Big Buttons and Catching up

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

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!



 

Journal Quilts and More Ferns

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:

Finally - Journal Quilts October-December

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!)

Ferns

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)

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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...

Journal Quilts May - August

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...

Journal Quilts

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:

February Journal Quilt

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

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.