Aurifil Artisans, Morocco Textile Piece.

In 12 hours I’m leaving Australia for Morocco. It’s a place I’ve been to before and this time I will be teaching Textile Art and Photography as Artist in Residence.

working on the balcony on my last trip to Morocco.

I wanted a project for the guests to do as we travel so I decided to create an image of Marrakech as I see it, which is a little differently to the way other people see it.

The first drawing in the sketchbook was to explore ideas.

I wanted to put the Medina in the middle surrounded by the Ochre ramparts, then maybe water, Palm trees and the mountains

Drawing in the iPad I was able to erase the things I didn’t need.

I refined it on the next set of drawings and traced it onto fabric. I wanted it to look like a watercolour map of sorts. Yet still retaining the look of a quilt.

I chose this fabric to illustrate on to achieve the effect I wanted.

I used inktense blocks to lay the foundation colour and then wet it with a water brush. I never use paint on fabric, this is pigment ink.

I coloured in the buildings first with a pigment ink brush because I wanted solid colour, then this was an experiment to see if I could add the Inktense blacks in between the houses and not have it run into the outline of them.

And yes I could, very carefully.

I like to add shading to give depth. I didn’t want it to look like a colouring in.

This is the finished piece I wanted the watercolour effect in the surrounding borders and I was successfully able to do that.

Each guest will receive a 2 foot square piece of fabric printed from Spoonflower so it is exactly like this.

What is it?

It’s a drone like view of the area we will visit and stay in. Of course it’s whimsical because it’s mine, but the guests can create their own as we travel. We will have lessons on what to look for and how to draw it.

It’s also met the criteria of being map like and I was very pleased with the way it came out.

Of course, then came the stitching, so with batting and backing, I sewed the outline of each black line that I drew. I used Aurifil 50 weight sewing very careful free motion stitching.

I always leave the feed dogs up on my machine when sewing free motion it gives me much more control. I use a ‘sharp’ needle and I’m using the Janome continental M7 machine.