Accidental Hacienda

 

Accidental Hacienda
Quilt No. 148

One day we were out walking in the forest (more aptly called “the bush” here in the north) and found a trove of rusted treasure.  I say “treasure” because rusted items are surprisingly rare these days, especially those with the flat profile needed to “rust dye” fabric.  Flat pieces are essential.  Past attempts using amply dimensioned items such as railroad spikes have produced spotty messes and were somewhat gross and frighteningly anti-inspirational.

The rusted pieces we found were either long rectangles or vaguely letter E shaped pieces.  I wasn’t sure what I could make out of that, but surely a quilt design lurked in the heart of those pieces!

To “rust dye” fabric, you use white cotton, spray it with a water/vinegar solution, and set the rusted pieces on it.  It’s then covered with plastic and left to do its own thing in the great outdoors. A few hours works best. Any longer and you end up with more holes than cloth.  A stroke of brilliance being nowhere to be found, I simply placed the pieces on the prepared cloth and hoped for the best. 

Rusted pieces as laid out on fabric

I was kind of happy with the end result.  But what exactly was it?  Months, then, shamefully, years went by, and every time I thought I had a sliver of an idea, the execution of it eluded me.  I was pretty sure I could turn it into a pueblo, one of those suitably rust-coloured Mexican villages, but no, at the end of the day/week/month no pueblo emerged.  Next, my idea was a rusted-out abandoned factory. That would be a cinch, it could be kind of abstract, just a suggestion of a factory.  I looked at photos of all kinds of defunct factories…nothing emerged from my fabric that resembled anything factory-like, not even a pseudo factory.  I tried simply machine quilting the piece to see if its inner transcendent beauty would emerge.  Nope.

Cloth after rust dyeing

Tired of grinding my teeth over this unyielding piece of fabric, I hung it in the closet where I keep my fabric.  At least a year went by, and one day as I was looking for something in one of the drawers, the rusted fabric snagged the corner of my eye and I thought, ‘That looks like a hacienda’.  I went back to my quilt table with the echo of that thought and had to ask myself ‘What on earth is a hacienda?’  I made an immediate trip to the land of Google Images.  Turns out, just about anything is called a hacienda these days, as long as it lacks aluminum siding.  Surely, I could turn my piece of fabric into something that might be construed as a hacienda, even if it was by accident that I had arrived at this concept.

I set to work and cut the centre “shape” away from where the rust had spread out from the edges of the pieces, appliqueing it onto a rocky setting in a desert.  The landscaping was a great opportunity to use up golden sparkly fabric from a blouse a friend no longer wanted (the conical trees), flowerbed fabric from my friend Helen, brick and roofing fabric from my sister, and tiger print fabric (the tree trunk) from my daughter. The tree leaves are made from layers of organza, sandwiched between a top and bottom layer of soluble stabilizer and machine quilted with metallic thread. 

It may have been a long journey fraught with ever-collapsing ideas, but quite by accident, I had arrived at my hacienda.