The prompt “Garden, Parks and Green Spaces” hooked me right on the first word: garden. I live in a small town of 5000 people in a rural area in Nova Scotia, Canada. We are surrounded by lots of green spaces, woods, beaches and beautiful rolling hills. There are some parks and nice green spaces in town, but it really takes just a 10-minute stroll to leave the town and be in the countryside with lots of nature and wilderness, so we are not in need of public green spaces like the bigger cities.
For people here, gardening is a popular hobby, and many tend to their gardens passionately and with great success. Besides decorative shrubs and flowers, almost everyone has a vegetable plot somewhere on their lot. As our growing season is not very long, many people start planting seeds indoors early in the spring and transplant to the outside beds around the end of May, hoping that no more frosts are coming. Especially this year it seemed to be important to a lot of people to be able to grow their own veggies and prepare their gardens.
I got inspired by this idea of nurturing the seeds into tiny seedlings until they are strong enough to be planted outside. The seed trays I’m referencing in my quilt are often used to get the seeds started. I made a paper template of a tray to use in the two multi-layered monoprints, the first print including the seeds, the second one using actual plant material to mimic the young seedlings.
The third panel was mono printed with real plant material as well. I did use some mint from my garden for the plant material. Not that anyone would really grow these plants from seeds as they are more of a weed, but the size and shape worked well for my purposes.
The quilting is a mix of machine and hand quilting, I aimed to repeat the seed tray shape and included lots of seed stitching (!).
Nurturing Seeds
Regina Marzlin
Dimensions h 39.5″ x 23.5″
Material: cotton fabric, acrylic paint, embroidery floss
Technique: mono-printing, piecing, hand- and machine stitching
Haha, yes, “seed” stitching is perfect for this. Love the whole thing — your design, prints, and conception.
Thank you Martha!
Love reading about your quilt, Regina. Lots of people have planted gardens this year down here, too. Seed displays were sold out and vegetable plants were hard to find for a while. Gardening is a good way to keep your head on straight, too. And for me, mint isn’t a weed. I have it in pots so I can keep it alive in the hot summer. During the spring and fall, it’s glorious.
Thanks Deb, yes, this year all the garden centers were cleaned out early, and the gardens look really good.
Great piece, very delicate looking, love the hand stitching.
Thank you Susan!
Your mono prints are so wonderfully organic, I can almost smell wet earth and green plants.
Thanks Terry, it was fun making the prints and thinking about the layering and sequence of it.