Textile Map of Barra & Vatersay and the Bishop Isles

Our task this weekend was to illustrate saltmarsh that we can use to show this on the map. Lily Scott got the session started with an overview of the mapping process and detail on exactly where the saltmarsh is. She discussed what she had learned whilst working with Prof. Bill Austin, Dr Alex Houston and the interns from St Andrews University. While Barra and Vatersay does not have a lot of saltmarsh what it has is important as a habitat, a carbon store and a coastal buffer.

We painted the sea with the help of the young people from the craft club. We used a range of dyes of different tones of green, blue, umber and white. We thought about the texture of the sea and the waves and tried to create this using different brush strokes and splashing techniques. we also used salt and this was particularly effective. It was great fun painting on this scale. The more that we painted we had to be careful not to stand on the paint. The map now has a sea that

This weekend we got the basics of the textile map in place. With a helpful group of volunteers we set out the outline of the map of Barra and Vatersay in textiles. We used a large piece of sheet fabric to give us space to include all of the stories and science that we will create over the next four years. Using a giant print out based on a smaller map we cut out the shapes of the island and bondawebbed these to the base layer. It was very tricky to make sure that these were a