It’s small, just 2ft X 1 ft 6", but a journal is supposed to be small!!. This is the fourth of my quilt journals for the year in the 4th month of the year….!
As I mentioned before, on Monday I was lucky enough to see the water flowing into Lake Eyre and because it is a special occasion and happens so rarely I wanted to do my journal quilt of that sight.
I finished it today, spending almost the entire day quilting.

How did I do it.?

Well I guess first I decided on a photo. Enlarged it to the size I wanted and then began the job of re-creation.

The first step is very similar to the portraits, however, (tracing the design onto acetqate) this time I needed to dye the background fabric to fit the picture and I used a blue pigment ink water washed on a cream fabric.

I have use 9 other fabrics in the quilt. Several of them are batiks which work exceptionally well for this type of picture. Now before you think I have used a traditional aboriginal token… let me tell you that is purely a Pam Holland Design dot painting with pigma ink using the same colours as the picture. I think it depicts the river, with pools of water joined together by the flow of blue water.

I used some 10 different colored threads. They are all 100% cotton and just 50 weight which balance quite nicely with the 60 weight bottom line thread I used on the back.

A little trivia. The centre of Lake Eyre is 50 feet below sea level, it fills very rarely maybe very 10 years or so. the cyclonic rains we experienced in February at the top end of Queensland have encouraged the water to flow right into the centre of Australia. Some 1500 kilometres.