery sky of weak light. I used a commercial stamp to add subtle ghostly vegetation prints in the bottom half of the piece, before adding strips of hand dyed fabric to depict the fence, and the thick cotton ‘wires’ are hand couched between these.  The tall stems of hogweed are hand stitched, as is the straw-like grasses in the foreground. I used free machine stitching, as well as hand stitches, to quilt other areas of the piece.

Detail view: