The inspiration for this quilt came from the sculpture by Serena de la Hey of a man made from willow and sited alongside the M5 motorway at the Bridgwater junction. Willow weaving is one of the oldest crafts in Somerset and the sculpture is an example of an old technique but used in a new and innovative way. This quilt was made for the South West Challenge 2005 and won me the cup for the second year running. The Willow Man is an easily recognisable image for people in the South West and he is viewed with affection as we drive past him up the motorway.
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This is the original source photograph and note the bird on his right hand. The birds are so fond of him that he had to have his head repaired last year due to their nesting habits!
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Above you can see I am scaling up the image and piecing the sections together.
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The entire man is made from half inch squares of fabric, colour graded and “Bondawebbed” to the cotton base pattern. I used a magnifying glass to position and check for colour match.
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Getting the shape right! The central photocopy was kindly supplied by Serena de la Hey, who was very interested to see her sculpture translated into fabric.
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The completed piece. The body is free machine embroidered to secure the half inch squares. The sky is made from hand dyed fabric and couched embroidery threads. He is standing in free machined, imaginary willow beds and the whole background is hand quilted on linen with linen thread in a basket weave design. Not forgetting the bird on his right hand which is made of black glove leather.
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“The Modesty of Vitruvian Man with Apologies to Leonardo” was made for The National Quilt Championship 2004 and was drafted from a black and white drawing by Leonardo Di Vinci. (See photo above)
It is an anatomical drawing and based on that fact, I decided to “improvise” muscles and organs for the man in bright, bold colours. Each section of his body was enlarged and divided to get the maximum use of colour and he comes complete with a hinged fig-leaf to protect his modesty!
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The starting point after scaling up the drawing to a working size was to section each limb on the drawing and number each piece. Each individual toe and sectioned muscle was a different colour.
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This was the original working drawing for the outline colour plan, but was used only as a guide because I kept finding new and more exciting colour- ways of fabric.
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I made a pattern piece for each numbered section out of freezer paper, fused the paper to the individual fabrics,pressed the turning and then machine appliqued the sections together onto the base fabric pattern.
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Legless! – Two legs and two arms were padded trapunto style to give a 3D effect.
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The finished body piece is stitched onto a pieced background constructed of strips of cream, beige and white to try to represent parchment. The border is made from fabric, which has been transfer printed with the actual notation from the original black and white drawing by Leonardo Di Vinci.
