the dyers hand

Big Buttons and Catching up

2011-11-28T09:40:00.000Z

The Contemporary Quilt Group Journal Quilts for the October-January pieces are all required to use buttons, causing many people including myself something of a real challenge. Looking through my button box I came across eight huge buttons and the idea of using these as focal points for composition proved irresistible. As I have eight buttons I have challenged myself to double up and make two pieces per month. I've also set myself the task of exploring complementary colours in each one.

The first, called Yellow Colour Field with Big Button is a collage of various fabrics - cotton, scrim, dyed wadding, felt and butter muslin anchored with machine quilting and embellished with couched purple thread and bits of silk carrier-rod - lots of time playing with the arrangement but the stitching was straightforward.

The second arose from a series of samples I made for a workshop I taught on Improvised Curved Strip Piecing for Textile Without Limits. It uses fabrics which originated I from Ghana along with some hand-dyed fabric. This is also a tryout piece for something larger. It's called Ghanaian Grid with Big Red Button.

Number three, which also uses fabric from Magie, dyed damasks and Zimbabwean prints, is called Big Button Blues.

The fourth one uses my stash of fabrics designed by Native Australian Artists. My husband was born in Australia and was fascinated by Aboriginal Art. Improvised curved piecing again but this time in crazy form. Couldn't resist calling this one Big Button Dreaming!

June-September Journal Quilts

2011-10-18T14:59:00.000+01:00

For this series of CQ Journal Quilts I have chosen to explore family history, specifically four generations of women in my family at similar points in my life. These pieces all use text - a specific requirement for JQs in these months.

The first piece, 1968, relates to myself - yes folks the picture below really is me, taken from my passport photo, posterised, solarised and blue-printed in Paint Shop Pro, then printed onto Extravorganza, cut out and stitched down with a simple running stitch, which has also been used to emphasise some of the features. It is appliqued to a piece of tie-dyed silk taffeta; the whole thing was then machine-quilted, very simply, using the same thread as for the applique, then bound with tie-dyed cotton.

The words round the edge were suggested by an idea from fellow CQ member Margaret Cooter, who created a piece of artwork using the last three words of popular phrases. In my case I have used the last three words of favourite sixties quotations, plus one quotation from something written later about the sixties.

In 1968, I was a student at London University. It was a heady time, with a rather strange feeling of a worldwide student community (I suspect for those of my contemporaries have to devote their energies to earning a living things might have felt different) and a real belief that we could change the world. It was also a huge amount of fun, and a great time to be a student in the swinging sixties.

The second piece centres on a picture of my mother in 1944. She was then doing war-work in the Vickers Armstrong factory at Castle Bromwich in Birmingham, making Spitfires (she told my brother about the Spitfires, me about the partying that went on in off-duty hours); to hear her talk it sounded like a bundle of laughs; it was only later that I found out about the long hours operating a capstan lathe and the fact that the factory was the target of bombs (one bombing raid had taken out one of the main sections). This piece again uses a photograph (printed "straight" this time) on Extravorganza, layered onto pale fabric. The background is a contemporary fabric of the sort used to make overalls and aprons; another contemporary fabric contains the text that describes her life at the time. The poster is used with permission of the Imperial War Museum. The whole thing is quilted very simply, with the addition of the outline of a Spitfire.

In 1926, the year of the General Strike, my grandmother, who is the subject of the August JQ, was 23. She was a miner's daughter, married to a policeman, though there doesn't seem to have been any sense of divided loyalties; though having to police pickets and demonstrations publicly, in private my grandfather sympathised strongly with the miners' cause; he also helped support her sister's family through the hard times of the twenties and thirties.

Unfortunately, I have no early photograph of my grandmother, though I do remember her as very young-looking well into her fifties. The drawing here is a combination of later photographs and my own memories - though not the best drawing I have ever done it did succeed in capturing something of the look she had. The other pictures are all taken from contemporary sources, and again there are some details in print about her life at the time.

The final piece centres on my great-grandmother. My research into family history began with her, and I have included the family record from the 1901 census as well as a tinted photograph from a couple of years earlier, at around the time of her wedding (again printed onto Extravorganza) The census entry means the piece goes back a further generation, including my great-great-grandmother. Both were quilters, and they quilted professionally. My great-grandmother died young, in the flu epidemic of 1919, but her mother went on to quilt for the London market in the 1920s, in common with many other women from her home town of Maesteg in South Wales.

Both census entry and text are printed onto commercially-treated cotton, with hand-painted silk chiffon layered over to give an antique feel. The whole piece is hand-quilted, including a characteristic Welsh spiral pattern (which unfortunately doesn't show too clearly at this scale.

One annoying feature. The commercial fabric I bought came in sheets, and unfotunately none of the sheets in the pack were straight, as a result of which it distorted when being taken off the backing paper, and no amount of gentle tugging could make it straight again - unfortunately I had not more left and it was getting just about to the deadline by then so I had to go with what I'd got. But I shall be exploring similar themes again - and next time I'll get it right, I promise!

International Quilt Challenge

2011-10-09T18:31:00.000+01:00

Partly inspired by seeing the work of the Twelve by Twelve group at Festival of Quilts, I have recently joined an internet challenge group, The International Quilt Challenge. Sixteen of us, including quilt artists from the UK, Ireland, Australia and the US are producing a piece every two months to a theme set by each member in turn. The first theme, chosen by Annabel, was Sunshine and Shadow. For a long time I couldn't decide what to do then, pondering one morning with the deadline imminent, I became fascinated by the shadows of my neighbour's ornamental plum tree on my bedroom curtains, which reminded me of yet another photograph taken by my late husband, of evening shadows on the mesh curtains in the downstairs bay window:

What I found particularly intriguing was the way that the shadows of the leaves in some cases were crisp and in others half-formed and varied in depth/intensity.

The resulting quiltlet was composed intuitively and at speed with no sketchbook input. The ideal base fabric presented itself to me - a piece of silk charmeuse I'd dyed some time earlier, and the shadows were made from layers of silk and polyester organza I'd also dyed. I ironed the organzas onto black mistyfuse, then cut and bonded freely composing as I went. Then finished the composition with free-machine quilting. Though the end result is in my view a bit limited, and has nowhere near the depth of some of the other pieces in the challenge, I do sort of like it...

More challenge pieces

2011-10-05T20:50:00.000+01:00

First updates on work from NWCQ Weekend group - aka Textiles Without Limits: Mary's piece with the couching finished:

Phyl's leaves (well worth enlarging to see the detail, especially the embroidery:

and a clearer photograph of Leah's piece!

and a whole series of small pieces by Julie - showing a wealth of techniques and a wonderful degree of imagination, not to mention artistic ability!

Leeds West Indian Carnival - 44th Year 2012

2011-09-02T20:44:00.001+01:00

Just a few of many photographs!

NWCQ Weekend Group: the Challenge Pieces

2011-08-31T12:11:00.001+01:00

Just over a month ago I put together a series of challenge packs of bits of fabrics thread and so on from my huge hand-dyed stash - an attempt to do something useful with it instead of letting it just sit there. The pack contained a variety of small pieces of fabric - felt/wadding, silk, cotton, satin, scrim, butter muslin, velvet, chiffon/organza, a silk carrier rod, stranded embroidery cotton, ornamental thread, and jute scrim. The challenge - to use some of the contents (plus any of your own that you wanted to add) to make one or more small pieces - these could be sample pieces, the idea being to explore the possibilities.

The results amazed and delighted me, not just for the quality of the work but also on account of the enjoyment people obviously had in producing it.

So here goes - in no particular order (or rather the somewhat arbitrary order in which Blogger uploaded the photographs:

This gem of an abstract composition is by Ann Horton: something of most of the fabrics laid onto felt, embellished with stitching, couched thread and absolutely amazing use of beads which really make this piece (unfortunately the beads have not shown up as well as I'd hoped for which apologies)

Catherine's work - in progress - started with the satin, which suggested stormy sky, together with the stormy sea of the hand-dyed cotton and scrom suggesting foam (if I'd known this fabric could look this good she might not have got it!) I also loved the felt sails with the emboidered crosses. Look forward to seeing this one finished.

Hilary's beautifully appliqued leaves really wowed me and I love the way she's found just the right fabric to use with the fabrics in the pack - and the stitching is wonderful too - again, really looking forward to seeiong this one finished.

Ena Glogowski's Volcano is a really dramatic and exciting pieces. This is the first time Ena had tried anything like this and she has made really effective use of the materials - the silk volcano, the muslin and scrim mountains in the foreground, the fibres, jute scrim and bits of silk in the smoke and fire. A very special piece - and Ena's comment - "You have introduced me to a Real Good Thing" is the icing on the cake.

The following piece - probably the most adventurous of all - is made by Anne Egerton, Ena's daughter. She describes it as a 3D sampler, and once again I'm not sure the photographs do it justice. Part of it is quilted satin made into a sort of cornucopia...

with various other fabrics spilling out in a sort of wild profusion - an effect I love but which I always find difficult to achieve; she's also included ornamental gift ribbon. I especially love the stitching on the satin and the way she's used the jute scrim so effectively. Again, one I look forward to seeing finished.

Helen's work will be familiar to those who have followed the Twelve by Twelve group or seen their book and exhibition at Festival of Quilts. This piece contrasts the mass-production (shown in the comparatively flat machine-stitched background fabric) of textiles with the richness of handwork: and here it really is rich - if you click the picture it will enlarge so you can see the detail. The more I look at this the more I see in it, and I particularly love the asymmetric composition and the way in which the tiny darker pieces of silk carrier-rod bring the whole thing together.

During the meeting Ann Horton made a frame for her piece (hope we get a lesson at some later stage - is there no end to this woman's talents?)

Dina is another member of the group for whom all this peculiar stuff was new, challenging and ultimately exciting and worthwhile. Her piece is a sampler of different materials and techniques depicting the twelve months of the year, beginning with the paper fan ( a fanfare for the coming year, and including april showers made of scrim, chiffon plants, frayed velvet for a November bonfire, a painted apple and winter fires in jute scrim: a really inventive use of the materials. She was also stitching a really beautiful scarf during the meeting.

One of the members of the group got a little stuck (it happens to all of us from time to time) and passed her pack over to Ann Horton, who made this piece for her friend - not only taking on the task of finding ways to use the fabrics effectively but also making something her friend would like - beautiful felt and velvet leaves, padded petals and a variety of fabrics and threads for the flower centre. Lucky friend!

Leah Higgins is the groups convenor and produced a beautifully finished geometric piece: unfortunately the photograph doesn't do it justice. A pity because she's used a whole range of fabrics in a very complex way to produced a beautifully balanced composition. Using simple shapes she's used a whole range of techniques - different kinds of edges, lines and overlays. And being me I love the touch of asymmetry. Another one I could look at for a long time (I hope I'll get a better picture at a future meeting.

Finally to Mary's. Apparently her technique was to spread out the contents of the pack on the background fabric, rearranging until she got something she liked the look of and it really has worked well. I love the contrast of colours and textures and particularly the way the wiggly lines in the jute scrim and the thread with silk carrier-rod contrasts with the straight-sided geometric shapes elsewhere. Another one I wish I'd made.

And there are hopefully more to come.

Pleaase if I have mis-spelt or got names wrong could somebody tell me and I will correct it (I was still a bit train-lagged after going to London the day before!)

Journal Quilts and More Ferns

2011-05-31T20:31:00.000+01:00

The first of my journal quilts this year is inspired by memories of a very difficult period of my life: my husband died eleven years ago and during the first two years after his death I experienced financial hardship, problems with the house which needed repairs I couldn't afford and depression. I also neglected friendships and became rather hermit-like. If the piece above, which I have called Dark, looks grim, it is because it is meant to. I've also deliberately used coarse fabrics - various scrims, including jute scrim, raw edges and silk carrier rods - the black-dyed rods it occurs to me are like huge blocks of something barricading me in from the outside world, which is exactly what happened...

The second phase is where I was beginning to cope - living very abstemiously, paying off debts, decluttering the house and applying for a renovation grant. However, another setback occurred when I wa diagnosed with endometrial cancer. This left me feeling raw and vulnerable, hence the title of the second piece, called Raw:

The third piece is after I had been operated on and had undergone radiotherapy and the work on the house had begun. I was also financially more stable by this time and the title, Mending, describes the time when I was beginning to find things enjoyable again, and becoming less isolated, repairing old friendships and developing new ones. Hence the brighter colours. I've also used materials and techniques which suggest healing - the dyed mesh is fabric used for wound dressings; I've used darning and knots.

The fourth journal quilt is called Light, and describes more or less where I am now, having shed some of the previous burdens: treatment for cancer was successful. The house is still a work in progress, but only in terms of bits needing redecorating - all the serious stuff has been done. And although I apparently earn well below the national average I can live comfortably within my income. I am enjoying life and feel comfortable in my own skin for the first time in a long while.

The final project for this month has been a small quilt I made for a display at the Quilt Museum in York of work from our region of the Quilters Guild. The challenge was to make a long narrow quilt in tints and shades of one colour only. And somehow I found myself visualising ferns: here's the quilt - it will be on display in the Aldwark Gallery for the months of July and August:

Digging for Bait

2011-04-03T14:23:00.000+01:00

Made for the Hannah's Room Beautiful Batiks Challenge, this will be at Uttoxeter Racecourse (Quilts in the Garden) from 15th to 17th April. Based on a photograph taken by my late husband in Whitby some years ago:

Admittedly not my usual style which is probably why I found it so much fun to do (once I got round to it, after much agonising - however the agonising was productive, as it went together like a dream in the end. Quite a challenge for me too in using the commercially-produced fabrics, having to work with colours already there, rather than dyeing the ones I really wanted: learnt a lot this way! And I love the way the patterns echo the fossils that you find in this part of Whitby!

Techniques are straightforward - curved piecing, improvised as I went (but only after trying out various ideas in paint and cut paper which is probably what made it so easy in the end), with the figure cut from a fabric also made from curved strip-piecing. Then overloaded with a variety of free-motion quilted patterns for the backgound, with drawn lines (quilted drawn lines that is) suggesting the figure. Enormous fun to do!

Arthouse Co-op's Sketchbook Project 2011: Part 1 - Grids

2011-02-12T18:27:00.000Z

I finally got to finish my sketchbook about two weeks after the deadline (the organisers said submit it anyway so I have done!) The theme I chose was Grids and Lines, partly because I had begun to explore these in an art class a while back and the whole theme was far more interesting than meets the eye. In this section I'll have stuff about basic grids (though the nearest to a regular grid is the cover (above)

The above piece was done by painting some textured paper with Brusho and cutting out pieces to make an irregular arrangement of windows, behind which is a piece of silk with painted bondaweb (Wonderunder) ironed onto it. The windows idea is explored further in a section of pages, each coloured with a different colour/colours of drawing ink, from which windows of different sizes and colours have been cut out; as you turn each page different patterns and colours emerge - here are two of the double pages:

I am interested in the way in which natural forces can make the patterns in animals and plants diverge from the strictly regular. The two pieces below are an experiment in ways this can happen: the pencil lines were made by holding a pencil at the top, loosely, then moving it over the paper and allowing the minor irregularities you find in most papers to modify the direction of the line (with a little help from my cat, Django, who wanted to join in by giving my hand the occasional nudge).

The second piece was done using a similar method but with a brush and black ink (and no cat): this had the added element of the strength of colour in the ink varying with the speed and pressure of the stroke, and the amount left on the brush. Afterwards I added the contrast of the red acrylic, applied straight from the tube so that the colour would be as flat as possible.

I mentioned natural grids, and one of the things I explored in my art class, through a series of observational drawings, was the way in which you have grids occurring in animal and plant patterns and growth:

One of the most striking is the chequerboard pattern on one of my favourite plants, called snakeshead fritillaries here in the UK (I believe the are called checkered lilies in the US): this is a linocut based on a drawing I made: the first version is printed over a monoprinted background using a printing press:

The second is the same block but burnished by hand on the back of the paper, giving a more textured print, which was then hand-coloured (non-naturalistically) using drawing inks.

More soon ...

Leeds Waterfront and Markets

2011-01-22T22:47:00.001Z

New buildings on Brewery Wharf

Leeds Indoor Market - Victoriana at its height

Dock Street - the old back-to-backs are now trendy new flats

Leeds Centenary Bridge at Brewery Wharf

Old footbridge over the lagoon

Warehouse conversions, new buildings and Leeds Parish Church in the background

View from outdoor market on Sunday

Finally - Journal Quilts October-December

2011-01-04T12:25:00.002Z

The final Contemporary Quilt Journal Quilts for 2010 use fabrics I created in Rayna Gillman's amazing masterclass at Festival of Quilts in August. . The printed fabrics are combined with hand-dyed poplins, mainly an extraordinarily vivid red I dyed some time ago. For me red symbolises life and energy and I have tried to use this symbolism in different ways in each one. Technically, I have also tried two things. The first is to focus on the use of contrast in composition; the second is to use a more minimalist way of free-machine quilting instead of the all over complex patterning I have done in the past.

The September one contains a fern in a layered screenprint containing various elements. I wanted to get the efffect of light through trees and shrubs; those of you who read this blog know that for me ferns are a potent symbol of life and continuity. I've added two hand-dyed fabrics here, using fused applique, and the whole is lesss simplified than the later ones.

The October JQ uses a ready-made thermofax screen over hand-dyed fabric screened in a low-contrast colour in two directions over corrugated cardboard to make a grid. I printed several layers of the pattern to create something a little more complex. I also wanted to get the sense of looking through something to see the seedheads (another image of continuity and new life, now I think of it).

The November JQ uses multiple printings with another ready-made thermofax screen using squares of different sizes over a "failed" screenprinted piece. This seemed to be like a city to me, with the line where the fabric had folded and not been printed suggesting a river. Rivers were once the life-blood of many cities, including Leeds, where I live, bringing in goods and raw materials and taking out manufactured items for trade. Leeds also has many underground streams (one runs down the middle of our back alley and has been known to reappear in exceptionally heavy rain) and the unprinted 'river' under the superimposed thermofax has become one of these, the main river is in the red fabric, and the only quilting other than the rivers is a branching river that has become a plant. This is the least quilting I have ever done on a piece this size, and the jury is still out on whether it needs more.

The December JQ uses fabric which was not my favourite at the time but which has become the one I like best. It is a ghost print, i.e. a second one made without reinking, just using the ink left on the screen after the previous print, which had been made using pieces of sequin waste some of which had been removed before the second printing. The image it made suggested dust, smoke and urban decay and I wanted to contrast this with curves in the red applique; the quilting adds the suggestion of more curves.

I must admit to being fairly pleased with these pieces. My favourite is the last one; my sister-in-law's is the first. I'd love to know which you like best.

And - oh yes - these were the first photographs taken on my new Lumix G10 camera which the cats (in a fit of reckless extravagance) gave me for Christmas, so they should enlarge well! (Though having checked that I've discovered there is such a thing as too clear - apologies for the cat-hairs!)

Bixy R.I.P - a sad end to the year

2011-01-01T12:44:00.002Z

Shortly after my return after spending Christmas with my family, I noticed that Bixy - who had appeared to be full of beans when he got home - was breathing oddly. Initial diagnosis from the vet was possible bronchitis or asthma. There was no improvement from the medication he was given and the next morning his breathing suddenly became a lot worse. I took him back to the vet and he spent the day in an oxygen cage, which helped slightly. Later I took him to Leeds Vet Hospital for overnight care and more meds; however, the radiologist who looked at his x-rays was able to identify severe heart problems: even if he had recovered this time (which was looking increasingly unlikely) the same thing would happen again in a few weeks time, and the best thing seemed to be not to allow him to go on suffering.

He died less than 24 hours after becoming ill, so at least his last illness did not last long.

He was a wonderful cat - not only beautiful but gentle too: he acted as mother to the two younger cats when they came into the family. It was amazing to see such a big cat (even when he was slim he was a huge cat) playing gently with Django when he was a tiny kitten, and grooming and curling up with Pepper within two days of his arrival. One of the last things he did - and he did it even when he was feeling at his worst - was to try to reassure the other two cats by licking them on the head. Oddly, they seemed to know he wasn't coming back even before I did. Since yesterday they have both been very quiet and have wanted to curl up with me whenever possible.

He arrived in November 1998, a young cat who had been taken into the vet having been found with a broken leg. Unable to find his owner they decided to treat him and try to find a new owner. We adopted him. He was described as an "interesting" cat by the vet and we soon discovered that meant trouble!

Ignoring the fact of his broken leg he insisted on plaguing our other cat mercilessly: in order to get enough sleep Hoagy had to hide and the quieter interludes were punctuated by the sound of Bixy yowling for him to come and play (he was called Bix after the musician Bix Biederbecke on account of having a yowl of three and a half octaves with blue notes in addition).

He wandered but not very far: we discovered this when he went missing, was returned by a neighbour whose cellar he'd got into, and was let out by my husband the following day - a series of phone-calls told us exactly what he was doing and where for the rest of the morning.

He loved company, human and feline, and possibly because of his size he did not seem to be aggressive - as far as he was concerned discretion was definitely the better part of valour: hostile behaviour in other cats was something he ran from. A beautiful gentle giant who will be deeply missed.

Quilts finished for FOQ

2010-08-04T20:57:00.000+01:00

This is the one I struggled to finish - not the best shot. It's the quilting that took the time. Made of layered scrim over yellow-green satin (hand-dyed) for the big fern and grey silk overlaid with dyed silk organza for the dark fossil-ferns. I ended up liking the back more than the front, but there you go...

The title is Survival of the Fittest as for me ferns are a potent symbol of survival and renewal (and they are actually great survivors - having been around since the Jurassic era, though the ones in my garden are mere youngsters, having only been around for a hundred years or so.

Next is another fern one - made near the end of 2009, a sort of companion piece to the quilt chosen for Contemporary Quilt's Breakthrough exhibition, which will also feature at Festival of Quilts:

This one's called Nature's Blueprints - with Improvisations and attempts to celebrate the ways in which ferns are not - as many people think - fractals but in fact vary greatly from one frond to the next; this capacity for improvisation is a key factor in their success.

The final quilt of the three (photographed in the car on the way to the P.O. is a double-sided miniatureusing hand-dyed silk organzas and nets over silk-painted pelmet vilene (the shadowy trees in the background deliberately show through from the other side). Unfortunately this had to be finished off rather hurriedly and some of the stitching has suffered as a result (quilting layers of sheers, especially silk nets, is not the easiest job in the world). A pretty piece rather than anything very special but I actually manage to like this one! The trees are drawn from real ones in Wytham Woods, the title is Wildwood - Spring and Autumn and the label is pinned on so it can be easily removed - I understand this will be done before it is shown to the public (I hope)

bad blogger posts again - art and function, family and influences

2010-06-22T14:31:00.002+01:00

First apologies for not posting for such a long time - I've been stitching for Festival of Quilts, decluttering the house, trying to tame the garden and - as a result of the decluttering and the tenth anniversary of my husband's death - reliving bits of the past both bad and good...

So it's been time for reviewing what's happened so far - not a bad thing to do once in a while. Coincidentally, one of the recent discussions in the Contemporary Quilt Yahoo group had me putting together a lot of the pieces this morning. The discussion was sparked by a comment from Helen Conway, a member of the Twelve by Twelve group, during an interview about their work, in which she talks about having to overcome the feeling that creating something not strictly functional was somehow "self-indulgent and wasteful." This led to a lively discussion, which I am responding to here, about how and whether people feel guilt about what they do and the time and money spent on it, and how they overcome that guilt.

My mother grew up in a Welsh mining village, Maesteg, where there was a strong Protestant tradition, with astrong streak of puritanism woven into it. Everone in the family was expected to subscribe to the idea that you were supposed to work hard for what you got. And when times were hard the women made sure they looked after the men's and children's needs before their own, often going without themselves. However, bound up with this was the idea that when work was finished you were allowed to enjoy yourself - hence the rugger, boxing, singing, picnics, walks in the country, decorative crafts, reading for pleasure and so on that also made up their lives. As far as I know no-one felt guilty about enjoying what little leisure time they had.

My mother photographed here shortly before she died

continued this tradition, but with some variations. When not at work (she worked part-time) she and my grandmother, who lived with us, had the housework done by lunchtime. Depending on the wather, the afternoons (which I remember as wonerful times) were spent going for walks, reading, gardening or doing other enjoyable things (though I did not inherit the green fingers); and I grew up believing that this time was something you were entitled to. I am heartily grateful for that: such a belief has stood me in good stead.

My mother also believed, along with my grandmother, in beautifying the house. (I just typed beatifying which would work just as well). Every so often we would arrive home from school to discover total chaos for a couple of days as one or other os the rooms was redecorated. Usually to very good effect - much of my colour sense I learnt from my mother. And the same attitude went for clothes: we couldn't afford much and day-to-day clothes were often hand-me-downs from better-off members of the family, but best clothes were always the best that could be afforded (though a good suit - usually called a "costume" in those days - would have to last a long time) and looking positively stunning in them was a definite plus and definitely not something to feel guilty about (I could never understand the streak of puritanism that dictated that everything had to be ugly).

As far as stitching and artmaking goes I was lucky enough to learn that that was guilt-free too. My mother knitted and embroidered - often what she made could put to practical use but it was far more than that - she knitted complicated fairisles and lacy things that wen well beyond practical, and as the embroidered items were never actually used they cannot be said to have been purely functional by any stretch of the imagination.
And she also encouraged me to paint (largely I think because it gave her a chance to paint herself) and drew the most amazing cartoon characters. As I grew older she was proud of my ability to use a brush and a needle - though when it came to career choices the protestant ethic won out and I never got to go to art school: university plus teaching gave far better options for making a living.

And for myself what impact has it had on me? Well, as a student I had no remorse about wasting anything except food (and the idea it was sinful to waste unless it could be avoided has stuck with me - from time to time I have to clear out the unidentifiable objects from my freezer - it's OK to waste them if you can't remember what they were or when). I wasted time and money with enormous enthusiasm - though I did have one term where I had to dig myself out of an enormous hole, and managed to do so. Once I started work and got married though I suddenly reverted to type: my husband at one point had to persuade me that I should spend money on clothes for myself, and it took a few more years before I could persuade myself that I should spend money on other things I wanted...

My husband was an enormous influence on me: he never considered time or money creating stuff as in any way wasteful. To him it was a positive. Here we are in our youth, together but in separate photographs (note the matching M&S jumpers - sweet eh?):

Perhaps the fact that he was a painter (oil and acrylics rather than gloss and emulsion) had something to do with it. Also he did regard what he did that he wasn't being paid for as more important than his paid work (which consisted of work supplied by an agency which consisted of things like paintings of racehorse, portraits from photographs and so on - including some rather unusual ones like the thirteen head and shoulders drawings of Edward Heath which is probably now mouldering in a basement somewhere in Conservative Party Central Office - difficult to draw without caricaturing, apparently!). When I took up quilting he understood and encouraged - visiting exhibitions, offering constructive criticism and sharing my enthusiasm for interesting fabrics. On the day when he said he could no longer teach me anything about colour I really felt I'd arrived (admittedly up till then his colour advice had usually been "needs some gold" but it is amazing how much a touch of gold, yellow, cream or mustard can do for a quilt or a painting)

But probably the thing that did most to stop me feeling guilty about spending so much on quilting was my health. I started quilting at a time when I was spending hours and hours on my job (teaching in an inner-city school meant I spent hours on preparation and planning - not being a "tough guy" I had to keep the kids entertained and happy as well as educating them) as well as on union and political activities in my spare time (the protestant work ethic in operation with a vengeance). I decided to timetable in an evening class to keep myself sane - two hours a week that would be sacrosanct and just for me; the hand-stitching also kept me alert and productive during all the long boring meetings I had to attend. In a few months I had made my first quilt:

Because I still hung onto the belief that to be any good it had to involve a lot of work I ended up doing an elaborate border pattern (not realising that the unquilted areas would gather up and stick out like a sore thumb) and this is where the Protestant ethic transformed into a new shape.

But first, the health issue - quilting came in time to preserve my sanity but not my physical health. I ended up having to retire from teaching with what was then called ME and is now more often called CFS; even the simplest things left me ill and exhausted, and having pinned so much of my sense of worth on doing things, it was terrible no longer being able to do them. Being unable to knit (my hand-muscles tired too quickly) I turned to hand-stitching, and unable to do that for long I spent longer thinking about and designing what I did. Being lucky enough to win third prize in the Harrogate show (this is way back in the nineties) for a cot quilt gave me a sense of achievement once again. As I got better I was able to use the sewing-machine again, and attend a City and Guilds course. And all this was guilt-free because I felt so good about actually being able to do it, and yes I really got a boost when, a couple of years later I completed my first quilt out of hand-dyed fabrics, to my own design:

This quilt, Caging the Moment, completed in 1996 for an exhibition at Lotherton Hall in Leeds, also won the Quilters Guild cup for use of colour at the Great British Quilt Festival in Harrogate as well as rosettes for bed quilt and use of colour at Quilts UK in 1997-8.

However quilting had still not become guilt-free. I was now burdened with the need to live up to what I had achieved and felt that I had failed dismally every time I made something which wasn't wonderful (which, of course, was most of the time). I had merely ditched one set of "ougt-tos" for another set: I ought to spend ages doing it, conforming to the rules of the quilt police, making it as good as possible (and preferably winning awards whixh has only happened one more, in 1998) in order to be a worthwhile person

Between my husband's death ten years ago, which I partially blamed myself for (I should have been able to affect his lifestyle choices and his inability to cope with his own inner demons I felt at the time - as we all do when someone dies) and four years ago I made nothing, the longest I have gone without creating anything in my life. Recently I have been thinking about that period, feeling I had achieved nothing of note since his death. The reality of course is different - a close friend presented me with a long list including things like digging myself out of near financial ruin, restoring a house that had begun to fall down around my ears, getting through cancer...

But I suppose that the thing that I have really learnt in the last few years, since I started stitching and drawing/painting again is that failure has an enormous amount to contribute to success. And though it sounds cliched, having cancer reminded me I only had one life and I had better make the best of it and avoid as far as possible wasting time in guilt. Though my work is moving towards becoming more simple, with the design process being more often than not a process of paring down rather than cluttering up, I am still battling with a tendency to want to clutter it up with more than it needs, in attempt to justify its existence by ensuring the production stage is as much hard work as possible. So I've still got some distance to go.

Bixy the white cat, who is still on a fairly unsuccessful diet, has just come and spoken sharply to me because his food bowl is empty. Although, unless I have hurt someone or let them down, humans have lost much of their capacity for making me feel guilty, cats are a different matter. So that's it for now.

playing with pastels

2010-04-01T13:52:00.000+01:00

After a number of rather serious posts, I felt this blog needed a bit of leavening.

Having hated pastels for most of my life - too difficult to control, too messy, won't stay where they're put, and so on - I'm now (possibly) a convert, having produced these in my (beginners, in my case very much so) drawing class:

This fish is in the collection of Leeds City Museum - the art class takes place in Leeds Discovery Centre, where all the items not currently on exhibition are kept. This one from a donated Victorian collection. Don't know if these were the fish's original colours - but it had been enhanced with paint. Felt inspired after looking at pastels by Paul Klee. Had lots of fun doing it, and loved the way you could mix blended colours by rubbing in, then add details with neat crayon on the top.

This was a dress in the stores, drawn in the first instance with strips of torn masking-tape - pastel rubbed over and lightly rubbed in in places.

...

This developed from an exercise in drawing negative space (i.e. the shapes between the objects rather than the objects themselves. After doing a couple of drawings in short time-frames (1 min, 5 mins) we did another where we were told to pay special attention to composition. I like cropped images, so decided to produce something which bled off the page. Also drew more loosely, concentrating on getting interesting shapes even if a little bit wonky. Left with two areas of space, decided to fill these in with mixed and blended cool and warm colours - trying to get the same effects as with my dyed fabrics. Enormous fun! I am possibly hooked on pastels now.

V&A Quilts 1700-2010: Part 2 - the stories

2010-03-29T22:48:00.001+01:00

Every quilt has a story. Making a quilt is a meditative process and our thoughts, memories, all the things we experience are stitched into them. Looking at my quilts instantly brings back events during its making. Sometimes the fabrics have memories of their own. But the "hidden histories" and "untold stories" - to quote the subtitle of the V&A exhibition - rarely come to light: usually we keep them to ourselves and do not record them: even present-day artists' statements give only a brief nod to the thoughts and events that went into their making. And most of those who made the older quilts in the exhibition remain anonymous.

However, some quilts do come with something of the stories of their makers. One such is amongst the earliest quilts in the exhibition, a cot-quilt made by Priscilla Redding at the end of the seventeenth century.

We know something of the turbulent events of her and her family's life because she also left behind a diary which tells amongst other things of her father's persecution for his beliefs, and the death of one of her children.

The George III Coverlet (image in previous post) contains a series of applique panels depicting both private and public events from the beginning of the nineteenth century; as V&A curators discovered, through painstaking research, a number of the panels are based on contemporary prints. However the maker has included what is thought to be a self-portrait in a number of the panels, emphasising her role as onloooker.

The Elisabeth Chapman coverlet (above) arrived at the V&A complete with its history: it was made as a wedding coverlet, including a love poem and paper templates cut from love letters. Much of this proved to be myth. The "love poem" turned out to have been written by a dentist who embalmed his wife's body after her death - he continued to receive her dowry only while she remained above ground. The "love letters" turned out to be receipts, copybooks, household ledgers and so on. The quilt also - rather bewilderingly - contains a panel commemorating Wellington's victory at Vittoria.

Some of the most poignant stories are those stitched into the prison quilts. One of the women involved in making the Rajah quilt, stitched on board the transportation ship of that name, had been sentenced to transportation as a seventeen-year-old after stealing at the age of fifteen a length of cloth. Happily she lived to become a pillar of the community in Tasmania, where she settled. But imagine all the sadness and anxieties stitched into that quilt.

One of the women present at the preview had been one of the girls who had made the quilt whilst a civilian prisoner at Changi Prison in Singapore. She told of how the quilt had been made from scavenged scraps, stitched in secret (the guards would have beaten them had they been discovered) using the thread from unpicked clothes.

The most recent of the prison quilts is one made by men at Wandsworth Prison, organised by the charity Fine Cell Work. Each of the hexagons was made by an inmate, choosing his own illustration and/or message:

Another of the contemporary quilts is that made by Quilt Art member Sara Impey:

This beautiful quilt, called Punctuation, contains the phrases never did like puntuation and see you suddenly one day found in a letter amongst her mother's possessions after her death. The letter suggests there was a relationship between her mother and a family friend - the rediscovery of a "hidden history".

But possibly the most poignant of the stories relates to a piece I was unable to take a photograph of (it was behind a glass case), a tiny piece half of a larger piece that had been embroidered with a heart. It comes from the Foundling Museum: this piece was left by a mother with her baby whom she was forced by poverty or some other circumstance to leave at the Foundling Hospital. The other half she kept with her, intending to reclaim her baby when circumstances improved, using the piece she kept to prove that she was the mother. In this case, as in many others, she never did return.

Interestingly, there is a link between this and the final piece in the exhibition, one which I also find profoundly moving, the installation by Tracey Emin (shown in the previous post). There is currently an exhibition of work by Tracey Emin at the Foundling Museum on the theme of lost children.

Quilts 1700-2010 at the V&A: Part One

2010-03-22T12:46:00.000Z

On Wednesday I was one of a number of quilting bloggers invited to a preview of Quilts 1700-2010, the new exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, its first major exhibition of British quilts. It is an extraordinary exhibition and it was wonderful to be able to explore the exhibition thoroughly without the crowds - in fact fellow-blogger Angela - http://fenlandtextiles.blogspot.com - and I go locked in briefly, we were so loathe to leave (though as Angela said "we would have been warm"!)

I had intended to write just a brief and straightforward review of the exhibition but it started getting longer and more complex - the more I though about it, the more the ideas flowed: above all it is an exhibition that makes you think. So I intend to write, in addition to this piece, at least two others about the matters and issues raised by the exhibition. These will appear some time in the course of the next week or so.

This is the first thing you see as you enter the exhibition: valance and hangings in clamshell patchwork made of an assortment of fabrics, including silks and indian chintzes much sought after at the time (between 1730 and 1750). This, like all the early quilts in the exhibition, was a luxury item, something of a status symbol - far from the stereotype of "make do and mend" often stated as the reason for patchwork. It is true, however, that such luxury items are more likely to survive than those in less wealthy households where quilts got used to death. Even so, there were few if any quilts made in the poorest households, where there would not have been the materials or leisure to make them.

The first section - titled The Domestic Landscape - includes quilts for cots, beds and other items, some made by relatively well-to-do women with skill and leisure-time, some made by professional makers. Many look toned-down in colour to us now: in others, with a little imagination you can guess how vivid they must have been before they faded:

...

It is in this section that the first big surprise comes. You are admiring the subtlety of the early quilts when you round a corner and come face to face with this quilt

the work of contemporary art quilter Jo Budd. This piece - one of my favourites by an artist who has long been a favourite of mine - is called Winter/Male and responds to the seasons, the colours of the natural world, but is also a reference to her partner and their love of the land. It has enormous impact partly because of its size and colouring but does not jar against the antique quilts; instead it complements them.

The second section, Private Thoughts, Public Debates, includes a range of quilts, taking the viewer into the noneteenth century. One of the most remarkable, by an unknown maker (as are most of the quilts in this section), is a coverlet with a central applique panel depicting George III reviewing the troops:

...

The body of the quilt, which dates from 1803-5 is made up of a series of intricately pieced blocks, whilst the border is a series of vignettes of scenes from contemporary prints and paintings.

There are a number of exquisitely-pieced quilts in this section, which also includes works by two contemporary quilt artists, Sara Impey's Punctuation and Diana Harrison's Box . Amongst the antique quilts is one of my favourites, a wholecloth "strippy" from Penparc in Wales

The third section, Virtue and Virtuosity, includes quilt intended for display rather than domestic use. One of my favourites was an applique quilt with silhouettes in various fabrics:

There are contemporary quilts by Caron Garfen and Nina Saunders and a range of quilts made by men, including this quilt made of tiny hexagons by a soldier, possibly Francis Bailey in about 1864-77:

British troops in India had time on their hands, and were encouraged to take up stitching: it helped to keep them away from drink and gambling.

One of the most disturbing quilts in the exhibition is the one designed by artist Grayson Perry and completed in 1993, a commentary on the American abortion debate of the 1990s:

Perry's commentaries on the quilt refer both to the way a bed can be a place of danger, and the way in which hard-line anti-abortionists committed acts of violence: this left me wondering whether a work of art with a "message" should need a commentary, given the quilt, with its title, could be read otherwise. Having looked at it a number of times, however, the ambiguity can be seen as important...

The section on Making a Living had a particular impact for me, in that my great grandmother and her mother made wholecloth quilts for sale in Maesteg in South Wales. This section includes work produced by professional quilters in Northumberland, South Wales and Northern Ireland, and also includes work by artists Pauline Burbudge (one of her beautiful Applecross quilts) and Susan Stockwell - a commentary of the Chnese economy pieced from new and used banknotes. Another piece. produced by final-year textile student Kirsty Fenton, Threaded Wrists is a powerful commentary on poverty and childhood. Another of my favourites, by quilt artist Jane Whiteley (originally from the UK but now living in Australia), is Sides to the Middle, Fingers to the Bone, which refers to the "make do and mend" ethos of post-war Briteain:

The final section of the exhibition is an extremely powerful one. Called Meeting the Past, it includes quilts which celebrate major life-events and quilts as memorials.

One of the latter, by Jennifer Vickers, is made of stitched squares of paper, mostly plain, but some with tiny photographs. Each square represents someone who died during the Second Iraq War; the photographs are those of military personnel, the plain squares represent civilian deaths.

Three prison quilts stand out: one made in collaboration with Fine Cell Work by inmates of Wandsworth Prison: each of the prisoners involved stitched an image/message on a hexagon - some serious, some humorous, provide a unique expression of what prison life is like. The patchwork coverlet made by the Changi Prison Girl Guide Group (one of whom was actually present at the preview) had to be stitched in secret, away from the eyes of the guards, from bits of prison uniform (surreptitiously shortened by tiny amounts) and scraps of any fabrics they could find. The third of the prison quilts is to my mind the most remarkable - the Rajah Quilt, made in 1841 by women convicts on a prison ship bound for Tasmania, a huge quilt made using meterials donated by an organisation started by social reformer Elizabeth Fry. This is the first time this quilt has been shown outside the National Museum of Australia.

The exhibition ends as it began, with a four-poster bed: this time To Meet My Past by artist Tracey Emin. The first impression is of a luxurious rather beautiful bed:

When you look closer you see the appliqued and embroidered messages relating to periods of pain and despair in her life: one reads "I can't believe I used to be afrad of ghosts".

The exhibition continues until 4th July. In addition to the hudge range of exhibits, it is beautifully arranged and lit, with exhibits supported with a variety of documentary material. Sue Prichard, the curator, and her team have done a wonderful job. For anyone in London this spring/summer it is not to be missed.

PLEASE NOTE
The majority of the images in this post - used with permission - are those of the V and A and are their copyright.

breakfast with the herons and other adventures

2010-03-13T20:25:00.000Z

A couple of weeks ago I visited Llangollen to see the Quiltfest exhibition organised by Val Shields. Unfortunately part of the exhibition was closed on the afternoon I arrived: the museum volunteer had had to leave early and I was unable to see the Effie Galletly and Liesbeth Williams exhibitions.

However, my overnight stay in Llangollen was enhanced by discovering that fellow exhibitor and Contempoarary Quilt member Ros Crouch was also staying at the Royal Hotel - we spent a pleasant time over a very good chinese meal. Also the following morning by enjoying an excellent breakfast whilst watching the herons on the River Dee - a rare treat (the picture above is unfortunately not by me but by JMW Turner - one of the bird studies currently on exhibition in Leeds City Art Gallery.

The next day I spent at the Breakthrough exhibition, a selected exhibition of work by members of Contemporary Quilt, a subgroup of the Quilters Guild of the British Isles. I did set the machine up as I was supposed to be demonstrating but in fact ended up doing much more talking than sewing. The two stewards from Gresford Quilters, Jane and Jill (hope I have the names and the spellings right) were excellent company and though we didn't have masses of visitors, it being mid-week with heavy snow the night before, there were not only a number of interested quilters but also a number of local artists and art-students all of whom were really impressed by the quality of the art-work and the way it was presented - praise is due to Val Shields, the organiser, and to Hilary Gooding, exhibitions officer for CQ.

I haven't included any detailed photographs of the quilts as I didn't want to breach any copyright here, but here's a photo of stewards (nearest the camera) plus Ros (furthest away facing) which gives you a flavour of part of the exhibition and the beautiful building it was housed in:

If you have a chance to see this exhibit it will be well worth it: the artwork is amazing - I'm not easily impressed but I was amazed at the quality and ended up wondering how I got selected (but then as Ros put it "Don't we all feel like that about our own work?") One of the features that visitors particularly enjoyed was a folder of swatches, one for each quilt, showing the techniques used, which could be examined more closely and handled, coupled with statements from each artist.

The exhibition itself was in the most wonderful setting, in the grounds of Plas Newydd, where the Ladies of Llangollen - two women who had fled unwelcome arranged marriages - set up home and entertained the great and the good of their day, including Lord Byron (who, incidentally also stayed at the Royal Hotel - wonder if he contemplated the herons over his breakfast?).

The other half of the Breakthrough exhibition can be see at the Quilt Museum in York from March 26th, and the whole exhibition will be on display at the Festival of Quilts at Birmingham NEC in August

Breakthrough exhibition: Spring Ferns

2010-02-07T14:32:00.001Z

Quiltfest - http://www.quiltfest.org.uk/ - is taking place on Llangollen during the month of February. There are three major exhibitions - Effie Galletly with a new exhibition A Sense of Place, works by Liesbeth Williams, and selected quilts by members of the Contemporary Quilt Group (a specialist sub-group of The Quilters Guild of the British Isles) in an exhibition called Breakthrough. Quiltfest is an annual event and is known for the quality of its exhibitions and this year is no exception - so if you can get to Llangollen this month you'll be in for a treat.

One of the quilts selected is by me! Yes! Really! I have seen photographs of the exhibition and there are really amazing quilts in it, many by well-known quilters: I am proud (and excited) to be in such august company.

My quilt is one of my fern pieces. It's based on the ferns that have grown in my garden for the last century, but every year seems like new when they start to grow - and for me they are potent symbols of growth and survival. In terms of my development as an artist they also represent a personal breakthrough in that the ferns are all portraits developed from drawings (apart that is from the screenprinted ferns which remind me of the ghosts of the previous year's ferns that hang around till spring):

The fabric for the quilt is hand-dyed (the background had to be overdyed to get the depth of colour I wanted). The "ghost-ferns" were screenprinted with thickened dye, using a real fern as a mask. I've been experimenting with ways of attaching applique by machine: in this case I used a tiny zigzag with a line of straight-stitch either side (if I'm going to use something that will show I prefer to make a feature of it). I've couched hand-dyed thread (six strands of stranded embroidery cotton) round the screen-printed panels. The same thread is also used to outline the other fernlets (the ones that haven't yet grown). The whole wuilt is free-machine quilted (I have been practising this and while I'm not yet perfect I have come on!) with Oliver Twists hand-dyed threads.

"There really is no such thing as Art"

2010-01-30T00:48:00.001Z

This is the opening sentence of the late Sir Ernst Gombrich's Story of Art. For those of you looking for an intelligent introduction to pre twentieth century Western Art you could do no better. Not just an art history but a book which gives enormous insight into the ways art has been made in the past. Because Ernst Gombrich was one of the good guys amongst art historians who, instead of relying on personal prejudice, as many so-called art historians of his generation did - you know, the sort that wrote about art with a capital "Ah" - he took the trouble to do his research - not only from books and documents but also by discussions with practising artists.

So yes, you may be bewildered, by this as an opening sentence: read on, and - especially if you take note of the use of upper- and lower-case letters - all will become clear:

There really is no such thing as Art. There are only artists. Once these were men who took coloured earth and roughed out the forms of a bison on the wall of a cave; today some buy their paints, and design posters for the hoardings; they did and do many other things. There is no harm in calling all these activities art as long as we keep in mind that such a word may mean very different things in different times and places, and as long as we realise that Art with a capital A has no existence. For Art with a capital A has come to be something of a bogey and a fetish. You may crush an artist by telling him that what he has just done may be quite good in its own way, only it is not 'Art'. And you may confound anyone enjoying a picture by declaring that what he liked in it was not the Art but something different.

The subject of "what is art?" or, as it sometimes phrased "art or craft" is one guaranteed to stir up a hornet's nest in several of the discussion groups I subscribe to. (I once wrote my own spoof - but broadly accurate - response to one such discussion which you will find on the sidebar under A Brief History of Western Art).
And so far no-one, to my mind, has come up with a satisfactory answer. In the search for the absolute, as with the title character in Moby Dick, the whale is always white, or has a kink in its tail, or some other element that distinguishes it from being just a whale, even if that is what it actually is; just as an Artist is an Artist because she or he knows how to use colour, or makes things come to life, or knows about the Elements and Principles of Design, or conveys Important Meanings.

In the Vermeer above, the artist does know how to use colour, shape, line, rhythm, balance, contrast, harmony and all the rest of it; he knows how to produce a likeness. He was an expert at this and at many other facets of his craft: he has served his apprenticeship and learnt how to do these things. But any professional at that time could have done as much - and I'm sure we can all think of artists then and since who were intensely skilful, who had learnt their craft, but whose work has no more impact than having us admire their technique. What makes this painting special, however, is not these things but the effect it has on the viewer, the way it involves us - and when it comes down to it that is the only thing that matters: that is what I see as the "meaning" of the painting. Whilst I'm sure Vermeer enjoyed his worldly success, and like just like every other artist in history needed to be rewarded for his work, provided that these things happened I'm sure he was not concerned about whether he was described as an artist or a craftsperson. (The two words anyway had the same original meaning, both meaning skill, one derived from Norman French, the other from Anglo-Saxon).

Last Autumn I attended a talk at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park given by Peter Randall-Page (see his work above) who was asked whether he considered himself an artist or a craftsperson. His response was "I just make things" - in other words the distinction was irrelevant for him.

Whilst I understand the need people have to feel that what they do is "special", and - especially for those marketing their work - to have what they do considered as being on a par with other forms of visual art (and galleries in this country are possibly even further behind than those in the US in this respect) I do feel there is a sort of continuum: there is certainly artistry in the making of many traditional quilts, and speaking personally I cannot see a specific point where craft ends and art begins: they are part and parcel of the same thing. The problem in our society is not what things are but how they are valued. I'm happy to think of myself simply as a "maker" - though I would prefer to be called an artist than a craftsperson (I'm only human after all) I don't need a label to get myself to do what I do.

What Gombrich does in the introduction to his book is to make a plea for the democratisation of art as something you don't have to be a member of the privileged classes or to speak a special language in order to enjoy. Let's try to keep to that aim shall we?

the quilts I made for Christmas (well almost!)

2010-01-17T15:53:00.000Z

For Christmas last year I made a quilt for my brother and sister-in-law. This was much admired, has been used and washed and still looks pretty good (better, in fact, as I didn't pre-shrink the cotton wadding and it now has a lovely texture) even if I do say so myself. My two twenty-something nephews loved it:: the elder,Carl, and his girlfriend Elise wanted to commission me to make one for them too; the younger, Gareth, said it was the "dog's b*******s" which is possibly the most unusual compliment on a quilt I've had. Faced with such enthusiasm, how could I resist? I'd always iutended to make them quilts anyway - just waiting for the right time.

The quilts didn't quite make it in time for Christmas: Gareth's was part quilted and bound so I was at least able to present him with it on Christmas morning, I reminded him of his previous compliment and said my provisional name was "The D's Bs" (I move in much politer circles than he does); his reply - "no, this one's The Mutts N**ts" and so that is what it will be called:

This is just part of the quilt: the detail tends to get lost in the larger photograph: individual blocks are made up of four chevron log cabins with different sized centres with the strips deliberately misaligned:

The fabrics come from across the globe, with fabrics from Zimbabwe (courtesy of Magie Relph).Gareth has a liking for interesting textiles so I thought these would add to his collection. This quilt was real fun to make and went together like a dream: I have added more quilting but there is still a little more to do.

Carl and Elise's quilt was also fun to make, and I was able to use a lot of the Kaffe Fassett fabrics I love for this one. Originally I had planned to use the fabrics I bought from Aussie Dreams designed by Australian aboriginal designers (Elise is Australian), but I couldn't get theme to fit into the agreed colour scheme (sunset colours) so the next gift might have to be a wallhanging!

Of course Django had to get in on the act - he can't resist a camera - or a quilt! The individual blocks are four-patch stars which make up a secondary design when they are put together.

The current title for the quilt is Southern Star (given the antipodean connection). They haven't seen it yet - they spent Christmas in Australia at Elise's family home in the Blue Mountains where I trust Carl managed to cope with his spider phobia and Elise's nephews (and I'm still waiting for news of how they reacted to being given England cricket shirts for Christmas presents!). They also spent last week in tropical Thailand and missed all that lovely snow - it's a hard life but someone has to do it.

If you've got round to reading this, Carl and Elise, welcome home and hope you like the quilt!

Ferns

2010-01-10T13:34:00.003Z

My interest in nature's patterns and observation of the ferns in my garden have led to a deep fascination with these amazing plants. My ferns, like many others in the neighbourhood, have probably been growing there since soon after the houses were built at the beginning of the twentieth century, but they are mere youngsters compared with the history of ferns in gerneral, which have been around since the Jurassic period. Good job I like them, as they are not only great survivors but are almost impossible to get rid of.

It started with observational drawings I did last spring, including these two:

For me drawing is not only an intriguing activity which lights up the artist in me but is also a process of observation and discovery sparking questions and a need to know who what and why (I've always felt art and science were closely interlinked and not the separate disciplines many people seem to assume). One of the first things I observed was how irregular ferns are: a surprise because, like many others who had been fascinated by fractals some years ago, I had thought that ferns were among the most regularly-patterned of plants. Looking more closely at the growth-patterns of the Male Ferns (the species name) in the following months I discovered a huge degree of variation from the "blueprint" pattern: individual leaves or groups of leaves missing or stubby, for example, especially where they grow near a solid object like a wall or are crowded together (maybe because there's no point in expending energy in growing leaves that have no chance of prospering? I haven't yet found an answer to that question but I'm still looking).

The next drawings took me from naturalistic to stylised:

(apologies for the roughness of these sketches but they are rough notes rather than finished drawings)

I also produced a series of screenrpinted fabric pieces using ferns, hand-dyed fabrics and thickened dyes - here are two examples:

I used these in two quilts: the first is called Nature's Blueprints - and Improvisations. The ferns here are based on actual ferns in my garden. It uses the printed panels, my hand-dyed fabrics and machine applique and quilting. I have not shown it here as I may want to enter it for a show. There is also a slightly smaller quilt in this series, which I will not show here as it has been selected for the Contemporary Quilt Breakthrough exhibition at Quiltfest in Llangollen next month, so I will not be showing it on my blog until after that exhibition opens.

Then followed some linocuts I did for my printmaking class at Leeds Art college - these are the first two in the series. The first was intended to be the closest to naturalistic, though it has a strong degree of stylisation. The print is hand-coloured using watercolour pencils. The second is strongly influenced by Peter Randall-Page's linocuts (see previous posting)

During this time I was also producing a series of Journal Quilts for the Contemporary Quilt Group's challenge: the idea was to begin naturalistically and become increasingly abstract. The first, the September JQ, used a print made by pressing one of the ferns used for screen-prints onto fabric, then free-machine quilting the image produced. The October journal quilt uses the stylisation and techniques used in the larger quilts.

November's JQ, Fuzzy Fern, uses lines rather than shapes and is made by cutting back layers of scrim:

Whilst the last one December's JQ, which I have called Electric Fern because it reminded me of a neon sign, simply focusses on the basic ferny line, to me essence of fern:

I had intended to give ferns a rest after this, but then I went for a walk in Wytham Woods and saw this clump of ferns growing on a tree:

which set me off thinking again...

Peter Randall-Page at Yorkshire Sculpture Park

2009-10-23T20:52:00.004+01:00

I'm lucky enough to live half an hour's easy drive from the Yorkshire Sculpture Park, to my mind the finest sculpture "gallery" in the UK. This Autumn sees a major exhibition of the work of Peter Randall-Page, a UK sculptor whose work explores natural patterns (probably one of his most famous works being the his sculpture Seed at the Eden Project in Cornwall.

The majority of his sculptures are in indoor galleries and therefore I could not get photographs or - however tempting - touch them (some of the stone used such as the limestone is fragile enough to be damaged by the touch of numerous human hands). The bronze above is one of a series and is called Bronze Dreaming Stone. The sculpture below, definitely one of my favourites, is Secret Life. One of the fascinating things about it is the way in it changes with the effect of light.

I've been fascinated by nature's patterns for some time now and had decided, even before seeing this exhibition to make them the focus of my textile work for the moment so this exhibition was very timely for me. Luckily it's on for a couple of months yet so I shall have chance of several revisits. Highly recommended if you get the chance (only a mile off Junction 38 of the M1 and well worth the detour - you can also avoid motorway services and have a good meal in the Visitor Centre restaurant).

If you can't get to Yorkshire Sculpture Park you can see the sculptures (plus drawings and prints that are also on exhibition there) on http://www.peterrandall-page.com

Blog Action Day: Great Tits, Tulips and Funny Weather

2009-10-15T21:31:00.004+01:00

What do these three things have in common? They all give us reminders that climate change is here with us now, and accelerating rapidly - not something we can afford to forget about since it'll be so long coming that we can be sure it won't affect us.

The Wytham Woods Great Tit population is monitored for climate change research: nesting times have been getting earlier year on year. Planting tulip bulbs at the traditional time of year results in the pushing their heads up just in time to be killed off by the first frosts so gardeners are having to plant later, and in this country snow has become such a rarity that a heavy snowfall last year brought many areas to a standstill, including the capital city!

So what can we do about it. Well one of the things is to try to influence those in power: if climate change were a top election issue, changes really would start to happen - it's getting there in this country but a bigger push wouldn't harm. Influencing those outside the political arena too would be useful: for example persuading those in charge of public transport facilities to improve services to encourage people to use them instead of getting in their cars.

And there's lots of opportunity to influence those in the retail trade: they're beginning to dawdle in the right direction, but they need to up the speed. Sending stuff twice round the world before it reaches the shelves needs to be seen as no longer the sensible option in business terms.

As individuals there's a lot we can do. Maybe leaving the car behind for journeys within walking distance for a start (we'd all be a lot fitter; I've been doing this for a while now and have been rewarded with getting several inches thinner and a lot healthier. Asking for local produce in the shops, not using plastic carrier bags, recycling, minimising waste and so on. Inidivdually it may not seem like much: multipled by the whole population it would make a vast difference.

Journal Quilts May - August

2009-09-11T09:34:00.004+01:00

This series of four continues the steps theme by celebrating journeys. The first, a walk through Bolton Abbey Woods in May. There's a shelter on a path that takes you on a steep walk up through the woods and while you eat your lunch and draw your trees you look down on the view on which the first journal quilt is based.

I've called it May with its Light Behaving from one of my favourite W.H.Auden poems. It's made by first stitching the outline shape of the river onto the wadding, then cutting it back. I did this in hand-dyed viscose satin, two layers, one river-coloured, one green; flipped up the green to cut away the grey (avoids having two layers of thick fabric), then used reverse applique scissors (also called lace scissors) and carefully cut away the green where the river should be. Then laid pale viscose organza over the river, free-motioned outlines of the shapes and cut this back, and did the same with green hand-dyed silk-metallic organza over the trees. Finally had lots of fun with free-machine quilting, stitching very closely over the exposed edges to secure them (usually I use granite stitch (small overlapping circles) to do this, but there are other options). And isntead of binding I've couched down some metallic/viscose hand-dyed chainette.

The second is inspired by a view I had to reconstruct from memory. Driving to Contemporary Quilt Summer School I decided to take the scenic route through the Forest of Bowland; after taking a wrong turning it became even more scenic (I knew I was in the right direction so I wasn't actually lost, though there was a hairy moment when a signpost had got turned round).
I rounded a corner and suddenly came across this view - nowhere to park up and not really safe to stop on narrow winding roads so I had to simply drive slowly and commit it to memory. It was chiefly the colours, the golden field full of buttercups, the green hedges, the blue hills beyond. The whole area is the essence of The Shire in The Lord of the Rings. Tolkein knew the area well and used local place-names from this area, so I've called it Not All Who Wander Are Lost.

Hand-dyed silk habotai and taffeta, overlaid with gold chiffon (field) and blue (hills) organza, then free-machine stitched. For the binding I cut the rolled hem off the gold chiffon scarf I'd used, rolled in the raw edge and couched it down.

I had planned to combine a visit to my brother with Festival of Quilts, but in the end FOQ won out as I thought if I tried to do both I'd miss out be not being able to give either my full attention. So after making the decision in July I used a remembered walk from Christmas and imagined what the Dead Tree Walking would have looked like with late summer woodland colours behind.

More silk hand-dyed habotai with hand-dyed silk charmeuse fused on, and the whole thing FMQd.

Another walk in Strid Woods was the inspiration for my August journal quilt. A favourite place. The colours came from a photograph my late husband had taken of the Strid many moons ago at this time of year. This is the one I had most fun making. It's built up in layers. Silk charmeuse, viscose satin, silk habotai as a base layer, then built up in snippets and layers of silk organza, with some layers being partially cut back, with a layer of undyed white organza for the frothing water: a combination of onlay, reverse and shadow applique. The final layer was the stitching, added a bit at a time (I have a tendency to overdo it). I loved doing this, and though I have reservations about some aspects of it (this is normal for us all, right?) I really like the finished piece. Though I didn't enjoy binding it in velvet, it did work better than any other fabric for binding.

This one could end up being the first in a series. Now on to September and beyond...

Wildwood - final part:

2009-09-07T09:04:00.009+01:00

The final episode begins with the second set of trees. First the autumn trees, then the spring ones:

Next at the front is the fallow deer one of the three kinds of deer in Wytham Woods (the others are roe and muntjac) A deer-fence limits them to part of the wood only, to minimise damage to trees.

On the other side leaves and a scarab.

Next the toad - I kept him safe, well away from the grass-snake:

I'd originally intended to use bracket fungus as the reverse, but whatever I did to it it just looked toad-shaped. Surprisingly, the mole worked much better:

The back of this section begins with the dragonfly. I remember once walking along the bottom path on a hot summer day with thunder in the air being followed by a huge emperor butterfly which kept pace for about half a mile. My mother used to be scared of them, as are many people, but they are in fact completely harmless.

On the reverse a moth. It started as a copper underwing but bits got added ... you know how it is!

Last in this section is the tawny owl, on the back of which is a Daubenton's bat (they're the ones with short ears)

And finally as the endpiece we have, appropriately I thought, a hibernating common dormouse: it took a number of goes to get this right:

With, on the reverse, a brimstone butterfly, one of the earliest of butterflies to fly in the year: hence I've paired it with primroses.

Wildwood Part Two

2009-09-03T23:32:00.008+01:00

To continue: there are two double sided pages that serve as links between the groups of four: Above and below are the first of these, one with spring and one with autumn colours:

The next group of four begins with, on the front, great tits. The great tit colony in Wytham Woods is the focus of climate change research, for example in recording earlier and earlier nesting times.

and the green woodpecker on the reverse of the page is one of my favourites (though more often to be found looking for food on the ground than on tree barks, so this pose is a bit of artistic licence.

Next the odd one out, the ghost orchid. I have seen one but not in these woods. When, as little more than a child, I saw a whole group of them and discovered from my plant book that they were rare I was really excited. Didn't know then that even at that time they were so rare that people got really excited and reported their findings.

On the reverse are bluebells from my favourite time of year in the woods. Doing this page was a challenge, but eventually I traced each drawing onto opposire sides of a piece of tracing paper with different colour pencils, adjusted as much as I could then cut out the bits where there was no plant, which has actually worked out well and has provided each with an interesting background. Could have saved a lot of problems if I'd thought of this approach earlier. If you look closely you will see that I had to use a pale pink in order to get the highlights on the bluebells to come out the right colour - another example of what's there not being what you expect to see!

The back pages begin with the plantains - not specifically a woodland plant but you do get them, especially where the paths and tracks adjoin fields.

And on the other side, for spring, I have ramson buds. Otherwise known as wild garlic. These I drew from life in Strid Woods (couldn't get to Wytham that month!)

And the final page of this quartet begins with the crows, witty birds and amongst my favourites, here shown in tender domestic mode. I adapted this from a photograph on the Arkive site - http://www.arkive.org - by the late Maurice Tibbles, including details of my own drawings of crows from the stuffed specimens in Leeds City Museum's Development Centre:

And on the reverse a violet ground-beetle (more violet than is usual in real life) with all sorts of oddments including toadstools, leaves and a centipede:

One more instalment to come!

Wildwood - Part One

2009-09-01T22:31:00.010+01:00

It seems very self-indulgent showing both sides of all sixteen book pages' but people have asked to see them so here goes! To begin at the beginning, with the title page. It was originally going to be much grimmer (the working subtitle was A Story of Life and Death) but I chickened out of showing things like crows feeding on animal carcases though I am annoyed with myself about this as it would have been more honest to have done so, and would have developed a more interesting theme, i.e. the way in which death for one kind of life-form becomes life for another.

Next to the titl-page comes the fox, in his uncorrected state (I did later elongate the front leg out of the picture so it got to be back in proportion.

And on the reverse, what else but foxgloves! All the pages are see-through (shapes cut in painted pelmet vilene with a scalpel; then covered in hand-dyed silk organza - for each side; then stitched and sandwiched together with dyed silk net in the middle, and finally quilted, the organza cut back in places so that the light could come through in a similar way to the dappled light in woodland). Designing double-sided pages proved challenging: this is one of the more successful ones.

The next page in the middle bit shows a squirrel: not one of the most successful pictures (though as my art teacher pointed out you can see its a squirrel:

backed by a stag beetle, one of the pages I like best:

On the back section is a grass-snake (not normally associated with woodland but my dog once found one curling itself round his hind leg after running into some undergrowth, and you do still find them in the more open bits of Wytham Woods).

with brambles on the reverse: they do tend to throw out suckers which makes them appear to grow in loops and coils - and I was relieved, after a great deal of trial and error, to find something woodlandy that would go on the back of a snake!

And the last page of this set of four has snails...

and on the reverse badgers. They are fat because they are from the badger colony adopted by my sister-in-law's father who feeds them on suitable left-overs. Once has was asked to stop feeding them while Oxford Wildlife Films (some years ago) could make a documentary about the effects of drought on the Wytham badgers; they then phoned and asked him to come back - the badgers refused to come out and be filmed until Sid reappeared with food and water...

I suppose that's the badger equivalent of Equity rates!

Next instalment coming soon.

Back from Festival of Quilts

2009-08-31T10:28:00.005+01:00

Back home from Festival of Quilts - very enjoyable but ill afterwards - I tend to forget that the CFS (Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, what used to be called ME) I once suffered very badly from never actually goes away completely and got hit bad this time. Very much worth it though. Not only some amazing competition quilts and other pieces but also a wealth of exhibitions, and a chance to meet up with friends old new and virtual! Finally got to meet Maggie(http://stitchingwithschnauzerandsiamese.blogspot.com/), together with Kath Danswan (http://stitchingswan.blogspot.com/), and Hippopip (http://hippopip.blogspot.com/), plus renewing acquaintance with fellow Contemporary Quilt members Margaret (http://margaret-cooter.blogspot.com/), Mai-Britt (http://www.linen-and-silk.com/) who won the miniature section with a beautiful art-quilt, and a judges choice with an equally gorgeous larger quilt, and - briefly - Marion (http://artmixter.blogspot.com/) and other margaret (http://magsramsay.blogspot.com/) whose quilt in the Guilds Challenge section should have won a prize but didn't. Not forgetting of course Julie (http://mixed-media-jem.blogspot.com/) who I spent a really good evening with - part of it hilariously driving round Birmingham getting lost!

I did spend some of the time on various stands. For three of them it meant a chance to sit down and talk to people. For the fourth, not a chance to sit down or relax - the tombola was amazingly busy (who knew quilters had such a worrying gambling addiction?) and hugely successful, taking £9,800 or so; enormous fun to take part in as well.

Apart from that I spent some time on the Contemporary Quilt stand - very relaxing as I was surrounded by people who knew a lot more about CQ than I did ; SAQA - Studio Arts Quilt Association - http://www.saqa.com/ -(this being the second SAQA exhibition I've stewarded I felt like an old hand and didn't have to make too much of an effort to "sell" the organisation seeing as the exhibition was superb - a number of visitors thought it was the best in the show); and last but not least, SDA (the Surface Design Association) - http://www.surfacedesign.org/

where we managed to up European and UK membership significantly - thanks to the organisation and selling skills of Lindsey Lang, the UK rep.

People have been asking to see my entry so here goes. First a bit of a grumble. FOQ organisers had asked for detailed hanging instructions so I obliged by giving details of the size and height of stand needed (and sent in a life-sized model to boot) only to have these details ignored so that my effort suffered by being displayed in a way I had specifically asked for it not to be at coffee-table height and with very poor lighting. I'm sure it made no difference to the overall result - the winners in this section were amazing - I'd just have liked - after all that work - for it to be displayed in such a way that people could actually have seen it as it should look. So here's a ccouple of photos (above - seeing as blogger won't let me drag them to anywhere else on the page) taken at home: I was hoping to get a better one at the show but the poor lighting prevented that.

Just a taste

2009-07-27T23:41:00.004+01:00

Just a small taste of this year's entry for Festival of Quilts, and artists book based on the varied wildlife found in English woodland, partly based on Wytham woods where I grew up. Many of the pages remind me of specific incidents - the dragonfly which followed me one summer afternoon, the grass-snake which found itself wound round my dog's hindleg. The stag-beetle, above, used to terrify me when I was little, it looked so ferocious. The ghost-orchid, below, which is now extremely rare, is a flower I once saw during my career as an amateur botanist - not in Wytham woods but elsewhere - I did not know at the time how rare it was but even at that stage I knew to content myself with looking and then move on...

The pieces were made first by cutting designs from silk-painted pelmet vilene (timtex), one for each side of the page (producing double-sided designs was an enormous challenge but I managed sixteen of them). I used a scalpel for this - the first time I have done so, and the perfect tool for intricate cutting - providing you take great care. Then each page side was covered in hand-dyed silk organza (one of my favourite fabrics - it takes dye beautifully) and the design was stitched on: with the more intricate designs I drew it onto tracing paper and stitched from the back to outline the design accurately, taking out the paper before continuing. Next the two sides of the page were sandwiched together with a piece of hand-dyed silk tulle net as a "filling", and then quilted through all layers before being finished off with satin stitch. Finally I cut back some of the organza to reveal the net underneath. Using translucent fabrics means that the light shines through the pages which is meant to imitate the way you get patches of light shining through the woods.

That's why I've been so quiet recently!

Harvey and John update

2009-07-23T08:43:00.004+01:00

By the time the programme ended I was already getting asked for information so here goes:
website is: http://www.freewebs.com/vanvon
phone: 01859 530 485
address: 1 Lickisto, Isle of Harris HS3 3EL

I was prepared to be impressed but found it even more impressive than I expected it to be - and love the idea of secluded campsite pitches coupled with good-quality facilities. They deserve to be successful and I'm sure they will be.

Harvey and John on t'telly

2009-07-21T13:54:00.003+01:00

From here...

To here...

Harvey and John, my friends who left Leeds to move to the Isle of Harris for a different kind of life are on television tomorrow (Wednesday) night - UK television programme Build a New Life in the Country on Channel 5 at 8 p.m., repeated on Thursday at 8 p.m. on Fiver. I've just watched the programme on http://demand.five.tv/Series.aspx?seriesBaseName=BuildANewLifeInTheCountry

and even without knowing Harvey and John I think I would have found it riveting to watch them working ro restore the buildings and prepare to open a campsite business on thirteen acres of land through sheer determination and on a tiny budget all done with their usual wit and good humour. For those of you not in the UK you can see the programme on the link above.

the one that didn't make it...

2009-07-08T19:24:00.004+01:00

The reason I've been so quiet recently is that I've been making a project for Festival of Quilts. Never one to shirk a challenge, I've been making an artists book with double-sided see-through pages (one of my neighbours said "Isn't that ... sort of ... difficult...?" which has to be the understatement of the year) using silk organza, silk tulle net and pelmet vilene all hand-dyed/hand-painted. It has been a lengthy process and a testing one and I am now looking forward to getting it finished so I can get on with something else (like normal life perhaps?).

During the process there have been some cast-offs and casualties. The moth above is definitely not a cast-off (apologies for the inadequacies of the photograph though), merely the other side of something that really did not work, namely a dragonfly that looked as if it might sink if it ever managed to launch itself. The metallic thread seemed like a good idea at the time; by the time I finally admitted it wasn't the two halves of the page had been sewn together, and ditching the dragonfly meant I had to - very reluctantly - give up on the moth as well.

wet

2009-05-21T16:05:00.004+01:00

Django came in out of the garden this morning very very wet and looking extremely sorry for himself - and couldn't understand why I was not exactly delighted when he insisted he needed a cuddle. I did point out that there had been grey clouds overhead but he had still insisted on going out but he still insisted it was my fault, the way cats do.

Luckily the other cats were kinder to him. Here's Pepper checking he's OK (though the concern did not extend to letting him share his footstool in front of the fire):

and Bixy helped him to lick himself dry.

Then tried to hypnotise me into thinking that he'd worked so hard he deserved a second breakfast. I ask you, does he look like a starving cat?

As you'll have gathered, I haven't much to blog about at the moment. Most of my time is taken up with either decluttering the house or with a project for Festival of Quilts which I want to keep under wraps for the moment. And the weather is too awful - rain and hailstorms - to go for any interesting walks.

Bixy says I should mention that the above photograph is cruelly unflattering and he is losing weight (admittedly at a rate that means he will reach his target weight in about two years' time) and that I am actually starving him to death...

to the woods, to the woods!

2009-05-13T14:57:00.006+01:00

Same area as last week's walk: I bought a season-ticket which allows me into any of the car-parks on the estate, which is owned by the Duke of Devonshire - a lot of good walks around here and I hope to be to the more strenuous ones by the time it expires. Walked up the other side of the river this time, more up and down but with a high-level walk along much of its length. Paused here to draw breath, and to let a lively but pleasant school party overtake me. Having a camera gives you a good excuse for a pause when you need one.

LOTS of photos this time - some (not all shown here) taken for a project based on woodland. I started near lunchtime and paused to eat at the top of the climb in a shelter which looked out onto this view:

I also had some interesting company for lunch - part human, a very pleasant group of local people - and part avian:

Some walkers bring bird-food specially apparently. Makes a change from the rapacious sheep in seach of sandwiches elsewhere in the Dales!

Love these tree-roots on the exposed slope.

The high-level bit on this side of the river was punctuated with amazing views,

including the one above, a different angle on The Strid. (By the way I am amazed to learn that Brenda, one of my readers, has actually kayaked down the Strid)

And there were of course plenty of amazing trees: could you have predicted the shapes of some of these branches?

Or the shapes in these trees?

And finally, some time later, back to the other side of the river with its beautiful range of colours - very inspirational!

haiku festival

2009-05-11T13:22:00.005+01:00

Not a great haiku but it was hovering around at the top of my head...

the flowing waters

of woodland rills and rivers

refresh my spirit

and I had a nice piccy to go with it!

may with its light behaving

2009-05-04T10:26:00.006+01:00

Yesterday I made a return visit to Bolton Abbey in the Yorkshire Dales - a place we used to visit often when my husband was alive, but which I have not been to since his death nine years ago. The best bit was walking along the river to the Strid and beyond. The Strid is a narrow chasm in the river through which water rushes. It looks fairly mild here but it has been dry in the last week - it is more spectacular when in spate.

Though it looks harmless - in fact it looks as if you could jump across it - beware of trying: the pool below is thirty feet deep and it has claimed many lives over the centuries. Here's sa shot looking downwards:

I love the colours of the river, the mosses and the rocks, and despite the weekend crowds, I found a number of other equally appreciative people along the walk:

Not to mention the bluebells in Strid Woods - a real bonus.

A really magical walk - maybe the inspiration for May's journal quilt.

And in case you're wondering about the titles of this post - it's the first line of a poem by W.H.Auden one of my favourite poets, who was born in York and also loved the Dales:

May with its light behaving

Stirs vessel, eye, and limb

Spring

2009-04-27T08:52:00.002+01:00

Snakeshead fritillary botanical name fritillaria meleagris. Also come in white and is also called chequered lily in the U.S. I believe.

My birthday

2009-04-25T09:58:00.000+01:00

Journal Quilts

2009-04-23T14:59:00.006+01:00

I've got my Journal Quilts (for the Contemporary Quilt Group) done safely inside the deadline.

To remind you, my theme for the year is "steps", and each of the first four features feet in some way.

In March I began the redecoration of the house with the bathroom and loo: easy rooms or so I thought (especially as I'm not going to do any tiling myself). Looked drab with just paint and tiles and fully tiled wasn't an option, not with one curved and four irregular Edwardian walls. Wallpaper seemed sensible and I found a pretty but fairly sophisticated blown vinyl washable paper. And yes it did have a large repeat but hey I work with fabric so that isn't a problem.

Two days later and I was tearing my hair out - or I would have been if it hadn't been stuck firmly to my scalp with wallpaper paste. The paper didn't stick to itself and didn't allow for overlaps: eventually I did manage to fudge it so it looked OK but the air turned blue in the meantime and the cats hid under the bed. And fudging involved the bottom corner of the loo with a thin line of acrylic to disguise a narrow gap (and it did work thankfully).

So inevitably, I had to use the experience for my journal quilt: it's my first experience of doing a full year's worth and I want to record actual events wherever possible. Here's the finished item:

I've used hand-dyed felt and wadding for the main fabrics (two layers for the shoes) and bonded print fabric to tissutex for the wallpaper. The whole thing's machine stitched and quilted, with fancy yarn couched with a zigzag stitch round the edge. The wallpaper is 3D which I haven't done much of before.

The April one celebrated (if that's the word) minor surgery to remove a distorted and ingrowing toenail. I'd been told to sit with my foot up (I'd managed to steal the footstool back from Pepper when he wasn't looking) and was beginning to get bored (why is it than I can sit for ages doing nothing if there are things I really ought to be doing, but the moment I get told I have to do nothing I get restless and want to be doing things?). Turning over ideas for a journal quilt, I realised that the foot with the bandaged toe was pretty well the right shape for a JQ, so out with the sketchbook.

The first version was too close for comfort and rather too gruesome (especially after I'd stitched through the edge of my finger sewing the bandage on and got real blood on it):

So I decided something less realistic was needed, and came up with the idea of a blue foot. The actual foot for this one started not from the sketch but from me drawing round my foot and I think I had the pencil leaning in slightly, hence the elongated shape, emphasised by the fact I gor the ankle in the wrong place:

This one was pretty straightforward to make: the print fabric based on Gaudi seemed to work well with the shape, giving it a slightly art deco feel, and the spirals on the blue fabric seemed to go along with this. Straightforward fused applique, edges with satin stitch, and with details drawn in freehand using a triple (stretch fabric) stitch which gives a chunky line. Plus pale blue scrim folded and stitched for the bandage. All finished with satin stitch edging - all a great improvement on earlier attempts at satin stitching.

The first group of four together look like this:

Easy Little Gems

2009-04-14T13:08:00.006+01:00

You don't have to be an expert to make a Little Gem: this is an example of a quiltlet that can be made by a beginner, or anyone with limited time.

This is one of three Little Gem Quilts I made for the Quilters Guild Tombola at the Festival of Quilts 2009 (see previous post for details)

The secret of making an attractive little quilt without having to have extensive quilting skills lies partly in choice of fabrics. It's worth using interesting fabrics because you get interesting results and with Little Gems being so small (A4 size) you can experiment with fabrics and still have plenty left over for another project, so it's a good way of trying out ideas about combining colours/prints and so on.

So the first stage is to audition your fabrics: if you're a perfectionist who can take three weeks over this, set a time limit.

There aren't many short-cuts which include coffee-breaks but this is one. When you can no longer see the fabrics for looking, leave them out and go and have a cup of coffee somewhere where you cannot look at them. When you come back you will see instantly what works and what doesn't.

After you've removed the cat, that is:

The next stage is to decide how to divide up the surface of the quilt. I like asymmetry (it also helps to make a very simple design look more interesting/complex). There are many ways of producing a sort of balanced asymmetry (of which more in a later post) but a useful one to start with is to divide into approximate thirds, which will give you a vertical division of between 3 and 4 inches.

Cut an oblong of one of your more interesting fabrics in the chosen width or a little wider (plus half an inch for seam allowances) for your narrower section and a length somewhere in the region of two thirds of the length of the finished piece (don't worry about exact - approximately eight inches works well) plus half an inch seam allowance. Add on narrow strips of fabrics that blend or pick up individual colours (small prints, solids or less defined patterns are useful for this) until you reach 11 5/8 inches (or a bit more - it can always be trimmed back later): stitch together using a quarter-inch seam allowance.

For the larger section cut one or two pieces of more interesting fabric the size you want, plus narrower strips of toning or contrasting fabrics. Join together to match the length of your first fabric strip.

Decide how you want to arrange your two strips of fabric, and whether they need a further strip down the middle ot not. Press each strip, pressing seams to one side, going one way on one strip and the other way on the other. Either join your two strips of fabric together as they are, or join to a vertical strip. Press again.

Cut a fabric backing slightly larger than a piece of A4 paper, plus a piece of wadding the same size. Lay your Little Gem on top, and then either pin or stick the layers together using a spray fabric adhesive such as 505. Quilt in any way you like. Free-machining is good but if you feel nervous about that, straight or gently-curved lines with a normal foot is fine too.

Place your Little Gem on a cutting-mat and place an A4 piece of paper on top parallel to the edges. Using the paper as a guide, placing the ruler on the paper and lined up along the edge of it, cut to trim to size. Make sure the paper is lined up on the cut edge(s) before cutting each side in this way. If you don't have a rotary cutter you can pin the paper to the Little Gem and cut round the edge of the paper with scissors.

Finally bind the edges (see Little Gems website for links to sites telling you how to do this).

Have fun with it - it's a great way of experimenting with fabric-combinations!

Little Gems

2009-04-09T20:16:00.011+01:00

For anyone who doesn't know by now, Little Gems are A4-sized quilts, being made in aid of the Quilt Museum in York, for a tombola at The Festival of Quilts in August. This is being organised by The Quilters Guild of the British Isles with particular input from one of its sub-groups, Contemporary Quilt, of which I am a member.

I had planned to make a few to send, but I ended up getting hooked. First two I made earlier - my first attempts at doing "arty" quilting a couple of years ago:

Next, one I made last summer, one of several on the theme of bubbles: this one has been cut down from a slightly larger piece, and is cut back applique with free machine quilting:

Together with friend Chris, I'm working on a session on Little Gems for my local quilt group, Night Owl Quiltmakers, in Leeds and thought I ought to try and expand the range of Little Gems that I had. The first uses a collection of quirky folk-art cat fabrics I have in my stash and is simply a collection of squares of different sizes:

Next I experimented with free-pieced squares and oblongs from my hand-dyed fabric stash:

And next, strip-pieced base with fused applique, attached with free-machine stitching and FM quilted:

From there I moved into print fabrics with the following view through a window:

There will be more - at present I am having loads of fun playing with print fabrics and asymmetrical compositions - of which more later! In other words, Little Gems are addicitive, and enormous fun. Above all you can use those precious fabrics you've been saving and try them out on something small so you'll have plenty left for later! Try them for yourself: you don't have to be a member of The Quilters Guild, or even British, to contribute.

More information at:

http://littlegemquilts.wordpress.com/

http://quiltersguild.org.uk/
http://quiltmuseum.org.uk/

It's a ...

2009-04-04T10:55:00.003+01:00

coral - a brain coral to be exact (you can see the resemblance). A Number of people got the right answer: Jan's was the first right answer with coral; Mags Ramsay was the first with the full answer of brain coral and also provided extra information (know what you mean about starfish Mags - once found an undamaged whole one on the beach near Bamburgh and put it on the wall near our holiday cottage to dry out - you can guess the rest!). That bit was easy - so goody bag to each of those. The two most interesting was more difficult but eventually settled on Nearby Tree's new government road system to prevent traffic congestion which made me laugh out loud; and Aischa for nearly making me lose my tea with stomach turned inside out! I don't have emails for Nearby Tree or Aischa so if you like to email me with details of where to send and preferred colourway I'll get goody-bags to you by next week. (email address on my profile page).

There was a serious side to this. I'm fascinated by the patterns you get in nature, and the way these patterns recur in different places. Helen Parrott's talk at the Contemporary Quilt AGM really got my ideas churning and I dug out the following:

Close-up of patterns on a stone in Whitby churchyard;

A drawing I did a while back of a savoy cabbage;

fungus on felled timber in Wytham Woods.

The photograph below, taken by my late husband, has a different kind of patterning but just as fascinating:

what is it?

2009-03-30T11:07:00.004+01:00

The (almost complete) view:

closer...

and closer still...

The first correct guess wins a goody bag of dyed stuff in your favourite colourway, as do the two most interesting/funny/ingenious wrong answers!

I'll announce the winners (and the solution to the puzzle) on Friday.

Please write your solutions in the comments box below.

February Journal Quilt

2009-03-24T11:53:00.003Z

Yes I know it's March - but though this was designed when we had all the snow in Feb it was a long time getting finished - I tried various techniques and ended up with Shiva paintsticks. The format for Contemporary Quilt JQs this year is 6" x 12", hence the shape which has turned out to be real fun to work with.

Inspiration - as my cats and I get older we enjoy snow less - at least when we have to go out in it. In my case I have a fear of slipping and falling: despite being a lot rounder than I used to be I don't bounce as well as I used to. In Django's case - the only one of the three felines willing to venture beyond the door - he has short stubby legs and soon discovered the snow came up to his armpits and froze his belly. The JQ shows my tentative footprints (in my new walking shoes) and Django's few footsteps before turning back.

The fabric is a silk mix that my nephew brought me back from Thailand. First I made a rubbing from my shoes, then tried to get a rubbing on tissue paper from one of Django's paws but Django wouldn't play nicely and kept tugging it away, though I did manage to get a sort of rubbing in the end, which gave me the right size (with my footprints being lifesize I felt the cat's prints should be too. Drew on the pawprints, ironed to set, then FMQ'd which I really enjoyed on the silk - some areas where the fabric was totally flattened, others forming a sort of drifty pattern.

All in all the final version took a lot less time than all the experiments that led up to it, and this was the simplest of the techniques I tried.

more scrim and a journal quilt

2009-02-18T12:20:00.007Z

It's no secret I've been fascinated for some time by the effects you can achieve with cotton scrim dyed and layered, ironed flat or crinkled or scrunched; layered and cut back or not you can get the effect of various types of paint: I especially like the watercolour effect of layering scrim that has been stretched and ironed flat.

During the last few weeks I've been trying out various things - here are a couple of samples:

This one is based on the fungus on the felled logs I photographed when I was walking in Wytham Woods - just bits of layered scrim - not ironed, but as they come with free-machine zig-zag over. I love the different effects you can get with this stitch.

The second piece is more formal. Layers of pressed-flat scrim to start with, then the shapes are stitched in abd cut back through the payers with great care using reverse applique scissors (also called lace scissors) - an essential and sometimes difficult to find piece of equipment for this technique.

The third technique I tried is probably the simplest: layered as-it-comes scrim plus hand stitching: thicker threads - various kinds all hand-dyed including all six strands of cotton embroidery thread, perle and various silks and rayons - and big stitches so they show up (fine stitching tends to sink into the scrim and get lost):

The next piece is a finished piece using a technique I developed last year: ironed-flat scrim layered over hand-dyed wadding, free-machine stitched and cut back. In this one I was exploring the brighter-than expected colours of a rainy landscape through the window:

And finally, January's journal quilt for the Contemporary Quilt Group's challenge. This year's quilts all have to be 12"x 6" which is a good size to work with. This one is also as it comes with hand-stitching in thick thread, using hand-dyed wadding. The buttonhole-stitch appliqued shoeprints are also hand-dyed along with all the other materials used.

I've chosen a theme for the year (though I reserve the right to change/adapt if this doesn't work out) which is Steps. Instead of resolutions (I did make some but didn't keep up to them very long!) I decided to follow a really sensible suggestion of having a word that would keep me focussed on what I want to achieve, and the word I have chosen is steps. Literal steps in that I want to start going for long walks again, an activity I enjoy and which I had to give up some years ago when I had ME/CFS and something I need to do in order to get fitter. But also steps in terms of getting things done by dividing them up into stages (I find the decluttering is coming along wonderfully since I limited myself to one hour at a time); plus steps in terms of learning to do things a stage at a time rather than all at once!

Oh yes, the JQ - for January so it's a bit late - is called Magic Shoes.

monoprinting

2009-01-19T14:29:00.003Z

Last Thursday I started a printing course, one evening a week, at Leeds College of Art. Our first week was spent monoprinting: for anyone who doesn't know, this involves inking up a sheet and then making designs by painting on inks, masking off shapes or areas or scratching in lines, wiping out areas and so on. The advantage is it doesn't involve lots of dangerous equipment and is very easy to do - especially for beginners (apart from some roller printing and lino printing I've not really printed before); the disadvantage is you can't print multiple images - hence the "mono".

Our first exercise was to ink up a piece of plastic, then place cut-out shape or shapes on top and print the result:

- not the most sophisticated shapes in the world, but this was designed to be a play session: I can be more seriously creative when I've learned the basics.

You can then re-ink the plastic and turn the shapes over to get a print of one shape on top of the other: you have to work at speed for this, before the ink dries on your mask - I was slower than I should have been, which resulted in a misty-looking print:

In the next one I used the end of a paintbrush to scribble lines in the ink, as well as blotting with scrim (there are also some fingerprints where I forgot and held it):

One of the things I really got into was layering the ink on the plastic in different ways - curved lines, varying the pressure, using the edge of the roller to get narrow lines and so on - the following print is from the basic inked up plate:

You'd never guess I'm into a woodland theme at the moment, would you?

The last two involve masking off, this time with torn rather than cut paper; this gives a softer, subtler effect:

-though the effect is subtler than I intended - forgot again to add more ink before inking up the roller, but it does give some very subtle colours, which become even more subtle when the strips are turned over on the re-inked plastic:

This week it's drypoint which means we have to take a line-drawing to use, so off to practice my drawing skills. I also have some other prints which are waiting in the drying-rack.

Keeping Going

2009-01-18T22:08:00.002Z

At last I seem to have got through my midwinter doldrums. I'm working on several things - so far so good - and I'm back at art school, having added on a printing course of which more in a later post. I also have the mammoth task ahead of decluttering the house and preparing it for sale in order to downsize, hopefully to large studio with living accommodation and space for cats, if such a place exists!

I'm also getting more motivated to continue with The Artist's Way. The next week which deals with issues such as anger, criticism and growth seems to be just what I need at the moment, having been dogged by self-doubt recently; I am ready to turn things round and look at life more positively.

Thanks to "Brenda from the Boro" for the comment on my last posting! Comments like this help enormously.

Finally (it's getting late and I need to get ready for bed), the photo above is the view from bedroom window at my brother's house - just to prove I wasn't exaggerating about living in the woods!

the artists way

2009-01-11T13:26:00.004Z

At the beginning of this month I joined up with Marie - http://zquilts.blogspot.com/ and Judy - http://tiedyejudy.blogspot.com/ - in agreeing to work our way through Julia Cameron's The Artist's Way, a book I bought two years ago, intending to work my way through it. I did work through a few chapters and found it useful despite my initial reservations about its manner and philosophy (summed up in its subtitle - A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity) - I'm basically a down-to-earth practical person so I tend to miss a lot in veering away from the high-flown stuff. Maybe it's time to put that right.

So far I've been going for one week and so far I've learnt that it's not the end of the world if I don't do everything 100% all the time. Last time I worked through Chapter One, a whole lot of rather surprising feelings from the past surfaced, which I worked my way through. This week has been an odd week - difficult to concentrate on much else but keeping warm - and I don't think I've been as thorough as the last time. One of the features of the course is the morning pages - free writing for about half an hour at the beginning of the day. This week I managed this for only five out of seven days, though on one of those - today - I foud myself writing for more than an hour, working my way through something I hadn't resolved last time - the whole idea of people wanting you to be different from the way you are and so on (I'm sure most people will be familiar with this so I won't say more - anyway I don't really feel like spouting my innermost thoughts and feelings in public). This bit I really did find useful and today has been a useful reminder of the value of doing the morning pages consistently - any yes I do find it useful to do them near the beginning of the day.

One of the other features is the Artists Date - the idea of taking a piece of time out of your week to do something different to foster your creativity. This is something I'm not very good at so it will become a priority in the next week. This week the nearest I got was going into town to spend my Christmas tokens - token-givers were very generous this year and I got:

Reef - a book and DVD of inspirational photographs by Scubazoo;

RSPB Visual Guide to the Wildlife of Britain

The Drawing Book by Sarah Simblett -more than just a how-to guide, it has a wonderfully varied selection of interesting drawings by a vast range of artists

ArtEffects by Jean Drysdale Gree - an amazing collection of different techniques using conventional and unconventional materials

The Suspicions of Mr Whicher by Kate Summerscale - an account of a real-life murder mystery in nineteenth century England - I really enjoyed this one and found the accounts of the methods of early police detection fascinating

When Will There Be Good News, the latest book by Kate Atkinson, one of my favourite authors

A pretty good haul I think!

Overall the effect of the first week has left more willing to commit more time and energy to the overall process - though this week art college starts again - including the printing course I am starting this term and I really do have to turn some of my thoughts and energies towards getting the house ready to sell later in the year (stage one decluttering)

And just so you have pictures - a collage of "likes" to put me in a positive mood for this coming week. This fits with my word for the year which is STEPS - enjoying walking, reminding myself to do things a step at a time, keeping going and enjoying and relishing every step of the way!

And finally, a further comment on the weather at the moment:

There and Back Again

2009-01-05T19:06:00.009Z

Many thanks for the complimentary comments on the Wytham Woods photographs: it is very photogenic woodland so it wasn't difficult to get interesting ones.

For the third and last visit to Wytham Woods I am going to take you with me on one of my walks. First is a mile and a quarter stretch of uphill which will at least warm you up in this freezing weather. The track on either side is bordered by a band of trees on either side with farmland beyond, reaching a kissing gate with - on this particular morning - a rather hazy view of the "dreaming spires" of Oxford.

Here a pause to catch our breath and answer Julie's question. Tolkien would have known Wytham Woods, though I have been told that the Old Forest is in fact based on somewhere else, so it's difficult to know how much he was influenced by them. I first read The Lord of the Rings after we moved there and found the woodland described in the book very familiar indeed!

Through the kissing-gate at the top of the lane, bear left and you enter the are known variously as (to me) the top road, (to locals) the Gallop and (on the Wytham Woods official map) the Singing Way. Here we find a startling sight - felled logs. Timber is cut from these trees from time to time and moved to the roadside by horse-power, one horse at a time to minimise damage to the forest floor.

We can pause here for a rest, and look at the amazing shapes of the stacked logs ...

and the strange shapes and colours of the fungi on them:

Now the walk becomes a nice level trudge along a good path (soft underfoot providing you walk on the middle bit) to the sound of bridsong. There's all sorts of wildlife all around us but the things that can move are hiding (and I'm not sure I really want to investigate what's under those logs)

This is where many of the weird-shaped branches and weird-shaped trees come from.

Aren't the colours wonderful?

Near here we meet a track which points down to the car-park which is why there are more humans than in the earlier bit.

Continue for some distance past a memorial stone to Hazel ffennell, who sadly died young and whose father gifted the woods to the university in 1943, and then turn down another track, where you come across a rather fanciful-looking building:

This is known as the chalet: when I lived in the woods, the Warden lived here; now Wytham Woods has a Conservator (probably a more accurate title and probably posher) but I don't think he lives here - I could be wrong!

From here we take a real road downhill (we've walked a long way already, need to get back and therefore must leave Wytham Great Woods for another day) to where there was once a working sawmill, and follow the path along a wondrously idyllic-looking green field full of sheep with Wythan Abbey in the distance:

And from there, back along the Gallop through swarms of runners who have a habit of appearing suddenly - the really fit ones give you a breezy hullo as they pass - to the top of the land.

Looking over a fence, we see the path through Rivendell (see yesterday's photograph) so sunshiny and lush with mosses and spngy turf we can't resist, so on we walk along it, not minding that it's taking us in another direction from where we want to be: I know these woods and know we'll get to a turning that leads onto the bottom track and this area has always been magical for me.

And then onto the track: when I lived here there used to be a house called Marley Lodge at this point, but now it's gone and there's no trace: it was fairly primitive, had no foundations, and was demolished when the last occupants left.

More interesting bits of tree along the bottom track which would be even more idyllic if you couldn't hear the A34 which runs close by:

And home to warmth and food!

Where fairytales are born...

2009-01-04T17:12:00.009Z

More Wytham Woods photographs today (further ones to come - I took a lot!). Idaho Beauty http://idahobeautyquilts.blogspot.com commented that my previous pictures made you see where fairytales came from and I must admit that Wytham Woods make me think of books such as The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings as well as a whole series of myths, legends and folktales.

Trees have always seemed to me like characters in their own right, usually benign but occasionally scary - I remember one day, when I was about eighteen, when I'd walked further than I intended and was still in the woods, on my own, as it began to get dark and began to feel as if the trees were alive and I was an intruder into a different world ...

Different times of day and differences in light make the woods change mood and colour...

and there are magical places, like these, where the water has been culverted so as not to drain the path...

or in the broad rides, soft underfoot, mossy, and often full of dappled light like the path below which on the sunday after Christmas reminded me of Rivendell - it is so easy to imagine elves just out of eyeshot watching your every move...

Meetings with Interesting Trees

2009-01-03T13:29:00.010Z

My brother lives at the edge of Wytham Woods, owned by Oxford University and used for research projects. Unlike most managed woodland it is for the most part left to develop naturally: many areas qualify as "ancient woodland" where the undergrowth hasn't been cleared. Mostly oak hazel and beech, with additions like the ivy which wraps itself round the tree below:

Trees here are allowed to split, droop, fall apart, decay and above all grow unrestricted:

I spent a number of happy hours this holiday re-exploring the woods where I grew up (and discovering that I was fit enough to walk for miles and miles without getting tired, which was also a bonus!)

Looking forward, looking back...

2009-01-01T22:27:00.004Z

Happy New Year! A time to reassessthe past and plan ahead.

Sometimes we forget to tell ourselves about the good things we did. So apologies while I start by congratulating myself for:

finally signing up for art classes
entering quilts in a show and recognising that although I was not especially happy with the work I produced I could learn a lot from the experience
beginning to find a sense of direction in my artwork
managing to get the routines of life under control
discovering how much pleasure I can have from making things for other people - like the quilt which I did, in the end, give to Kelvin and Gill, my brother and sister-in-law - here it is in their red bedroom:

Now for 2009: I don't propose to make resolutions. Instead I have decided on fairly specific goals. Here are the five most important:

I will complete a quilt for the Art Quilts section at Festival of Quilts: it will be finished well before the deadline so that I don't ruin it by rushing to finish;
by June/July I will declutter my home and redecorate as needed, ready for sale;
I will complete at least three drawings a week for the first three months of this year; after that I will review and decide what comes next;
having established that I am fitter then I deserve to be, given the way I've neglected my physical wellbeing, I will go for a medium to long walk at least once a week (minimum five miles);
I will update my blog at least once a week.

So here's to 2009

Where Have I Been?

2008-12-09T20:53:00.010Z

I'm amazed it's been a month since I've posted. So what have I been doing?

First the two art courses I'm doing - both at (apparently) a basic level but quite challenging enough for where I started from! The first of them has been drawing based this term, with lots of close observational drawings using and learning various techniques. The course is run by Leeds College of Art and Design at the Leeds Museums Discovery Centre, an amazing place where you find antique statuary cheek by jowl with clothes, furnishings and assorted objects from bygone eras, not to mention the zoological specimens, many from donated Victorian collections. One of the zoological specimens is the reindeer above, known to me and my fellow-students as "Lips" (yes he really did have these handsome lips!) and probably my most successful drawing to date.

We've also been drawing everyday objects for homework - here's an early drawing of a shoe!

I also managed to get to The Knitting and Stitching Show in Harrogate, where I met up with cyber-friend Julie http://mixedmedia-jem.blogspot.com/ and had a really good day out - wonderful exhibitions, especially liked the Art Cloth and Ruth Issett ones (but then I am a dyer!) and lots of retail therapy. Julie and I are planning a day in Bradford in the new year when our finances have recovered.

There are other things, which I shall post about later, but finally there's the Christmas present (or not as I really am not sure whether a: they will like it; or b: whether they can be persuaded to be honest about it if they don't - I'd welcome ideas on this!) for my brother and sister-in-law.

To go with their new red and pale gold bedroom. So far I've finished the top, and here it is with Django trying to assert ownership!

As well as oriental-inspired fabrics (mainly based on Chinese designs) there are also real Japanese fabrics and a few Javanese batiks.

All very relaxing and a great change from art quilting. The overall design is based on one by Kaffe Fassett with a few twists additions and mistakes added by me!

And finally a really welcome piece of news: the quiltlet in the previous post has been bought in the SAQA Auction by art quilter Jacque Davis - thank you Jacque!

SAQA Auction

2008-11-09T17:53:00.003Z

The SAQA Auction starts tomorrow. In case you don't know, SAQA stands for Studio Art Quilts Associates, and members have contributed twelve-inch square quiltlets which are to be auctioned in three lots. My contribution, Effervescent Evanescent is above - inspired by the bubbles in my bathwater, techniques include cut-back applique using layered scrim and free-machine stitching.

There are quilts by some of the world's leading artists up for grabs, so why not get yourself over to the website http://www.saqa.com/ and have a look!

Congratulations America

2008-11-06T10:24:00.004Z

I suppose part of the euphoria amongst democrat voters in the US must be like what many of us in the UK felt when the Tory party was finally routed and Blair came to power, a night when cheers could be heard echoing down our street and next day everyone was smiling at each other - not that I feel Tony Blair stood the test of time very well but it felt really good to start with.

But aside from being great news for America politically, historically it has been an astounding victory. I remember, when I was a student seeing news footage of the Civil Rights movement, being horrified at the killing of Martin Luther King. And now, in what is, historically speaking, a relatively short period of time, America has elected an African-American president. As one African-American woman said on Monday, "Now when we tell our children they can achieve great things they can believe us."

And it's also a reminder for us in the UK that despite in theory outlawing discrimination we still have some way to go.

Castleford Weir: Fast Friday Fabric Challenge

2008-10-23T12:37:00.006+01:00

I've been a member of the Fast Friday Group for a year now, though many of my pieces I have to admit are awaiting completion. However I have determined to complete this year's challenges.
For this year we have decided to work in a series, with emphasis on colour and composition (it's a great group for learning and artistic development). I have decided to base my series round Castleford Weir in West Yorkshire, including the new award-winning footbridge over the weir photographed in a recent post, and decided on the mill-race as the topic for the first piece:

This month's challenge had also to be composed of basically complementary colours, and had to have a strong vertical, horisontal or diagonal composition.

I'm not sure whether this is creative cheating or not but I wanted a series of muted greyed colours for the stone and water so I did several blue-orange dye-runs, including (at the top of the photograph) runs of the basic colours mixed with black. The dyes are Procion MX Blue 2G (sometimes sold as cobalt or cobalt navy) and Bright (Pillar-Box) Red G plus Gold 3R for the orange.
I simplified the photograph, flattening the perspective, and exaggerating the height. The water-shapes have been simplified considerably too, to give a poster-like effect. In fact the design is what took longest (I have to work hard to get to be this simple!). Fabric pieces have been fused onto a dark blue background which has been allowed to show through in places because I wanted it not to look too smooth.

The piece still needs stitching, which I intend to do today - some of the features such as the mill-wheel will also be added in stitch. Must admit I feel quite good at the moment about the overall result.

Next challenge begins tomorrow and I'm really looking forward to it.

Back to School

2008-10-16T23:47:00.006+01:00

After visiting the Festival of Quilts I decided it was time to overcome my fear of the D word (drawing in case you haven't guessed) so I signed up for not one but two beginners'/returners' courses at Leeds College of Art and Design: they're also designed for people wanting to put together a portfolio of work in order to apply for mainstream art courses.

The two classes complement each other. One is based not at the Art College itself but at the Leeds Museum Service centre where stuff not on display in the city's museums is stored, catalogued and so on - everything from stuffed zebras to 1960s juke-boxes. This caourse is drawing-based and already I'm learning how to look at things in order to produce a (relatively at this stage) accurate drawing, plus looking at other options than academic naturalistic drawings.

The other course is so far more wide-ranging, including different media - there will even be a chance to try some sculpture later.

The great thing is I can feel my confidence developing already. I'm beginning to look at things differently and am making full use of the various sketchbooks I have. Also two great groups of people - on the first one a small group of all women enabling me to attempt things in a friendly and supportive atmosphere; on the second a wide mix of both men and women including a large number of young people - creating quite a buzz.

Hopefully it should all soon begin to trickle down into my fabric work!

The photographs in this post are of items from the museum collection we used last week for still life - using simple shapes to learn the basic principles of perspective. Hopefully, when I get a bit more confidence I'll post some the things I've done.

Ah, Sunflower, weary of time

2008-09-25T08:38:00.006+01:00

A tenuous link to the topic for the day, but it makes for a nice photo.

Topic for the day, in case you haven't guessed, is time. How we use it, waste it, get resentful of it and what to do about it. Inspired by several posts recently on my good friend Marie's blog http://zquilts.blogspot.com/ .

For many of us, the problem is not having enough of it. For many years I was a full-time teacher which, with preparation, marking, training out of school hours and so on meant an average of between 50 and 65 hours a week in term-time; to this I somehow added being a local NUT (teachers' union) officer plus local labour party officer and school governor. On Monday nights I had two hours I carved out for myself which I prioritised as me time when I went to a patchwork and quilting class.

The inevitable happened - with a little help from the education authority (schools in Leeds were reorganised) and the government (the whole education system in England and Wales underwent radical changes - to my mind not for the better) and the fact that the school I worked in was part building site. I achieved burnout. To be more specific, I ended up, after a period of trying to work through illness, with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS - what used to be called ME) and had to retire from teaching (and everything else) and was unable to work at all for five years.

However, having CFS (which you never completely get rid of - I still suffer the symptoms at times, though in a very minor way) taught me a lot about managing time and keeping up morale.

There are no quick fixes for this condition - you have to learn to live with it; if you manage it carefully you improve, but there are no guarantees: I was one of the lucky ones. Some things I had to give up - reading for the first two years (I could not maintain concentration for long enough); machine stitching (couldn't sit at the machine for long); couldn't even watch television for long (ended up seeing double when I exhausted the eye muscles so the two sets couldn't work in synch properly).

What I learnt to do was this: to do things but in short stints (sometimes as little as ten minutes) with rests in between. I learnt to see rest as a positive thing and not feel guilty about appearing to be lazy. I learnt that I was more likely to get the bouts of depression associated with CFS if the things I did manage to do included not only things I ought to do but also things I wanted to do. I learnt to compromise. As I improved I learnt that it was possible to do some of the big things I wanted to by resting beforehand, taking it as easily as I could at the time, and being prepared to suffer afterwards (after my first quilt show at this time I was ill for a week and could only get upstairs on all fours). I also learnt to adapt: you can iron sitting down; it's an interesting exercise choosing domestic appliances using weight as your foremost criterion - I managed to buy the worst vacuum cleaner in the world that way!

One of the things I found most useful is an exercise I was taught in a time management class, basically as a prioritisation exercise for busy managers.

(i) You begin by defining your discretionary time - that is the time that isn't timetabled or given to routine things that have to be done every day - i.e. time where you get some choice about what you do.

(ii) Then each day you begin by making two lists, one of ten things you want to do and one of ten things you ought to do. It's not unusual for some things to appear in both lists. Having to find ten things you want to do makes you dig deeper into the possibilities of just how you could use your time if you weren't forever trying to catch up on the "oughts". One suggestion - make the items relatively small - preferably no more than an hour (it can be considerably less!), two at the outside - break down larger things into smaller stages.

(iii) Next stage is to prioritise. Look at your lists and pick out the one thing you most want to do; one thing you ought to do which is most urgent. Start a new list and write these down as items 1 and 2, then bracket them together.

(iv) Leave a space on your list then write down the numbers 3 to 6, one on each line. Choose the next two things you'd most like to do and the two things you most ought to do and write these in: again bracket them together.

(v) Repeat the process for items 7 to 10.

Do not agonise over this process - it should normally take less than ten minutes.

What you now have is a working list for the day. You work your way down the list. The only thing you HAVE to do is complete the first two priority items. If you manage to get to six you are doing well. Few people manage all ten. Any things you haven't done can go onto next day's list - or you may find they're not as important as you thought and they can disappear altogether.

I found this useful when I had little time at my disposal. I find it even more useful now I am retired and have oodles of time. It means I can give my days a structure. It means I am finally getting to grip with actually doing the "oughts" instead of fretting about them, and establishing a reasonable routine for getting them done. I'm also becoming clearer about the things I really want to do and achieving more than I would have expected. And I feel pleased with myself and positively enjoy life. There is no danger of what I feared most about retirement - that I would become a hermit and sink deeper and deeper into my armchair!

The most valuable thing about this system is that it puts things you want and things you ought to do on a par, as having equal value, something that we as women often don't allow ourselves to do. It also means that you can keep your morale high by not spending all your time doing things you ought to do (you do however get through the things you really ought to do though maybe a little more slowly).

But most importantly it makes you redefine your wants and needs. Once things have been on the first list for several days but not made it as priorities you begin to reappraise whether the oughts are really things you need to do after all, or whether the things on your want list are as important to you as you thought. It teaches you that whilst you cannot have it all you can have the things that are really important and that feels good.

And finally a story about letting go of those oughts:

A friend of mine, when we were both teaching, spent the last afternoon of the summer term filling a huge bag with things she had to get done during the summer vacation or the earth would stop spinning on its axis. She left the bag in her office to be collected after the end of term party.

After the end of term party she forgot about it (wine can do this to you). One of the cleaners next morning tidied the bag away into a cupboard. The following summer term my friend cleared out the cupboard and found the bag. She had not missed any of the things in it. None of the things had been done, and nobody missed them, least of all her.

Castleford Weir

2008-09-19T17:21:00.006+01:00

Most weeks, circumstances permitting, I visit my quilting friend of many years (we used to teach together) Judith. She lives on the edge of the city, an area I know little of, and from time to time takes me off to see bits of it I'd otherwise probably not get to explore. She's an historian, which means these visits are accompanied by fascinating anecdotes and insights into the past.

This week it was the turn of Castleford, a town suffering badly from closures of local industries, most notably pit closures, a place I'd thought of as rather sad and downtrodden. Recently there have been moves to improve the town. Amongst the things that have happened is the building of a magnificent new bridge over Castleford Weir on the River Aire near where it meets the Calder: (an historical sidenote on the two rivers - it used to be said that "Castleford ladies are beautiful and fair. They wash in the Calder and rinse in the Aire")

For once I remembered my camera. The picture above is of what used to be a local mill where flour was ground. The river was in spate (heavy rains in previous weeks) which meant that water was plentiful. Here's the mill-race which once powere the mill:

And here's the old bridge, lower down:

The new bridge is an amzing structure built of wood and very different but equally beautiful. This photograph shows only a part of it and does not really do it justice though it does show the way it curves over the river.

The wires on the sides are thick and tensioned which makes it very safe for children -no danger of falling in. While we were there there were numerous local families enjoying the view. All in all a successful piece of modern design which also has allusions to more traditional design.

Whilst I was there I managed to get some inspirational pictures of water. Here I was really pleased to be able to capture something of the patterns the water makes:

and this one is my favourite: I set out to try to capture the subtlety of the colours and the contrast between the smoothness of the water above the weir and the turbulence below, and actually managed both!

Blog Award

2008-09-14T13:30:00.002+01:00

Nearbytree http://mittensmum.blogspot.com sent me this award - very much appreciated and I've been blogging so little lately that I'm not sure I deserve it but will try to improve and live up to it!

At the moment I'm finding it quite difficult to think of enough bloggers that I haven't (or someone else hasn't) tagged or nominated recently. For those of you looking for a list of brilliant blogs there is a favourite blogs list attached to my profile (courtesy of new Blogger thingy). It is not yet complete - there are some to be added to.

Any of you (and any others I read regularly) may consider yourself nominated. To continue the process, what you have to do is:

acknowledge the nomination and print a link to the nominator, plus the blog award logo above;

nominate seven blogs, and add links to them;

leave a message telling people you have nominated them.

And once again, thank you very very much!

Belatedly - Festival of Quilts

2008-09-13T17:32:00.004+01:00

Back in the land of the living after returning from the Festival of Quilts nearly four weeks ago.
Apologies for the delay in reporting back: I returned with a cold which became a nasty bout of bronchitis followed by a further bout of general fatigue followed by a period of utter laziness!

I actually treated myself to the whole week in Birmingham, which seemed like a good idea at the time. The first three days I spent in a masterclass with Susan Brandeis about developing creative potential and designing meaningful quilts. If you ever get the chance of a class with Susan, seize it with both hands. It came at absolutely the right time for me and was exactly what I needed since - as my entries for FOQ below will reveal - my work suffers at times from lack of thought: I've tended to go with the flow rather than really thinking about and developing ideas and designs. I'll post later about how this workshop has helped me develop.

One really good thing about the workshop was the group of people I was with: really supportive people producing excellent work - though at times I did feel myself running to catch up! Here we are (minus a couple of people who had to leave early:

By the end of the masterclass I was completely exhausted and, having seen all the amazing quilts (standards have been raised colossally since I last went to a large quilt show), I felt more than a bit apologetic about mine. Still I did promise to put them on my blog and here they
are:

First of all Snakes and Ladders, finished at last. Even though there are things wrong with this I still love it: apart from anything else it's the first quilt I'd started since 2000 when my husband died so it's great to have it finished.

The second is based on pebbles and rockpools, made of silk, satin, silk organza and cotton jersey plus silk fibres, hand embroidery and machine quilting:

It did suffer through having to be finished in a hurry - serve me right for over-estimating what I could do in the time.

The third quilt is the one I was really embarrassed by - if I could have taken it down and stuffed it away and hidden it from view I would have done so. I hadn't intended to attempt anything naturalistic but it kept drifting that way - not only that but it wasn't very well designed to start with (shouldn't have skimped on that bit) so that compositionally it is dreadful. On the plus side some of the detail works really well (two of the three judges commented on the painterly use of fabric, and one liked the light in the trees so there's something to build on there).

Must remember next year to only enter things finished before the entry deadline so that I know I'm only presenting my best work to the public!

The remainder of the week was highly enjoyable. Lots of amazing quilts and exhibitions to see (afraid I don't have pictures as I had camera problems), friends old and new to meet and catch up with and went home with lighter pockets but weighed down with supplies.

Oh, and the cats really did seem to miss me - wouldn't let me out of their sight once for three weeks after coming back from the cattery but insisted on following me everywhere - even Bixy made his way up two flights of stairs to find a curling-up spot in the studio.

More catching up soon!

I did everything but take photographs

2008-08-08T22:08:00.003+01:00

Sorry about the long delay in updating my blog. Did a silly thing. Entered not-yet-finished quilts for The Festival of Quilts confident that I'd easily finish them on time. I did (finish them I mean) but not easily.

You know how it is: you're going along to a particular timetable knowing what you're going to do and then as you do it you come up with new ideas.

The first was a small quilt based on the idea of rockpools - between the tides, where earth and sea meet. I've always been fascinated by them and the strange species which inhabit them. This one started with pebbles, translated into fabric in 3D using jersey hand-dyed and stuffed with wadding. I'd planned a simple background using a length of hand-dyed silk with dyed scrim for sand but it all got very much out of hand. It began OK with a length of scrim pressed flat over hand-dyed wadding producing a very nice dull sand colour, and the silk worked well too though somewhat inclined to fray so it needed satin-stitch. Then I discovered the viscose satin I'd dyed ages ago so that went in too; and that too frayed horrendously and needed satin-stitching. Then it needed shadows, in the form of silk organza. And of course it had to have rocks or there would be no rock-pool. By this time it had taken three times as long as expected.

I liked the seaweed made from granite stitch over silk fibre (the later seaweed, not shown in this photo was fastened to the rocks using seeding; some was stitched to a background chiffon/organza by machine and then appliqued. Then the pebbles went on by hand. And some couched hairy chenille for more seaweed.

I had all sort of plans - stumpwork shells and limpets, sea anemones, hand-embroidered feathered stars etc etc. On reflection it's probably as well I ran out of time or it could have been too far over the top!

Here it is half-way through:

The next one is based on Wytham Woods at bluebell time. I was trying really hard to be abstract but it kept coming out naturalistic. It's made in scrim over hand-dyed wadding with layers of colour used like water-colour washes. Here it is at an early stage. This version looks better than the finiished item:

I then decided to add more layers, and experimented on some scraps with FMQ which was then cut back to give a sort of speckled effect (to suggest leaves and the blue and green of bluebell plants). When I started doing this on the quilt it became obsessive - an interesting effect but unfortunately I got so caught up in doing it that I lost one of the most important compositional features i.e. the effects of light and shade which means that as far as I remember the finished piece is comparatively static. Unfortunately I have no photograph of the finished quilt - I just hope it's better than I remember and I don't have to run away in shame and hide when I see it hanging up next week.

The third entry is the only one at this stage that I am actually confident I like - i.e. the Snakes and Ladders one I blogged about earlier. The final stages improved it immensely from the way it was when I last showed it but once again I have no photo, till I get one next week at the Festival of Quilts.

I'm hoping I learn from this not to enter anything I haven't actually finished. There is actually a chance I might stick to this, since I'm doing a lot more anyway now I have retired!

Out the Other Side

2008-07-04T09:23:00.002+01:00

OK so here it is. It didn't get selected for the SAQA Europe show I entered it for but given the wealth of art quilters in Isreal and Europe and the quality of work those selected normally produce that is not really very surprising - I still have a very long way to go.

However it is a quilt that's important to me for several reasons. Firstly the subject-matter: the quilt celebrates finally being discharged from the cancer clinic at St James's (Jimmy's) Hospital in Leeds, where, six years ago I was treated for endometrial cancer by the most amazing team of doctors and nurses and other medical staff, to whom as you can imagine I am extremely grateful.

The patterns are based on normal and cancer cells and the sun-like thing at the top right is probably something to do with the radiotherapy treatment I had to undergo after surgery. I'm not sure where the snake-like shapes came from . My friend Judith reckons they look like snakes, which is not entirely inappropriate - the whole experience was intensely scary but snakes are also traditional symbols of survival, presumably because they can go without food or water for relatively long times.

It was also a first for me in that I've never made a full-size quilt using scrim before (the spots and blotches are the only bits on the surface that aren't); I also dyed the wadding to have colours that would show through the scrim. Plus it's the first quilt I've ever made with serious grown-up subject-matter.

Happy Birthday Nelson Mandela

2008-06-27T22:13:00.002+01:00

A truly great man, who I think has achieved more than anyone living!

Busy

2008-06-23T22:48:00.012+01:00

On the last day of May I finally said goodbye to the treadmill: no more working for a living - I have now officially retired, which means I can at last become a full-time quilt artist/art quilter/textile artist/artist/whatever. I think privately I prefer the term "maker" though if I ever get to the stage where I have an exhibition I may have to come up with something more grandiose!

So about retiring. I was well aware of the risk of settling down forever deeper and deeper into an armchair and intended to avoid it at all costs. But I did have an extremely lazy first week pottering about, meeting friends, reading books. In fact this lasted till about half-way through the second week (though I had discovered the therapeutic uses of gardening by then - half an hour a day of taming the jungle gets results, is helping to get me fit and wakes me up).

Then I remembered that rash half-hour when I added to my two entries for The Festival of Quilts a third which was less than half finished. In short I had three quilts to finish in not much more than six weeks. One simply needed finishing off and machine quilting. The second took a lot of designing and drawing up but is now going together quickly and easily. The third is a new venture for me with 3D stuff plus some hand embroidery which I have only recently returned to but is the most risky and the most fun of the lot - so far nothing has gone wrong with it (I really shouldn't have said that...)

I suppose I'd better explain for readers outside the UK that most shows here including the big ones are open entry without the need to pass a jury selection, so this sort of recklessness is possible. I'm also working on a journal quilt to enter for the Houston show where I shall have to have it finished, photographed and a CD sent well before the deadline. I think the jury system at least preserves me from the dangerous effects of recklessness to which I'm prone.

Anyway, the first quilt was probably going to be the most labour-intensive. This is how it began life, as a grid of woven fabric strips (using my hand-dyed fabric) at the end of 2006:

This was made during Myrna Giesbrecht's Self Expressions class at Quilt University, a life-changing class if ever there was one and highly recommended. We were asked to produce a small quilt which expressed where we were at the time. I decided to focus on the whole process of creativity and came up with the idea of a game of snakes and ladders to describe it in a light-hearted way. The grid was the board and I'd originally decided to applique the snakes and the ladders.

However, I spent one happy evening playing with transparent fabrics - hand-dyed chiffons and organzas - and liked the effect, especially of one red and one orange fabric, of transparent overlays:
This prompted me to come up with a design using reverse applique: the following version though not as clear as I would like shows the basic shapes.

Though I really don't like real snakes much at all to the point of being phobic I am also quite fascinated by them, especially the symbolism of snakes, and during the course of this they became a sort of symbol for creativity.

There are a number of silly jokes here as well as some serious symbolism. Starting at the bottom left, the first snake is a familiar symbol of continuity or eternity; on a lighter note it also describes going round in circles, something I do endlessly at the start of a project. Once I start I can keep going for a bit - hence the second snake (middle bottom) just moving along at its own pace.

However, soon afterwards indecision hits with a vengance, shown by the block at bottom right which can't even make up its mind whether it's a four-patch or a nine-patch. This can send you back via the snake to the beginning, or you can take the ladder up the right-hand side or if you're lucky get swallowed up by the exploring snake which takes you further on (NB not all snakes in this game take you backwards). Or you might move right to left across the board and meet the snakes on the right-hand side. One will take you onward, but if you miss that you might eventually get to the other which will bring you back down (these are based on the twin snakes of classical symbolism - the snake that gives life and the snakes that takes life away).

When you get to the top you encounter three more situations: the snake in the spiral is the dreaming snake - if you dream it right the snake will take you nearer where you want to go. However there are still problems even at the very top of the board - a snake tying itself in knots, an episode of doubt (does everyone have this when they're in sight of finishing?) shown by a snake in the form of a quesion mark. The last thing I shall do is to complete the final square at the top left with my initials and the date.

This is where it was just over a week ago. The satin stitch has now been strengthened to make the ladders clearer and it has been extensively machine-quilted. As a result of the stitching it is now slightly lumpy and I intend to block it before adding the binding (I had originally planned to face it but it needs a fine strip of colour round the outside - now for the agonising decision as to what colour to use - any advice greatly appreciated!)

Usually I don't like my quilts immediately after I've finished them - something to do with seeing all those mistakes really close up all the time - but this one I do (the extra satin-stitch and the machine-quilting improve it enormously). I hope I still like it when it's hanging up there for everyone to see!

Will post a picture of the completed quilt during the last week in August.

just teasing

2008-05-23T18:13:00.005+01:00

If you're wondering what I've been doing this month - well - I've been making a quilt. It will feature in an exhibition this summer (a big juried one if I'm lucky, a small open-to-everyone one otherwise. All I can say about it is it's a bit weird (I'm not sure where it came from) and it's made of scrim. One detail above and one below:

I have really enjoyed working with scrim: I love the effect of transparent overlays - a bit like putting on watercolour glazes only with crosshatching cause by the texture of the scrim itself. I've used dyed wadding (batting) as the base colour, a purple which shows under the blue in the middle of the second detail.

Now fired with enthusiasm for scrim, I'll just show you the first stage of the second scrim quilt - various blues and greens "glazed" over bright lime green wadding (batting). Not sure where this is going next (though I have a number of ideas which should be interesting)

dyeing bright colours - a tutorial

2008-05-12T18:19:00.006+01:00

I love bright colours. Decided I needed some for the quilt I'm currently making, so had another dyeing session yesterday. People have asked me how I get such bright colours: here's my basic method for dyeing brights.

1. First of all I use urea. It makes the dyes more soluble in water and enables the dye to dissolve more easily. It has other qualities too - it keeps fabric wet for longer (important when dye-painting silk for example) and if you dilute dyes with it it helps to get even-coloured pales and pastels. It even makes fuchsia behave! I would not be without it. So I begin by mixing a urea solution - nine tablespoons full to two litres of very hot water. Quantities are not critical - if you have some urea pearls left undissolved at the bottom of the jug they'll keep.

2. I immediately put my dye-powders into containers - for strong colours I put in 2-4 teaspoons per cup depending on the dye: light dyes (more bulk per gramme) such as turquoise, rust or gold need more, heavy ones like fuchsia need less. Then add a little urea mix (also called chemical water) and a plastic spoon to each container and stir well - the ideal is a smooth paste. Then add about a cup full of chemical water. Go away and have a cup of coffee, prepare your fabric if you haven't already done so but leave the mixes time to dissolve. If you're not sure, stir - if there's anything solid on the spoon it means the dye is not thoroughly dissolved so stir and leave some more (you can also strain through an old pair of tights to remove undissolved dye but I've never had to do that yet). The advantage of working with dye solutions rather than with powders are firstly that it makes the whole process safer (you spend less time risking inhaling the powders) and secondly it gives you easier control over shading the colours.

3. Mix up the soda ash solution: approx 8 tablespoons per two-litre jug. I have been known to use guesswork here and not have problems. MAKE SURE YOU LABEL THE TWO JUGSFUL OF SOLUTIONS SO YOU KNOW WHICH IS WHICH.

The urea and soda solutions keep for ages. The dissolved dyes should be used quickly as otherwise they bond with the water. They will keep longer in cool or cold conditions - a day or so (longer if you have a spare unused fridge you can store them in); in hot weather use within a few hours. If you have dye left over at the end of a session be adventurous - use it up by trying different colour combinations, dyeing different items - revitalise those dingy white knickers socks and teeshirts. Whatever.

4. Prepare fabric: non-PFD (Prepared for Dyeing) fabric (also called loomstate) often has dressing in it which needs to be removed or the fabric can't take up the dye: scour in hot water plus detergent; you can also improve matters by adding a handful of soda to the wash water. You can do this bit in the washing-machine but leave out the soda. Rinse thoroughly (in the machine is fine). If you rinse by hand, adding a tiny drop of baby shampoo or washing-up liquid to the final rinse will help the dye to penetrate difficult fibres such as wadding (batting in the US). I also tend to rinse out PFD fabrics in hot water before using as this seems to enable them to absorb dye more readily.

5. Add dye to fabric: in a separate container add the same amounts of dye and soda solutions (the dye solution can be diluted with water/chemical water). Pour/dribble/spray this onto the fabric. Use a second colour and repeat the process. And so on until you are happy with the result (remember it dries paler). If you are using strongly contrasting colours avoid overloading the fabric with dye unless you really like shades of mud!

6. Leave the dyes to do their work - preferably at a warm temperature overnight if you can wait that long. It's possible to leave them for too short a time but you're unlikely to leave them too long (I once found some dyeing fabric shoved into an invisible corner that had been sitting there for a couple of weeks and it was fine though I wouldn't want to risk it with silk which rots more easily). Then rinse, first in cold water to remove the soda ash, then in hot to remove excess dye.
Then wash in really hot water and detergent (the milder kind without added whiteners which could bleach your fabric slightly). I usually leave the fabric to steep in the soapy water for ten minutes or so - this makes it easier to remove the excess dye. I then rinse in hot water and steep in hot water for a further ten minutes before flinging it into the machine for a full rinse cycle.

I am not the kind of dyer (and there are many of them) who thinks her method is the only one that works. It is simply the method I learnt with, have continued to use and which works for me. If you're a beginner dyer do try other methods; you will eventually acquire a range of techniques that work for you!

Django in the dyes

2008-05-09T14:44:00.003+01:00

I had intended to post about the fabrics I dyed last weekend, for a series of projects, the first of which is now on the way. The fabrics are cotton scrim (in twists on the top), cotton wadding (the tope folded fabric) and various fabrics. Have got hooked on the combination of wadding and scrim so am trying something somewhat bigger than a postcard. If it continues to work as well as it is doing so far I may well take my courage in my hands and try entering it for something which is why I am keeping it under wraps for the moment.

All dyed with Procion MX (except the cat who I banished - I've been very careful ever since the day I found him strutting proudly round the neighbourhood with bright blue paws).

The purples are dyed with Fuchsia (8B) and carmine (5B) and a series of blues including 4RD which is a sort of deep midnight/ reddish navy. I find I get good purples using these two reds whatever blues I use. Trying to dye purple with the yellower (postbox) reds produces a duller, brownish purple.

Django loves having his photograph taken and he was not going to budge easily off all that lovely soft fabric: he looked so contented I didn't have the heart to chuck him off (luckily I have a good supply of lint rollers).

As a result of working on this new piece (which could end up being a series of pieces) I am having to take a brief rest from postcards but they have already served their purpose of getting me working again.

A footnote on lethargy - it appears that I have an enlarged thyroid gland and may be hypothyroid (a lot of symproms fit, especially the one about feeling exhausted much of the time). Am currently awaiting the results of blood tests. Hopefully it is treatable - according to a friend with the same problem - and I may lose some weight and have thicker hair - wouldn't it be wonderful to look and feel twenty years younger again? Though maybe that's a bit over-optimistic, I can dream...

Feline fun!

2008-05-01T14:04:00.005+01:00

Ok Week 3 (actually it took a week and a half - busy finishing off group quilt for the QGBI Button Up Challenge and it's amazing how long those final stages take) of the "Wake up Sandra by making postcards challenge" This week I decided to have fun, using a range of favourite print fabrics to create some more lighthearted stuff on one of my favourite topics.

This time the challenge elements were to a)draw the cat outlines myself; and b)use a selection of fabrics I've found difficult to use so far:

In the case of this first one the checkerboard fabric (overdyed a few years back) with the wavy stripes and batik plus gold highlights. The cat needed the narrow red zigzag outline to make it work.

This one's called Hiding in the Garden, something my cats do a lot of, especially when I haven't weeded and the jungle takes over; the background's a really mad Laurel Burch fabric that I love but have found difficult to use so far and the blue seemed to have just the right amount of patterning to provide the contrast.

The thrid one is another two-fabric one, called I'm not talking to you - I'm sure most cat-owners will recognise this behaviour:

The mad squares is another irresistible bright I found languishing in the "one day I will find a use for this" corner of my stash and it sort of made friends with the blue stripe.

The next one, called Chat en forme d'une poire (Cat in the form of a pear) is based on my white cat Bixy who has been on a diet for the last year but not sd's you'd notice (I'm going to have to take drastic measures soon). He likes to spend time sitting looking our of the window and is always there to welcome me when I get home. I've used one of my favourite Carla Miller (Rowan) prints for the background.

This one's a portrait of my cat Django, a sort of birds-eye view of him lying in front of the fire with his paws in the air, in the way he's spent most of the last winter. He really does have a lightning-streak belly and a lop-sided face. A couple of years ago he had a serious road-accident - a complex pelvic fracture, plus associated nerve-damage and I was really scared he would lose the hind leg and the paw with the black spot - thankfully he recovered and is now more of a home-cat than a roaming moggie.

My third cat, Pepper, likes to climb trees: I love the way cats go up trees really fast and then panic sets in when they discover it's not so easy coming down - most tackle the problem by doing a sort of controlled fall. Anyway this is a cat up a tree - not necessarily Pepper who's tabby rather than blue:

The final card uses a selection of fabrics - an African dyed damask, an indonesian batik, a commercial batik and a black fabric with holographic swirls I couldn't resist at a show (you know how it is). I hadn't had any squabbling cats so far so included the arched back hissing pose in this one, plus the tail end of cat disappearing off the scene familiar to cat-owners everywhere.

Now feel inspired to take it a stage further and create a hanging with wild prints in bright colours and black and white: I now have a list of projects to undertake as a result of doing these postcards: well worth while.

postcards week two

2008-04-23T19:23:00.008+01:00

After long deliberation, and with a certain amount of trepidation, I have decided to include here the "what was she thinking?" ones, because I think you can learn as much if not more from failures than successes and I would certainly find it reassuring to dicover that someone else had failures too.

The week two challenge was to use scrim: I have a stash of hand-dyed scrim crying out to be used: I love its texture and its ability to soak up dye; I've also used some of what we in the UK call muslin and those of you in the US and Canada call cheesecloth.

WARNING: some of these are downright ugly/clumsy/amateurish but publishing them is important to me in coming to terms with my hangups about failure.

Sunday and Thursday I played with chenille, a technique I hadn't got around to earlier, the snake being Sunday, the abstract Thursday: my chenille technique improved between the two but everything I'd learnt in Liz Berg's class went out the window (lesson - even speedy projects need a bit of forward planning) in the abstract one:

Can't make up my mind about the Monday and Tuesday ones - broadly I think I haven't got there yet but there are things worth exploring, especially the way it's possible to layer scrim and stitch to get a painterly effect.

Wednesday's effort is cringemakingly embarrassing: a real "what was she thinking of?" moment.

I felt distinctly lacking in ideas that day and could only come up with the idea of contrasting scrim with satin, chucking bits on without care or planning: I didn't even realise how unbalanced the shapes were till I took the photograph. Apologies. I think I've learnt my lesson though.

Friday's piece was speedy, enthusiastic and exciting to do, and came together like a dream: I'm not sure where the dolmen shape comes from though I'm familiar with it coming originally from Oxfordshire/Berkshire which has its share of them. Saturday's piece, which I like a lot less than Friday's is a less successful attempt (it went dead on me) at portraying standing stones from the end of the lane where we once lived - the local legend was that a man his horse and his dog had been turned to stone by a local witch.

Of them, I think there's only one that I'm happy about at this stage (and I shall probably develop strong reservations about that as my standards improve. However even one makes the week worth while, and I learnt far more from week two than from week one when I played safe!

The Elusiveness of Memory

2008-04-16T17:09:00.004+01:00

This is about a memory I thought I had. My mother was a GI bride; she met my father whilst doing war work in Birmingham; he was stationed in Sutton Coldfield, a suburb of Birmingham. Early in 1946 they were married. I was born in April 1947. Somehow I had assumed that my father had stayed on in Birmingham and did not return to his home in New Bedford until a year or two after I was born. Looking back this is I think an assumption I made rather than anything I was told. I knew my mother missed the boat (literally) because my grandmother was ill and she did not want to leave; as time went on she then seemed to get cold feet about going to live in the USA; in the end my parents were divorced.

Recently I made a discovery that - whilst it was unsettling at the time - presented me with a slightly different version of events which made better sense than what I'd believed before. Migration records were published on the family history sites and I discovered the date of the boat my mother was to have taken and the alternatives - all three in the Autumn of 1946; soon after my mother would have discovered I was on the way, I suppose, almost as if I was a parting gift to her from my father, though of course he would have assumed she would be following him in a couple of months' time.

My parents had been very young by todays standards, (22 and 23), both from close communities and away from home for the first time, during wartime and the immediate postwar period when everything was disrupted. Though I spent some years of my life feeling unhappy that I didn't have a dad of my own, only a stepdad, and had a tendency to hero-worship the dad it now turns out I'd never met, I can see at this distance that it was a difficult and unhappy time for both my parents and can understand much better why they made the decisions they did.

So how does this fit in with my earliest memory? Well, what I remember is my mother taking me with her to a large railway station to meet a man whom she hugged and kissed; in my memory I had assumed this was my father, but now realise it can't have been (on reflection I think it might have been one of her cousins who came to visit her and my grandmother at that time - he and my mother had grown up together and were like brother and sister - I have a couple or recollections of his visit).

The piece here, however, portrays the memory that didn't exist. Two faces, poised as if to kiss; two faces turning away; onlookers in the background; all done in layers or various organzas to suggest the ways memories sometimes seem drifting and insubstantial.