quilting

Mid-August 2026

Posted on by carolinehiggs

Well, I had hoped for drier, cooler weather instead we got the drier but not the cooler! If I have learnt anything this summer it is that the hot weather makes me very lethargic with a tendency to nap rather too often, not conducive to producing much work. I had the idea of continuing my work with earth pigments I have done some but again it was either too hot or too windy which meant drying was too fast or it blew away!

In mid-July I headed south, to the Haute-Garonne, to do a course on eco-dyeing; very hot and airless but very informative. We were a group of nine of mixed nationalities, English speaking, accommodated in an old farmhouse and fed with delicious wholesome meals. The heat meant that we didn’t go far afield but the local market in the village of Montbrun-Bocage was well worth visiting; we tried to restrict our daily foraging trips to early morning. I came home truly motivated and new ideas are bubbling in my head.

I completed the fourth Fifteen by Fifteen quilt, still with Time as the theme I used an old linen table napkin on which I had created the impression of trees when I coloured it with pigment which I then hand stitched with home dyed threads. I chose a quoted fro Ovid’s tree time in Metamorphoses telling how Jupiter was obliged to effectively restart the creation, “he restores rivers, gives grass to the earth, leaves to the trees and orders wounded woods to be great again” which of course happens over time. The bottom of the piece was filled with the words of the quotation repeated over and over. I am still part way through an on-line course using text as texture, I think that it will have to wait for the autumn now, there is no hurry as I have access to it for life!

The latest two journal quilts were also completed, one is a tree which I appliquéd and the last of four depictions of mosaic in which I wove the colours, the stitch lines were not too regular which reflects ancient mosaic tiles.

Finally I found a solution with which to finish I piece that I coloured last year with earth pigments. It has small amount of machine quilting but most of the background is hand-stitched and I introduced text to create more texture and pattern. The leaves were unsatisfactory eco-prints in the sense that there wasn’t much definition but the shapes were good. I dyed some abaca paper which I placed behind the leaves to give them a more withered look and machined the veins leaving the edges free.

I am hoping that this is the last heat- wave for this year and that I can really advance as I have some exhibitions coming up in the autumn. I still keep looking for patterns and textures to inspire where ever I am, my excitement bubbled over to find that with no special equipment I managed to photograph the eclipse several different stages. Without leaving the house and with the blinds down the sun was filtered through the aeration holes and was projected on to my kitchen wall, who needs special equipment!!!

June ’26

Posted on by carolinehiggs

Arriving home from holiday a couple of weeks ago I was ready to start producing some new work. Things have not gone quite as well as planned, I did get up to date with my journal quilts and complete the next piece for FifteenbyFifteen but then things began to go down hill. While I was on holiday I was bitten by a tick, two visits to the doctor in four days and I was given antibiotics against Lyme’s disease and another tablet against allergy, the latter would work well as a sleeping drug, I keep falling asleep ! This coincided with record temperatures, it was like a hot hair dyer blowing but without the air circling, to control the itch of the bite and keep it from being burning hot I was packing it with an ice pack, so I spent the most part of the week doing very little in a darkened house.

I had planned to get back to painting fabrics for several projects but it was, and still is, far too hot so I got out last year’s pieces and picked one to work on. I am often asked how long something takes to complete, that is always very difficult to answer, how long is a piece of string? The photo shows the project in question, the fabric was sized, painted and dried for 4 weeks before having the final coat added. Yesterday I auditioned threads for hand sewing, that resulted in dyeing a selection, they had to be over-dyed to get them dark enough, washed dried and would on to supports. Twenty four hours later I am now ready to start sewing and the hours have already flown by. When dyeing threads I always take a selection of threads because they all turn out differently, these are all cotton threads and dyed with procion dyes.

Recycled cotton sheet coloured with natural earth pigments, hand dyed thread

Since I last wrote I have worked my journal quilts and completed the first 4 FifteenbyFifteen pieces on the subject of time. The fourth can not yet be disclosed, that will be the end of July. I have travelled twice this year, once to the UK to meet my newest nephew and visit friends during which time I visited the Royal Albert Memorial Museum in Exeter to see the Grayson Perry exhibition, I was disappointed, I had seen some of the work and I fund it expensive for what it was, the textile section of the museum was interesting. I also saw some great costumes, at Killerton House, including a mourning dress worn by Queen Victoria.

Three roman landscapes on recycled linen

First two journal quilts, May and June, depicting roman mosaics using one colour.

Fifteenbyfifteen: Time N° 2 depicting a few lines of Shakespeare’s Time. Recycled cotton sheeting coloured with earth pigments and over painted, hand stitched and commercial fabric machine stitched and hand stitched with the word time.

Like as the waves make to the pebbled shore, So do our minutes hasten to their end, Each changing place with that which goes before, In sequent toil all forwards to contend….

Fifteenbyfifteen: Time N° 3. Tide and time wait for no man. Old linen table napkin coloured with earth pigment and highlighted with inktense sticks. Man and board appliquéd and the wet suit has the saying written on it in continuous text, copy of a tide timetable on organza, fading with time.

The second break was for walking but there was also a lot of inspirational art firstly in Aubusson at the tapestry centre then in many churches of the Haute Loire there were murals, some better than others. At la Chaise Dieu the religious tapestries were amazing.

I have had three exhibitions, one solo on the Ile de Rè for ten days and two where I had a displayed the Gaspart exhibitions , Lagord and La Rochelle. I am now working towards a new body of work, hoping for cooler drier weather so that I can create new backgrounds. I did manage to paint some fabric on the beach on the Ile de Ré during my lunch break while I was at my exhibition.

This last piece, which was exhibited with those in the other images at the A.N.C.R.E. Maritaise, Ste-Marie-de-Rè, is coloured with earth pigments and the orange and green is continuous text written ink “Full many a flower is born to blush unseen and waste its sweetness on the desert air” (Thomas Gray; Elergy, written in a country churchyard)

My inclusion of text is as result of being in the middle of a very motivational online course with Claire Benn and is aimed at using text as a texture. I am halfway through and need to find the time to continue because it is challenging me to try new ways of working.

Damp November

Posted on by carolinehiggs

Here we are at the end of November, the time has flown by since I last updated. At the beginning of October I spent a night in hospital for planned sinus glitches that was followed by a light dose of shingles so it was relief when I set off for the UK at the end of the month to visit family and friends for three weeks.

For once I was around for the journées de patrimoine and I went to the Mairie in la Rochelle to see the textiles on display, these comprised of a life size contemporary embroidery (cross stitch) of Aliénor d’Aquitaine celebrating 900 years since her birth and some rather wonderful wall tapestries.

The last Saturday in September saw me invited to teach around a hundred ladies at a friendship day for France Patchwork south of here near Angoulême in the Charente region, a little hectic but I believe that everybody went home happy with what they had achieved and I failed to take any photos!

At the beginning of October I hung 17 pieces at Le Sauzy, a parish hall which holds many different types of events . The hanging space is well lit and I was delighted to be invited to exhibit my work for a couple of months.

The UK was foggy, damp and cold but there was plenty to do and see. I made use of my National Trust membership to visit two lovely properties, Oxburgh House in Norfolk and the grounds of Knightshayes in Devon. In the former were the most lovely embroideries, rich leather and burnished velvet wall coverings which were a real surprise. The bed hangings arrived at Oxburgh around 1761 and were removed in the 1950’s and taken to the V & A which has loaned them to the National Trust.

The grounds of Knightshayes are fantastic and many of the plants are labelled, there were a surprising number of plants flowering and luckily the rain stopped for our walk around the woodland garden. The were some woven willow structures of wildlife secreted amongst the trees.

I also visited Country and Eastern in Norwich which has a collection of South Asian artefacts. Not only were there old textiles on display but also stunning carved wood and some enormous windows and doorways. I was particularly drawn to the Pakistani and Indian pieces. The building is an grade 2 listed old roller skating rink with the most incredible wooden roof. It opened as a rink in 1876 but a year closed due to financial difficulties and had a chequered career until it was transformed to its present use in 1993. There was so much to see in the museum section and to buy but I managed to keep my hands firmly in my pockets.

En route between friends I visited the Honiton lace museum, they had an interesting display of lace from all over Europe showing the different styles, then also drawers of lace in chronological order some of which was so fine and intricate. The first piece is the Esther Clarke flounce which was made for the Great Exhibition of 1851. I also managed to find my grandmother’s old house which I hadn’t seen for sixty plus years but which I recognised instantly.

On the stitching front I haven’t done much, the quilt I made for god-daughter’s wedding present was finished on time and was safely delivered, it was large and I had trouble photographing it, I had to hang it sideways on the washing line, hence the photograph is a little strange. I embroidered some of the panels and tried to keep to the colours that she liked to try and keep in harmonious. The whole piece was hand quilted.

I finished the last two pieces for Fifteen by Fifteen on the subject of Children’s books the first was The Adventures of Robin Hood and the last will be divulged later as we have not yet had the reveal. I am now trying to catch up with my journal quilts, September’s is posted and the last three for the year will be done very soon. All the quilting took up a lot of time and I now want to get back on track with creating, I need to make some new work, not that I have any exhibitions planned for 2025 as yet, because I have sold some of the newer pieces and I prefer to exhibit new work when I do exhibit.