The Reef - Hoffman 2021

Quite a fun shape for this one. It was longer but I had to fold over the top to keep within the 1 metre limit. The challenge fabric is the fungus print which I have reinterpreted as growth on the tocks of the reef.

The bakground was hand painted before beginning and is actually brighter than this photo suggests. The large fish were created using gyotaku, a Japanese printing method where the fabric is printed off actual fish. This is a traditional method that Japanese fishermen used to measure the size of the fish they caught. The fish are gutted and dried and the openings stiuffed with kitchen towel before beginning. Amazingly there is no fishy smell to the prints - probably the acrylic paint takes care of that. The eyes and gills were further embellish with stitch. These images were cut out and appliqued on. The small reef fish were made using shiny fabric embedded in organza so the fins and tails are semi transparent. They are lightly stuffed to sit out from the quilt.

If you look carefully on the rocks you will see some beaded sea anemones dangling down. And the background weeds are textured yarn.

The whole quilt is free machine quilted in a wavy horizontal manner to repicate the movement of water. This quilt travelled with the collection for the year