Clarice Cliff

     Clarice Cliff was an English ceramic artist of the 1920s and 1930s who loved Art Deco designs and bright coloured landscapes. My Dad's partner, Jan, loves her work and has had Clarice Cliff mugs and plates. As a Christmas gift, I decided to make 4 place mats based on Cliff's designs ... and kind of got carried away with the fun project and made 6 mats.
   
 

 Cliff used a lot more reds and oranges than I did, but I decided to incorporate some of the greens & turquoises that were in the newly recovered sofa in Dad & Jan's family room.

The landscape pieces are fused material, ironed on to the background and then satin-stitched around the shapes. I wanted to make sure they were heavily quilted so plates or glasses that were sitting on the place mats would be level.

I tried a few of the decorative stitches on the sewing machine ... liked it enough that I went back and added some of the stitches to the other place mats as well.

In the beginning, I tried to capture Cliff's designs fairly closely (I had borrowed Jan's Cliff book & had checked on-line) but part way through, I realized that the fun was in the design, and the trees could be as wonky as they needed to be and if the houses did not sit quite level, that was OK too.

This one is my favourite .... it reminds me of the trees in the Dr. Seuss books.

I also decided to make clear place mats with matching fabric binding that could be placed over the mats so they would be used, especially if grandchildren or great-grandchildren were visiting.