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Tuesday, June 26, 2012

Travelling Rail Fence Finished

There’s an awful lot of memories in these rail fence blocks.  When we were making plans for our 3 month South Island Odyssey trip I cut and stitched a whole pile of blocks, made from a pale sage green, and strips cut from a variety of New Zealand fabrics.  Packed away with my trusty Pigma pen, each night I got the blocks out to record where we were staying overnight, and any attractions we had visited. While we were down south we had 96 nights away, and stayed at 50 different overnight locations.  These ranged from motor camps, NZMCA properties, domains, pubs, park over properties, several A & P grounds and race courses, two farm properties, a chestnut orchard, a car sales yard, and a truck stop.

clip_image002Rail Fence blocks – ready for the trip

Once we finally arrived home, I started to assemble all the blocks.  I’ve pleased it’s finally finished - no not a quilt, but I decided to make a tablecloth for the caravan.  Prints used included Maori designs, water, paua shells, kiwis, pohutakawa flowers, New Zealand stamp designs, ferns, ponga trees, keas, tuis, in fact all sorts of New Zealand icons.

DSCF1760 Sewing it all together

The tablecloth was backed and bound with a bright cheeky kiwi print fabric, donated to me by my caravan club friend Eileen. She had bought this some time ago to make clothing for her grand-children. When that never eventuated, Eileen kindly donated the fabric to me.

DSCF1788 Kiwi backing fabric

The scenery of the South Island of New Zealand can only be described in superlatives, such as majestic, stunning, and sensational. With vistas of mountains, rugged peaks, glaciers, rain forests, fiords, rivers, lakes, hot mineral springs, wild coastlines, streams and estuaries, and rolling farmland, each day brought us more wonderful views to marvel over. Each of these wonderful places was faithfully recorded on the rail fence blocks, and the memories will live on each time I use my caravan table cloth.

DSCF1950 .Rail Fence table cloth for the caravan

1 comment:

FlourishingPalms said...

This is so pretty! Rail Fence is such an effective design, no matter what fabrics are used. And for you it's so full of great memories. I followed along as you sewed - and unsewed! - it. It turned out beautifully.