Stitchery

Well another month has disappeared and not as I had hoped! I envisaged spending lots of time walking in lovely sunny alpine pastures admiring the flowers only it has been wet and the high areas still have too much snow… I have been working though and not all of it on textiles unfortunately but at least I have been earning.

I spent a lot of time this month working on a group project; 6 of us who did our City and Guilds together have just finished our second round robin quilt, the quilt is handed on between us for each person to continue the work ‘blind’. It is a really good exercise and one which is also extremely nerve-wracking. Once that was done I got in with my niece’s wedding quilt, the 540 pieces are now all stitched together and quilting began last night.

After working on my Fifteen by Fifteen piece on the subject of circles I did a second and there is a third waiting in the side-lines. I have been encouraged on several fronts to try and work smaller and in a series to try and create a more homogenous body of work. The circles idea came from a photo I took in India which had a back-drop of brick circles.

The centre piece also had circles on it and I tried to recreate the idea of two different layers, the back ground I have already shown but here is the finished piece.

I then went of to play further by making a larger print of the circles and printed the two together making the foreground a little transparent.

watch this space for further developments.

I also completed a piece for a local group we had a handkerchief from China with a flowery motif on it which we had to incorporate in to our work, I traced the motif to reproduce it to form a tree. The trunk was  made using flour paste and Chinese ink before I painted the background. The fence is some decorative ribbon cut in strips and painted with acrylic paint. I played around by quilting the piece quite tightly to create movement, to get the effect that I wanted I actually worked at 90° to what one might expect, so the sky is actually quilted vertically .

The journal quilt for June again used ideas from India, this time I used a photograph of wrought iron railings that I took in Pushkar.

I redrew the design to make it straighter then cut out the pattern using a flowery sari silk scrap behind and tried to create the shadow by using a freezer paper stencil.

I have so many ideas I want to try out but now I am concentrating on preparing my classes for Birmingham, Maastricht and Vendée Quilt so that I have no last minute panics! The weather is now more seasonal and I want to get out and enjoy the countryside and of course there is the wedding quilt to quilt….

This is one of the classes that I a teaching at Vendée Quilt…

 

 

 

I arrived back from Quilt en Beaujolais a little subdued. The show was wonderful with a wide range of contemporary work and over 6000 visitors over the 4 days. My teaching went very well but I was not happy with the display of my work, I had a much bigger display than originally planned and as a result my work did not produce a coherent exhibition.

I now need to spend time rethinking what it is that I really want to produce, not easy when there are ideas all around me and I want to try so much!

My journal quilt for May was finished ahead of time and is the first with a touch of green. I saw some fabric at the Anouki museum in India and loved the way only part had been quilted so I wanted to try the same effect.

 

Meanwhile I have had  two pieces which have not been accepted in to exhibitions, this has helped me decide to work in a different way and not to try for acceptance to different challenges. The first is a piece that I am really pleased with but is probably to ‘simple’, the fabric is distressed with tea and the pattern is painted and stencilled and then the outlines are machine stitched, it is hanging very happily at home.

The second is still waiting for a home:

 

When ever I am out and about I look for inspiration, only now I need to channel my ideas, these are some of the photos that I have taken recently.

Detail of a railing outside the classroom I was teaching in.

Nice iron work part way up a mountain.

Interesting pattern on a tree trunk on the way down the aforementioned mountain.

The dandelion which was growing, uninvited outside my backdoor.

Then I have also been playing around with lino cuts and printing, this is the beginning of a series

I have still a whole list of things which need to be done in the next couple of months,  including a quilt for my niece’s wedding. She has chosen a fairly traditional design and we went shopping for the fabrics last week, all I need to do now is to get cutting the 540 pieces…

April is here and it seems much more like spring. For the time being my sewing is up to date, deadlines have been met so I am feeling quite relaxed. Now I have to really concentrate and get ready for Quilt Expo en Beaujolais, I have packed the quilts for my stand, just need to cut a few more batons and write a few labels. I know what I am teaching so I need to put the kits together and then cross my fingers for a few more students.

Today was the new reveal for Fifteen by Fifteen, I found the subject East meets West a difficult one it didn’t fit anything I really wanted to do; I finally decided to play around with stitching. Following the course I did last August I wanted to start experimenting with patterns and dyeing so I used this as the base, using the Japanese karamatsu technique and double dyeing. I then quilted the main body with a traditional Northern English chain pattern, placing a sashisko motif in the centre. The threads were dyed  with the fabric, so the middle blue thread was the first dye run, then I added yellow,hence the yellow thread and the result was the green. I think I should

have been bolder with my colours but was pleased with the result.

I have also been working on examples of photo to stitch for my classes, I love working in this way and now have ideas in my head for larger pieces of work. I want to present them with all manner of different items to demonstrate how adaptable this technique is, and how even if one can’t draw one can produce something artistic!

The tree is actually from a postcard that I have had for ages and the water buffalo is one I photographed in Kenya last year. The latter is using a slub thread so that the lines are not ‘clean’. They are both small.

I have also got the Journal Quilt for April finished. I played around using a photograph of a stone carved window/screen which was taken at an angle so that one could see that it was in 3d, I have cut away to show an old sari behind and used the same fabric for the bindings. Fine silk sari is difficult to work because it has a mind of its own, this one was faded and had holes in it and the scrap is never quite the size that you want it to be! I have stitched the lilies by hand and in coloured threads to bring it slightly more to life and the depth of the stone is shaded with crayons.

On the Edge is finished and has been submitted and I have one or two other projects up my sleeve, but at least I have time to sort out the garden and try to get rid of the weeds!

 

 

I have been working hard but I am not sure that I have much to show for it! I am working on a piece for the Quilter’s Guild Contemporary Group challenge, ‘On the Edge’ and it is nearing completion. I want to have it finished because I need to prepare for my stand and classes at Quilt Expo en Beaujolais which takes place 13 – 16 April. It should be an action packed few days, because apart from hoping for lots of visitors to the show it will be an occasion to meet up with friends and share a few glasses of wine, in the evenings of course.

At present I have work in Taiwan

I will also have work in two exhibitions at Beaujolais, Fifteen by Fifteen and the Contemporary Group’s challenge from last year Elements.

Where does the time go? I fully intended to keep up this blog on a regular basis but somehow that hasn’t happened. I have been working on pieces that are either for competition or display which I can’t display here, so in my head I had nothing to show.

I started the year by playing with ideas which still loiter in my head for a project later in the year.

This year I have decided not to travel as I did last year but to concentrate on things learnt on my travels, and the above were as a result. I intend to go further and actually produce something from these experiments.

Then there was some snow dyeing….

It has been frustrating this year because I have had relatively little snow in the garden and it has not always been of the right consistency, this was the first run and I have recently done another. Having thought that I would do a lot of dyeing like this this year, I have been disappointed with the results, not enough thought has gone in to my efforts, it has been a mad dash to use the snow before it disappeared.

At the beginning of the year I started doing journal quilts again for the Quilter’s Guilds Contemporary group. This year they are 8 x 10″ in portrait format and they have to have some purple in them for the first four months. I decided to use my many photographs of India and at the moment have been using old sari scraps which I brought back from The Stitching Project last year.

Quite by chance I also bought some plain cottons while I was in Pushkar and lo and behold the colours I chose are the colours that I need for the JQs this year. I have appliquéd this from a photograph I took of a mural in the Delhi Craft Museum.

My February JQ was inspired by a photograph of a screen where there were colours behind it.

To create the JQ I have used some printed silk that I bought in Delhi and cut out squares which have silk scraps inserted behind them.

The JQ for March has taken this idea one step further, photo to follow in the next post.

I am a member of a small group in this area who meet for the day about 4 times a year and who set themes for the following session. This time it was the sound of (in French)  “ou”. I thought long and hard and then managed to get 5 or six in to the same piece. Having done the fine machine appliqué for the January JQ I was motivated to continue, and I used neo-colours and crayons to add the colour detail.

We have also had a reveal for Fifteen by Fifteen since my last posting, the subject was mono-printing which I found really difficult, I like to work from a subject rather than a technique, but finally I got my head round it. I used some fabric which had been dyed with pomegranates and then I printed from the imprint of bubble wrap using procion thickened with manutex. Using the pattern I had printed  and coloured flowers and then chain-stitched around them, adding a little sparkle wax at the end and printed some silvery grass at the bottom with a thermo-fax screen

I have also worked on a piece for Quilt Expo en Beaujolais where I will also have a stand and be teaching quick and easy workshops, based on creating images in stitch from photos.

During this period, a piece I did some years ago has come home after travelling around France in a suitcase collection; we had to create an advertisement around the word MacFlé. I was drawn back to the Scottish hills and had great fun doing this although the pleating of the kilt did take some considerable time!

An finally a little detail of another piece that I have just finished.

Now back to the stitching!

Quilt Expo en Beaujolais is 13th -16th April 2016 at Villefranche sur Soane.

 

 

 

Well the year is almost over and I am looking forward to 2016 when I hope to put some of the thoughts and ideas that I have in to textile art. My travels have been many and varied and the inspiration they have given me will hopefully be fruitful!

At present I am working on a piece for ‘ Liberty in all its senses’ for Quilt Expo Beaujolais, I have been fiddling around for a while and now at last it is coming together and I hope that by the time the holiday season is over it will almost be finished, I am not going to say more about it until it has been shown.

Last week I made a small work for a Christmas present, I was with friends and  they decided that we should do a secret Santa except that we knew who we were giving to, men are always difficult but this time I knew what he would like.

It is only a small panel, mounted on a canvas frame, the background is silk sari fabric which was dyed in an indigo vat, the fish were drawn and coloured with water soluble crayons, one is on white fabric cotton the second on pomegranate dyed cotton so is darker, the dots are in crayon but with a stitch in the middle of each, they were appliquéd by machine with a fine Wonderfil thread.

I am waiting with baited breath to here what the Quilter’s Guild Contemporary group’s journal quilt constraints will be for 2016. I have photographed all my 2015 pieces together, this year I decided to work in a true journal style producing pieces inspired by what I was doing, fine when there was something, but I found it really difficult. I tried many different styles and techniques, some of which I will revisit, others of which I will leave well alone. One was on paper but I wasn’t bold enough with what I did and will definitely go back to that. 

Wishing everybody a very happy 2016 while waiting for winter to arrive, and by winter I mean snow!!

Well the festive season is approaching which, hopefully, means that I will have time to play textiles, I am not one for seasonal festivities and there is no snow worth talking about!

I finished playing pomegranates and am happy with the results I achieved; I made a journal quilt so I could test the colours and stitch types:

The fabric is dyed with pomegranates then printed as per my previous post; I stitched outlines behind and shaded them and hand stitched the seeds.

I then produced the challenge piece, I slightly misconstrued the subject which was kernels and pips by producing seeds and failed to add any of the former to my work, but I am happy with the result!

On Sunday I went to the Indian fabric exhibition at the V & A which I loved, there were some very old fabrics and items of clothing; I hesitated about buying the catalogue but at £30 and weighing a lot I decided to forego it and will have to make do with my cryptic notes and basic sketches. I also went to the wrought iron section which I have never knowingly visited before and found some lovely patterns there. Now I just need to spend time putting all these ideas in to practice!

To finish off the year by making my Christmas cards I went very seasonal and took contemporary route with my design, using paint sticks and a stencil. Not the best idea when there are two different colours and more than 70 cards to make, but I got three and took the design one step further by using it to make my final journal quilt of 2015. I stencilled the design three times, machine stitched the background with sparkly white thread and then simply applied one line of hand stitch to each motif. The idea was holly and snow flakes….

Now that winter is approaching I have at last time to play. My first project was a lino-cut pomegranate. I wanted to try to lino print and have been playing with different medium. I used procion dyes with a rather old manutex mix. The results on paper were ok. So I continued to print on fabric, which incidentally was dyed with pomegranates. Once printed I outline stitched and then started to embroider.Having got that far I decided to try using fabric paint which also worked relatively well.

Using up the paint at the end I had a shot at mono-printing on paper, the results of which pleased me.

I now have a lot of ideas to develop further….

As the year has progressed I have got no better at keeping this blog up to date. In late October, after a couple of weeks in Kenya, I went to Maastricht to the Open European Quilt Championships. I was there to help steward our Fifteen by Fifteen Quilt exhibition, we are a group of 14 international quilters and we make a new 15 x 15″ quilt every two months, the subject of which is chosen in turn by the members. This gave me the chance to photograph 8 of my quilts together. They use various techniques, some very machine stitched and some almost totally hand stitched. There was an exciting moment when somebody showed interest in buying one, it didn’t come to anything but made me feel good!

I also submitted a piece in to the ‘People’ category – the judges comments were very fair but I was miffed that it missed being ‘good’ by 0.1 point! The comments made me realise that living in a small space I can’t judge the impact from a distance very easily, the piece is 92 x 122cm, combined with the fact that the quilt was free hanging and was relatively light-weight so the outline of my two main characters became a little lost. I know better for another time!

This quilt, ‘Disappearing in to the blue….’, came about after my visit to the Gambia in 2014 and the ongoing stories of refugees being lost at sea. The blue fabric was dyed in India and the forms created with mud resist; sky and soil is fabric which I snow dyed. The outlines are hand stitched with chain stitch.

The summer has flown by and I failed to update after almost three wonderful weeks in Canada in May. I went over to assist at the Ailsa Craig Quilt Show which was hosting the quilts of France.We welcomed by the local community and had a wonderful time staying with Gerard and Trucy.

 On the Sunday the village had a quilt airing and they hung their quilts outside the house for all to see.

We then moved on the stay with Doug and Marion in Elmira. They were excellent hosts and took us all around the area, we took in a theatre performance of Mamma Mia in Kitchner, Toronto, the Bata shoe museum and dinner in the CN tower, the Niagara Falls and the St Jacobs Quilt show amongst other things. We were in Ontario where the place names reflect its history. I managed to go to London, Woodstock wasn’t far away, nor Stratford, I could go on….. We were in the mennonite country where life has a different value and tranquility.  It was a truly wonderful area and our guides were so informative.

I have loads of ideas to transform in to stitching not least the Niagara falls which I have already attempted. Although the falls themselves were impressive it was the upper reaches that i found so beautiful; there was a peace in the water which seconds later grew in to turmoil.

 The piece is only small 6″ x 12″ and was my first attempt at needle felting. I could go on about Canada but time to move on!

June and July  here were incredibly hot and the plant life all around, not least my garden has really suffered, sadly the hedge was not affected and has shot up, need to get the clippers out…

August arrived and it was time to head for the UK for the Festival of Quilts. I watched the news as chaos reigned in Calais and wondered if i would actually ever get there, the Gods were with me and I sailed through, did see one passenger removed from car in the neighbouring queue….. with all the fencing and barbed wire it did feel as if I was driving in to prison….

Two nights in Kent and more inspiration from the beach between Dover and Folkestone with my God-daughter Philippa:

Looking at the middle photo I find it extraordinary that this beautiful scene taken at low tide is in spitting distance of Dover and the heavy shipping traffic in the Channel.

Moving on through the country I had a whistle stop tour of Oxfordshire before arriving at Birmingham NEC. I met up with friends Claudette from Norfolk and Chantal and Fabienne from France and we went to Nuthurst Grange for dinner. I was a real trip down memory lane for me because it was my grand-parents old house and it was there that I knew my grand-father who died when I was 6 or 7. Last year I made a 15 x 15 quilt with the subject of memories and I used a family photo which I distressed which was taken outside the front of the house. It was a really lovely experience and I remember the entrance and the hall with the staircase, the drawing-room is still there and what was my grandfather’s bedroom when I knew him is now a bar!

The real reason for being at the NEC was the Festival of Quilts and we were there for the whole 4 days. it was great to spend time with like minded people, there was so much to see and do. I do not like posting the work of others on the net but I would just like a small detail of a piece by Maggie Vanderweit, A Wing and a Prayer. We were invited to Maggie’s house for dinner while we were in Canada and she showed us her studio. I was blown away by her work and generosity.

While at the festival I went to several lectures, one of which was interactive about how to judge a quilt, I do not want to become I quilt judge but I did want to understand what the judges are looking for. I found this a really useful exercise and think that it should help me in the future. I had a quilt in the contemporary section which I previewed in a previous post and was made on the back of my visit to India,

I also had a piece accepted for the Quilter’s Guild Contemporary Group Challenge, the subject was elements and I chose to work around chlorophyll as I wanted to stay with my subject of trees and leaves.

There was also a group quilt which was made in a round robin fashion by seven of us who had done our city and Guild diploma together. It was a really interesting and nerve wracking experience because we each had a three week period to add our contribution without consulting the others; I started it off by choosing the fabric and snow dyeing it…

The Festival of Quilts opens one’s eyes to what is going on and what one really likes; the first time I went it was a big wow I have lost that facture and become much more selective but I think my ideas have moved on as well! It was a great time for meeting old friends and making new ones.

After the NEC I headed back to Norfolk with Claudette because I had signed up to do a course with Jane Callender who conveniently lives just down the road from Claudette’s house. Cally has wonderful set-up and three of us had a wonderful five days with our hands in the dye vats, a week later and my nails still show the signs of indigo. The weather was good so our work dried in the open air and the vats were outside for us. I discovered the joys of pomegranate, will give me a reason to buy them when they come in to season! I have chosen sections of work I completed to show you, so many techniques and ideas flying around my head….

The journey back from the UK was uneventful except that the Highways Authority in their wisdom decided to shut the Dartford Crossing, and so effectively the M25, for Saturday night, the result was that I went across before it shut and spent a night in the car at Maidstone service area!

At least now I am up to date. It is difficult to show what I am doing when a lot of shows ask that work has not been shown publicly. I will try to keep up to date in the future!