International Quilt Challenge

The latest theme for the International Quilt Challenge Group has been 'Reflection' or any variation thereof.  I last showed you it a couple of weeks ago when I was trying to decide how to quilt it.  Since then I have got to grips with said quilting and the piece is now finished, having skidded past the deadline by 6 days (oops!).

Thank you for the advice I was given in my last post, it did help with the decision making.  I decided not to add in any more 'field' boundaries in the hope that the quilting would make the brown lines less obvious.  I think I've just about got away with it.

This detail shows the area towards the top.  I made the 'field boundaries' towards the top darker to give the idea that they are in the distance.  The binding was made from the same strips as are in the quilt.  

My interpretation of 'Reflection' comes from reflecting on this area of Cornwall which is close to St Ives which is always in our thoughts when we are not there.  The wallhanging is also going to serve as my entry for the Sue Ridgwell Challenge at the AGM of the Quilters Guild of the British Isles in April under the theme 'My World is Green'.  I just need to add the sleeve and label.  The dimensions are 24" x 24".

Snow day(s)

Or should that be snow week?  We have had more snow down but so far it hasn't tempted me to any more snow dyeing.  We were promised more today but it is slow in arriving so, despite the snow dyeing, I am hoping that maybe it will miss us.

On Friday, when the latest lot of snow came down, I ventured out to Stitchcraft for some 'Friday Fun' with a mini workshop making Pin Cushion Baggies with Wendy Coyne. 

Altogether nine baggies were made and despite keeping an eye on the accummulating snow out the window we had a happy couple of hours.  There are going to be a lot more of these mini sessions and I am planning to go along to a few more.  If it hadn't been for the snow I would have stayed for a cuppa and a natter/cake.  As it was I got home safely but the drive up our side road was 'interesting'!  (My DH rang me as I was about to leave to drive home to warn me the snow was drifting across our road and covering it in.  Bless!)

This was the view in our garden Saturday morning.  

Instead of more snow dyeing I have been working on my quilt for the International Quilt Challenge Group and for the Sue Ridgwell Challenge at the AGM of the Quilters Guild GB.  Last time I talked about these challenges I had got as far as making a paper collage to explore my ideas.  I have since been busy piecing the landscape.

This is the start.

I've spent the last few days disecting and inserting darker strips to describe the field walls.    I think it may need one more diagonal line across the foreground.  I've been experimenting in Photoshop with the added insert and with possible quilting lines:

What do you think?   I still feel it lacks some pazzazz so decisions may be made about thread colour and possible beading.  I need to get my skates on!  As the challenge group piece it needs to be finished by the end of the month! 

Wherever you are in the world and whether you're freezing or boiling have a good week and keep safe.

Welcome to 2013

Don't you find that the two holiday periods of Christmas and New Year roll into each other to make a bit of a doldrom?  Life seems to sit in limbo between all the cooking and present opening and catching up with friends and family and I am now looking forward to picking up the strings again and getting back to some creativity.  2012 has ended with a yucky cough and cold so I am looking forward to something better for 2013.

So far I have decided not to have a particular word focus or any resolutions for this year.  It feels enough to 'keep moving forwards' as I read on someone's blog recently. Although I do still want to amalgamate what I learned with Dionne Swift and Shelley Rhodes last year so more sketchbook work does need to become part of my routine.

In the meantime I have several projects on the go.  I am still involved in the International Quilt Challenge and the latest theme is 'Reflection' and I have until later this month to complete it.  It is a theme that is open to many interpretations, especially at this time of year.  I've also committed myself to the Sue Ridgewell Challenge at this year's AGM of the Quilters' Guild of GB.  The theme of this challenge is 'My World is Green' and the resulting piece has to be 24" square.  I'm thinking that I may combine the two projects and have some ideas for 'My World is Green'.   

You may remember the first quilt I made for Festival of Quilts where I used curved piecing.

The image above shows the general idea.  I've also been meaning to work along the lines of Rayna Gillman and her free-form piecing so I thought this could be the project for it.

To make a start I have played about with an image of fields near Zennor in Cornwall in Photoshop, as that part of the country is a constant source of reflection to me as we dream about a possible move to the coast that will probably never happen.  

Fields are obviously very much in the 'green' range.  The danger is not having enough range and contrast in the choice of greens, a pitfall that is easy to fall into.  I didn't fancy working in my sketchbook (what was I saying before?) so I had a play with collage with various papers on a piece of watercolour paper.

This is 12"x12" so, one quarter the size of the final piece.   The next step will be to start making some blocks in blends of greens and trying to build the whole thing.  When I used to paint I had to remind myself that there are many types of green, red greens, yellow greens, blue greens, grey greens, brown greens.  In fact, in some cases it was better to paint colours that suggested green without actually being green.  If I were Hockney my greens would even be pink!  Now there's a thought!

I've said it already but I'll say it again, Happy New Year!  I hope 2013 is kind to you. For myself, I would just like to stop coughing!

International Quilt Challenge

We have just been sharing on the International Quilt Challenge blog our interpretations of my theme 'Memory'.

This is the not-quite finished memory piece which I have titled 'Bumpsteads'.  I do not normally make pictorial quilts but I have had this piece in my head for a long time so it was good to get it out of there and explore the process.  The fabrics are a combination of commercial fabrics and my sun printed fabric and all the pieces have been bonded.  So far I have only added some hand stitching to describe the grassy edges of the garden and field and I am prevaricating about adding quilting but I will probably have to add some stitching to stop it all falling off.

From the age of 9 to about 17/18 I spent as many of my holidays as I could manage staying with a family friend on their pig farm.  In the garden was a huge pear tree with a tree swing in it and a rather rusty metal seat encircling it.  I spent many happy hours swinging, climbing trees, feeding the pigs, playing with the farm cats and helping to look after and play with the children of the family as they came along.  I have a very strong visual memory of making a picnic in the garden with the daughters of the family to be shared with their dolls and teddies, with the sound and smell of pigs happily grubbing about in the field across the road.  The scene in my mind is flooded with sunlight and my 'Aunt' heavy with her next child.  The children, as with all children, had lost interest in the tea party and gone in search of other entertainment, or maybe for a snooze.

My piece comes from a naive style painting that I made of the remembered scene several years ago when I was painting.

My interpretation has been very literal and I am quite happy with it, although I think I should probably give myself some hair!

Andromeda

I have quite a bit of catching up to do but I am going to jump in and show you my latest response to the International Quilt Challenge blog which I have posted over there today. 

The theme for the latest challenge is 'Time' and when I started to think about 'Time' my brainstorming produced a long list of possibilities.  The words of a Simon & Garfunkel song came to mind, 'Time, time, time  See what's become of me.......' and a hymn, I think , ' Time like an ever rolling stream bears all our fears away.  They die, forgotten, as a dream dies at the break of day'.

I thought of passing time, time past, holiday time, a stitch in time, old time, part time, daytime, night time, dreamtime, time travel, lost in time...... The list went on and on.  Then, on a visit to Greenwich Royal Observatory I was reminded that there are much larger measurements of time than seconds, minutes and hours.  I was particularly struck by an audio visual installation that stated that the light from the Andromeda Galaxy takes so much time to reach the Earth that's it's journey is measured in light years.  The view that we see of the Andromeda Galaxy is brought to us by light that left it approximately 2.6 million light years ago. It is the most distant body that can be seen with the naked eye and lies just below Orion's Belt in the constellation of Orion.  Seen through a telescope it is truly beautiful and I feel a personal connection to it through my late husband who was passionate about astronomy. (Not my present DH in case you were worried).

So, with this thought in mind I chose to make my piece about the Andromeda Galaxy.

I have been wanting to explore the colour wash method of construction for sometime and so played with this a little by using a range of my hand dyed fabrics of various textures (cottons, velvets, bamboo and something unidentifiable that had been tossed in the dye bath) together with a couple of commercial fabrics.  The piece was put together with curved piecing as a reference to the spiral nature of the galaxy but I think I could have been even more adventurous with the curvatures.  I layered the top onto polyester wadding and then hand stitched/quilted in a spiral from the centre outwards.  I felt the spiral stitching would reflect the spiral nature that I think is attached to time and I used hand stitching because it would take physical time to complete.

I used a Madeira Rayon for the quilting and then used a gorgeous metal thread from the Illuminations range at the Thread Studio to make reference to a beautiful infra-red image of the Galaxy that I found here.  Finally, I added some small beads to suggest some of the stars that contribute to the galaxy. 

The finished size of 'Andromeda' is just over A3 and I am thinking of facing it instead of binding it and will probably give it a curved edge rather than square.  As with the previous challenges I am left with pages of ideas to take forward from this theme and may develop it further for my Festival of Quilts entry, but maybe I won't use quite so much hand stitching!

DH and I have just got back from a week in Lancashire and I have a lot to update you on so I'll be back soon. :D

Archi-texture

Today is reveal day for our third challenge over at the International Quilt Challenge Blog and for the first time I am actually at home for the reveal.  The title of the challenge was 'Archi-texture' and I reproduce here the post I put up on the blog this morning.

 I'll start from the end which is the piece I've reached by today's reveal date.  At the moment it's  called Archi-texture I as I've forgotten the name of the building that inspired it but it is all about decaying surfaces and is only one of the directions this challenge took my thoughts.

After enjoying the process of the Pojagi in the last challenge I was keen to carry on exploring layers and the idea of looking through. On a train journey from Cornwall I had plenty of time to let my mind wander and notes I made at the time include suggestions of monoprinting on cotton; building up layers of print on top; sponging; painting over stitched, quilted fabric, discharging, painting again; scribbled stitching.  As the train slowly approached London we passed a Macdonalds' with its iconic arched logo and that turned a light on.  Having recently seen Karen Turner's work I thought about layering fabrics over a textured basecloth and cutting the arches through to reveal the texture below.  I think that would have been a fun way to go but when I got home and started looking at my photos of texture and architecture I found an image I had taken in Leicester near the New Walk Museum of a very decaying building.

As you can now see the image at the top caught my imagination and I decided to explore that with surface design on fabric.

Using my own printed , dyed and discharged fabrics I cut and bonded the pieces to batting layering one or two sheers with text on them below the dyed net curtaining that forms the 3 neutral columns.  My free machining/quilting skills are distinctly lacking but I used a variety of stitching to describe the cracks that you might see as a building deteriorates.  The 'quilt' is A3 size and there is no binding, the backing was turned through and the edge closed with top stitching all round.

I have to admit to several influences while I was working on this piece including the work of Shelley Rhodes that I saw at Alexandra Palace last year and work by Mary Hettmansberger that had featured in Quilting Arts magazine.  Having linked to Mary's work here I wonder now whether that is what drew me to my photograph although I took the photo about 5 years ago.  Subconsciously the colours may have been a strong factor in remembering that image of the building.  Another piece of work that got me very interested was a piece hanging at the Beetroot Gallery in their open exhibiton.

This is 'Traces' by Lesley Bohanna and I love the texture she has brought to the surface with mediums and printing.  The piece is very tactile with layers produced by added mediums, fabrics, printing and stitch. As far as I can tell from Google Lesley is a member of Dewbury Art Club. While preparing the fabrics for my own piece I applied some acrylic texture medium to the fabric before printing but I want to go back and play more along these lines. 

The beauty of this challenge, as with the preceding ones, is that it has opened my mind up to so many possibilities and so many ways to interpret the texture in architecture and I could, and hopefully will, carry on exploring for many months to come.  I am hoping that the next challenge will lead naturally into related areas of work and I still have to come back to thinking about how pojagi and archi-texture can come together.

PS if you can't enlarge the images by clicking on them go and have a look at them on the International Quilt Challenge blog.

Through The Window

This post is almost a word for word copy of the post that will have been revealed this morning over at the International Quilt Challenge blog and I have reproduced it here to save me re-writing a separate post for this blog (lazy mare!).  I think the photos should open if not please pop across to the Challenge blog for a better view.  I am trying to save time as I have a busy week coming up and am writing this post in advance.

As I said in my earlier post I was becoming fascinated with the quality of light that comes through a stained glass window and I particularly became fascinated with the cut through process that I had been playing with.  After I had made a piece 10" square for my Journal Quilt I have gone on to make an A3 sized piece for this challenge.  It is not the only piece I have made, more of that in a minute.

As you can see I didn't actually take this particular technique any further, mostly because I didn't have the time but I may well play with it some more when time allows.  You may notice that the quilt I made for the Olympics had a grey binding whereas I used black for this.  I wasn't sure whether the black would be too dark but I think it works.

I said in my previous post that I wanted to experiment with sheers and I have had a great time doing just that.  I took a selection of neutral organzas, silks and nylon sheers and used fabric paints tostamp and make monoprints on their surfaces.  I kept the monoprints neutral in tones of grey and was a bit worried at first that they might be too light to show up.  Sadly I was so busy working I didn't take any photos of the process.

The next step was to use silk paints to add colour to the pieces of fabric.  I decided on silk paint as I didn't have a lot of time, again.  Once the fabrics were all prepared I started to cut and piece them using a pojagi style of seam.  This is the result:

The photograph above was taken indoors with the piece laying on the top of my sewing table.  It is very slightly smaller than A3 size.  I then took further photographs outside.

After photographing the piece hanging from our driftwood I couldn't resist hanging the 'window' in the lilac tree where the sun was shining through this morning.

I have made a lot of mistakes with the stitching in this technique and a certain amount of drifting has occurred but I am so delighted with the way this has turned out.  The surface marks are really exciting me and I am really happy with my interpretation of 'Through The Window'.  I am quite tempted though to leave it out in the garden to let the sun shine through and see how it ages.

Been busy

I seem to have been very busy but I don't have much to show you as I have been working towards a challenge and the reveal isn't until next Friday so I have to contain myself.  However, following on from my last post I have made one of the stained glass window quilts for the 2012 Olympics competitors.

The quilt is A3 size and has lots of scraps of fabric of all sorts of texture in it to suggest the different qualities of light.  

The reverse of the quilt is the cross of St George, the English flag, although it's a little bit skew.  I just need to attach a label and hopefully make another before the December deadline. 

I can show you just a little taster of the project I have been working on for the International Quilt Challenge Group.

I have had great fun working on this, despite a little bad language when the machine ate the corner of the finished article! Grrrrrr!  Panic not, I was able to rescue it. Phew!

Some time ago my friend's elderly aunt passed away and when her house was cleared a part completed hexagon quilt with pieces of fabric was found with all its accompanying papers.  The quilt has now been completed and I was able to photograph it.

Isn't it a beautiful quilt?  Hopefully you will be able to click and zoom to see the fabrics that have been used.  Some of the fabrics are thought to be almost 100 years old and dates on the papers go back to 1915.  The papers were parts of letters and envelopes and some printed material.  I felt privileged to be able to look closely at and not least, handle such an old quilt and to examine these fabrics up close.  It is wonderful to see vintage quilts at the Quilt Museum but even more amazing to be able to handle a quilt that has survived a 100 years.

Finally, I'll leave you with a piccy of a gangster who found his way into my house this week ;-)

Al Capone, eat your heart out! LOL

Have a great week!

Through The Window

I think I mentioned before that I have recently joined a group that calls itself The International Quilt Challenge group.  Our second challenge which is due for completion and reveal on 25 November is titled 'Through The Window' and I have been giving it a lot of thought over the past few weeks.  My immediate, and probably obvious, first thought was 'Through the round window.....' as in Play School.

Similar to the last challenge, as soon as you start thinking about windows you see them everywhere (well, they are aren't they?) and you start thinking about every interpretation of 'through' and 'window'.  A window to the past, a window through time, windows of the soul, window of opportunity, looking in through the window, looking out through the window.  Window - an opening allowing a connection between one space and another, light pours in through the window, a surface that reflects light and its surroundings. A window can be many shapes; it can be clear, frosted, reinforced, mottled, distorted, etched, of many colours.

An abstract painting that I made on the subject of looking back through time which was made with a window cut from a photograph incorporated into layers of torn watercolour paper with crayon marks added and manipulated in Photoshop.

Inevitably, and to cut a long story short for the moment, my thoughts turned to stained glass windows, which I love for the light that they allow to pass into the room.  The window above is part of the stained glass in Chester Cathedral and I have used part of it previously in a watercolour sketch (still need to find that).  

In our local parish church we have a beautiful stained glass window by John Hayward entitles Christ Walks on the Water.  With the Quilt Artist's eye that I now have I can see several ways of interpreting this window.

Over the years, and particularly in the past these stained glass windows were a way through which people who could not read learned the Bible stories.  Over the years stained glass windows have become more abstract and convey their meaning in other ways.  

As a way of finding my way into this challenge I thought I would play about with cut through fabrics, especially after reading an item by Naomi Renouf in the June 2010 issue of Workshop on the Web   that I found on my computer.

I've started by layering scraps of fabrics onto a background and securing them under a layer of organza with stitching running at right angles to the run of the fabrics.  Subsequently I cut through the channels deciding as I went along how far down to cut.

The next step is to machine at right angles to the first lines of stitch opening up and catching down each cut layer to reveal what lies beneath. (detail above)

I am quite pleased with the result so far.  I feel it has some of the movement in the window in St Wulfram's church and I am excited to work it on a larger scale.  

I have been trying to decide whether this would work with a more transparent feel to it so that light can actually shine through and I've made a further piece but have not achieved that transparnecy yet.  Once you start thinking and looking there are a lot of ways of interpreting (light) through the window and I'm glad I've got a few more weeks to work on this project.

I have been trying to track down a link to a programme that brought home to me the power of stained glass some time ago and I can't find it.  I think it was  a clip of (?Rolf Harris/Michael Palin?) in a chapel with stained glass windows designed I think by Chagall or maybe Matisse.  My overriding memory is of the presenter standing in the chapel with light from the window pouring over his fingers like water.  For some reason the image took my breath away and brought a lump to my throat.  Such is the power of light through a window.

Light and Shadow

Where to start?  Have you noticed how it gets harder to start the longer time there is between posts?  Added to that I have been slipping into a slough of despond and  coupled with Blogger being difficult I really haven't the patience to blog, but here goes!

I was recently invited to join a new challenge group and we have just completed our first challenge.  There are 16 of us in the group with members from across the world and it looks like being a really exciting experience. 

Annabel set the first challenge as Light and Shadow and after and initial panic and some brainstorming I eventually settled into exploring the effects I had photographed on a visit to the Eden Project in Cornwall.

The biomes which house the plants are made up from hexagonal shapes and I was taken with the striking shadows cast on a massive rock at the back of the biome.

My initial thought was to manipulate the image in photoshop and I was quite surprised and excited by the effects.

I finally settled on the image above and decided to work it on my embellisher which has been sadly neglected if not ignored lately.  I used part of an old blanket as a base and used prefelt, silk scarf, chiffon, wool tops and carded wool to build the design.

I felt (no pun intended) that the large dark area on the right was a bit overpowering as I had used a piece of pre-felt for the shape so I pulled bits of it off and needle felted some lighter wool from the back.  Overall I am quite pleased with the final effect although I may add some stitch and I still have to decide how to finish the edge.

The International Quilt Challenge Group is a very illustrious group and I feel a bit inadequate in such experienced company but I  have enjoyed the experience of this first challenge.  I probably should have mentioned that my piece is A3 size.  The next challenge, due in November, is 'Through The Window'.  I have had a few thoughts about possible interpretations but I need to find some time to sit down and work them through.  'Through the Window' could have many interpretations, both literal and not so literal so I shall have to stir the old reluctant brainbox into life and hope for inspiration.

I should own up to feeling very low lately.  I don't like to bring personal stuff to the blog, especially negative stuff,  but I am down in a bit of a hole at the moment and blogging and facebooking are both feeling like hills to climb (not to mention tackling the tip that is my house at the moment!).  The sale of my Mum's house fell through today (we need to sell it to pay for her care) so you can understand that that felt like the final straw in a rubbish year but a bloody good roar and a couple of soaked hankies has helped me get a few things into perspective and it's not the end of the world.  Onward and upward!  (A trip to Ally Pally on Thursday to meet Dale Rollerson who will be there from Australia should be a helpful pick-me-up!)    

Challenge

I decided that my challenge quilt was a little bland (!) so, prompted by Tina, I thought I would add a few embellishments.  As you can see I got a bit carried away!  My photo is suffering a little from sun glare but I am really pleased with it now. 

I've had the results of my chest x-ray today and it's clear so the doctor is now telling me I have an allergy so I have to persevere with some therapies and see how it goes.  Who would believe, suddenly allergic, maybe to atmospheric changes, at my age?

I was going to post this photo a few days ago and chickened out but I was reminded of it tonight by Tom.  So, this one's for you Tom!  As you can see DH has his cupboard and spends most evenings there while I sit on the settee with my laptop! Ain't love grand?! lol

Synchronised sitting update and postal goodies

Did I say the winners of Bob T Bear's Olympic Synchronised Sitting competition had been announced? You can see who the winners were over at Bob's blog. Unfortunately my bears didn't win but the winners well-deserved their wins. My brave bears did receive a certificate today, though, for their pyramid attempt! Thank you, Bob's mummy and daddy, for giving us all a bit of fun and for your generosity in sending us all certificates!

Yet more goodies in the post today, this time from Kate who has set up an ATC challenge on her blog. Kate offered 5 ATC backgrounds and a selection of embellishments as a giveaway in return for one of the ATCs to be worked to a completion, in any manner and with or without her embellishments, and to be returned to her. (Sorry, all the ATCs have been sent out now).

Her package included the instructions on this very stylish notepaper and a very pretty parcel wrapped in sparkly paper and tied with a feathery yarn.

Inside were these lovely ATC backgrounds and a packet of goodies. I'm a bit spoiled for choice but I have one or two ideas so I'm going to have a play and see what happens! Let's just hope I end up with at least one that isn't completely wrecked as Kate does want a glimmer of the original base to show through! Play time!

Did I say I was going to see Mamma Mia again tonight? I lied! Sort of, I've had to call it off as I'm totally shattered, hence a short post. The spirit is willing but the body's said "You must be joking, kidder!" Actually the spirit's pretty spark out too.