Knitted Book of Mining

 

And here are the completed pages of my 'knitted book'.

The Knitted Book of Mining

A peek at the 'Knitted Book of Mining' I completed recently. It combines knitting with stitched images; of the pit-head, and the pit shaft; and fossils embedded into the geological strata.
I used the collection from the National Mining Museum for England as inspiration. There are some wonderful objects in the collection, and some of memorial pottery uses blue glaze/transfers to show mining disasters. That blue, was the starting point for my thread, when embroidering the stitched drawings. 

National Mining Museum

On Saturday we visited Caphouse Colliery, where the National Mining Museum is. It was my mum's birthday, so Jon and I took her for a visit, as she'd wanted to have a look round. My dad was a miner; he left and joined the army before the outbreak of World War Two, then spent the war in Burma, and later on, Germany. I took the opportunity to look at the fossils they have on display. Despite the strange shape of the 'thing' in the photograph above.....it's not a fossil, or from the Mining Museum! It's a tied up scrap of fabric; waiting to dry out! Am still busy dye-ing, tie-ing, and sewing! Spent today working on a 'prototype' fabric piece. Strange how, as I'm working on fabric things, other ideas come to me, to develop the ideas. I seem to be in a very fertile place at the moment with making art. Just need to have more time so I can get on with the making!