Many Sandstones

When I first heard the word for this challenge, I thought of Delicate Arch in Moab, and I thought most of us would think the same thing. Also, knowing what beautiful Batiks Anne has done on the subject of sandstone I felt a bit intimidated. I tried to "mix it up" by thinking of crazy things I could do to make Sandstone really different: make layers of sandstone in blue, or make the layers using zippers, or something not natural like a building made out of sandstone but in the end one of the things that kept calling me was petroglyphs. I found this cool petroglyph of Ghanaskidi, the Hump-backed God and really fell in love with the image. The second link is of the actual petroglyph and the first link is of a replica someone made which I translated into this reverse applique.

I really like how this turned out with the curls of the Batik behind the hand dyed fabric but I haven't quilted it yet because after talking with my son another idea kept bugging me. My son told me that sandstone wasn't an image for him, but rather a texture and so I played in my mind with different ideas of how I could create sandstone texture without actually glueing sand to the fabric. I came up with this:

Basically it is the same idea as that used in making faux chenille. I layed a large number of small scraps onto a piece of batting creating about three layers. The scraps were arranged in random directions. I then put a solid piece of fabric on the top and back and stitched lines all over the fabric in a pattern I had seen in many sandstone pictures on the internet. After I stitched, I cut between the stitches and viola! multicolored layers of texture. They are soft layers, so maybe not the rough texture I was looking for tactilly but more visually rough.

Here is a close up of some of the cut through layers.

I really, really liked this idea and decided to try to take it one step further by making another layered sandstone quilt and then "carving" an arch from it and placing it on a sky:

I don't like this quilt as much as I like the plain sandstone because I used a printed batik for the outerlayer instead of a solid. The underlayers don't seem to show through as well, and the dark outerlayer and dark blue background isn't enough of a contrast in value so the whole thing is reading dark to me. If I decide to do it again I'll change up the values. This might be something fun to try in a bigger size!

I can't wait to see what everyone else has come up with!