Aboriginal art

I have always been fascinated by aboriginal art. The colourful dots and different symbols flowing in a current of ancient mystery.

I was wondering, if not painting how could I possibly put them into fabric. My first attempt on my quilt named Mother Earth Is Our Home I thread painted colourful dots around my little lizard. Also added some fabric dots cut and fused on the lizard, then secured with free motion straight stitches.

But I still wanted to make a whole quilt of this style. So I figured, that I could punch out some fabric circles from different fabrics, especially batiks, that have double sided fusible on the back...How great that would look on a black background...

First I cut out some yellow lizard shapes and fused them into the middle to create a centre piece. Then I segmented the area with some light lines. I was intending to continue with two additional, separate pieces to the left and to the right, so those lines would have been ended there.

Then I started to fill in the areas with patterns of dots, that required lots and lots of little circles...

I ordered a puncher set that has a variety of sizes, between 0.3 and 1cm. It was a kind that you hit with the hammer on a board and I am telling you, you'd better hit precisely or your fingers will mind...

The process was loud, messy and slow not to mention blisters and other mischiefs. I left the paper back on the fused fabric when I punched it, even so many times it did not cut all the way through, so I had to finish with sharp scissors. Took the paper off, arranged and ironed after a section was assembled. Basically that was the method, that took days and days. It is still far from done and needs to be sewn somehow. I consider using monofilament to quilt it with and fix the dots, but for some reason I suspect it will be just as time consuming as the previous stage...

I will have to invent a better way to do this... And I think, I have an idea.

Happy quilting!