Admittedly, rust can create beautiful color combinations.
However, rust also creates holes in metal and who needs a hole in their gate? Since street signs and numbers are unheard of in this area, we would say to visitors "Look for the green gate," and they would get lost. That should have been a sign.
So out came the bucket of paint (future mosaic plant container) and the brushes. Once I got started, I remembered why I had put off painting this baby. The size is formidable. The new look:
Ahhhhh, that's much better. It took me four afternoons of laborious work.
Of course, such an event made it into the sketchbook. First, the sketch on fabric sewn to sketchbook paper:
Then laying down the fabric and machine stitching.
I remember when we first moved to the farm (m-a-n-y years ago), there was only a row of trees with a gate. Now we need walls...and a gate.
23 comments:
You did a great job with your magnificent gate!! It does look to be well made, I love the sqiggly detail between the bars midway, and the handles, very stylish!!!! Wonderful fabric interpretation too!!!!
just love the inspiration moved onto cloth. i felt the same way you did when i decided to paint my garage door. it looked so simple until i got started. great job on both counts.
Great job Nadia. I worth every minute of your time I'm sure. In my world I appreciate rust too. It acts as mordant in eco-dye! I appreciate everything around me through the lens of my camera - Have a lovely week - Hugs
Nat
I love your gate, Nadia, both before and after. And I really like how you document things in your fabric/sketchbook way. Very nice!
Wow, what a great job you did. Hope you took some photos of the rusty gate -- the colors were to die for!
The gate dressed in rust really was beautiful, if not practical! The paint job looks great and your sketchbook renderings are fantastic! When I was first reading along...I thought you planned to mosaic the bottom half of the gate! lol
A favorite of mine:
http://www.bartleby.com/104/64.html
..."Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out..."
Love the new gate, love the old gate and love the sketched gate...all this love!
How beautiful was the rust effect, I love how you captured it in your sketch. I do agree it's best not to have holes in your fence though so good on you for the mammoth task of painting it. Your gates now look very proud in their new green coat of paint.
Wow you did a great job on the gate as well as on the fabric!
Now you can call the estate "Greengate"--how Victorian that sounds, doesn't it. Of course the art part, the drawing and stitching is quite wonderful, accomplished, sophisticated and free feeling, as always. January 2o, 2013 was my seventieth birthday. Nice to think that while I was crossing the threshold into my eightieth year, you were writing that date so far way on your current project. And that you need both the gate and a wall reminds me of that Robert Frost poem "Mending Walls"
Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
And spills the upper boulders in the sun,
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.
The work of hunters is another thing:
I have come after them and made repair
Where they have left not one stone on a stone,
But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,
To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,
No one has seen them made or heard them made,
But at spring mending-time we find them there.
I let my neighbor know beyond the hill;
And on a day we meet to walk the line
And set the wall between us once again.
We keep the wall between us as we go.
To each the boulders that have fallen to each.
And some are loaves and some so nearly balls
We have to use a spell to make them balance:
'Stay where you are until our backs are turned!'
We wear our fingers rough with handling them.
Oh, just another kind of out-door game,
One on a side. It comes to little more:
There where it is we do not need the wall:
He is all pine and I am apple orchard.
My apple trees will never get across
And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.
He only says, 'Good fences make good neighbors'.
Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
If I could put a notion in his head:
'Why do they make good neighbors? Isn't it
Where there are cows?
But here there are no cows.
Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offence.
Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That wants it down.' I could say 'Elves' to him,
But it's not elves exactly, and I'd rather
He said it for himself. I see him there
Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top
In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.
He moves in darkness as it seems to me~
Not of woods only and the shade of trees.
He will not go behind his father's saying,
And he likes having thought of it so well
He says again, "Good fences make good neighbors."
Be well dear Nadia.
This piece is so cool!!! I specially like the way you have done the rust effect.
-Gaia
Beautiful rendition of your lovely gate.
ah gates.. we just had an iron security door installed a fewmonths ago when the very old wooden front door became so fragile it didn't always shut tight at night and I often shudder at the need for living behind barred doors and windows in this 21st C... remembering the big old shared houses in the 70's that we rented full of friends coming and going all day and all night... the front door was always open with endless cups of tea & chats of life the universe and everything round the kitchen table...
your work always asks the big questions Nadia!
Hello Nadia,
Just dropping by to say Hello and Cheers! It has been ages since I have had time to "comment". I adore your gate. Old and new. As for the quilt? I was amazed. At first, I thought it was a photo.
Shopping in Tunis looks so much like shopping in Mexico. It is uncanny.
xo
Mary
Hello Nadia. A can (or two) of paint and some elbow grease and behold a gate transformed! AND inspiration for more creating!
Hola Nadia, un trabajo muy bonito. Tienes mucha creatividad. Besos.
Fabulous job on the gate, Nadia...and how wonderful that you turned the venture into a extra creative project!
Hi Nadia, I love your post. The gate is so cool. And what you made of it even more!! Bravo you that you painted it - it is looking very nobel now. And your sketch and quilt are beautiful - both - I can't but admire you and your work.
The rusty patterns on the bottom of the gates are gorgeous, but I know that it had to be painted to keep it from falling apart. Good job on the painting and I love your stitched piece.
I like the shabby chic look, but the green looks great. That must have been a LOT of work! Great job. :) I love how you made it into a fabric scene. So cool! xoxo
Hi Nadia
Nice writing,Lovely work and great Photo
Najlaa
The gate looks like new with its green paint. And your quilt is wonderful as always.
Do the walls go just around your home or all the way around the farmland? Do you see much wildlife near your home other than birds?
the before and after gate(s) are beautiful, and so is your art quilt!
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