ALQS5

I should have posted this some time ago so apologies to Tina for not trumpeting (!) her beautiful Elephant quilt from Kate North's 'another Little Quilt Swap'.  This is the 5th swap Kate has organised and this time we worked to an A4 or US equivalent sizing.  You can look at all the quilts made by clicking here.  You need to scroll through to the 1 February and earlier to see the quilts.  Kate has the unenviable task of sorting out everyone's requests and matching quilt to 'swapee'. 

I love Tina's work so I was really pleased to receive her elephant.  Tina's work is always very colourful and always involves a lot of handstitching and usually a fair scattering of sequins and embellishments.  This elephant is even more special because Tina made him and many others while undergoing chemo and this is the last of her chemo elephants. Tina is now well and fully recovered and I feel privileged to have this special elephant.  Do click on the image to see all the details and printing that Tina included in her quilt.

This is the quilt I made for the swap

The quilt was made from a piece of shibori dyed fabric that I made in a workshop a couple of years ago.  I decided to work it all by hand and it helped me get through some of the time when I was looking after my mum after her stroke. I always find hand sewing very soothing and I'm sure it lowers the blood pressure.

My quilt went off to Wil Opio Oguta who lives in the Netherlands and who is coincidentally a fellow member of the Contemporary Quilt Group of the Quilters Guild.  It's a small world, especially as Tina and I belong to the same quilt group too!

Dyeing again

My programme of dyeing workshops has continued this week with a session of shibori. If you read the Wikipedia entry you will discover many of the techniques we tried. I don't think I have ever worked so hard at a technique! The stitching, pulling up and wrapping involved all put a huge strain on my hands and resulted in some very annoying pain but I enjoyed the day and I've got some lovely results which I'll get to in a minute.

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You can see in the following photographs the fabrics prepared for dyeing. Some of the fabrics had been dyed in previous sessions, hence the yellow appearance.

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Shibori patterns

These are the results of the shibori dyeing (we didn't use an indigo vat as you traditionally should but used Procion dye). You should be able to see which patterns have arisen from sewn techniques.

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I really like this effect above.

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Unfortunately the dye didn't penetrate to the middle of this fabric but there are some interesting marks where it did reach.

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This piece was stitched but I prefer the area at the top where the stitches were spaced further apart.

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I love this piece.

More patterns

This lovely piece above is only about 10" square, I wish it was bigger as I love the effect.

This is the piece that was wrapped round the drainpipe. Fantastic!

Another piece that I really like.

Last but not least

You may be able to see the ghost of buttons that were used for this piece.

This last piece had previously been monoprinted and unfortunately the dye didn't penetrate the central area. I like the effects around the edge which had not been dyed previously. I shall have to think about whether I will do anymore to this cloth. I am thinking that maybe I could dip dye the centre, maybe with a purple.