I ain't dead yet

Title with apologies to Woody Guthrie.

Very much alive and very busy, but decided to resuscitate the blog, at least until I have a website up and running (I will get to grips with it one day, I promise)

Busy making quilts for exhibitions.  The Cwilt Cymru quilts in the last post (about 19 months ago) have been to Redditch (Forge Mill Needle Museum), Llanidloes (Minerva gallery), and Rhyl Art Gallery, and will also be shown at the Pierhead Gallery in Cardiff (yes we're impressed too!) in November, after which they will tour with Grosvenor Exhibitions.  Work for the next exhibition is currently under way - watch this space.

In September, the Etcetera group, of which I am a member, has its first exhibition at the Platform Gallery in Clitheroe - 14th to 26th September.  If things work out I will have two quilts plus some small pieces on exhibition, space permitting.  The them is transitions, and the pieces I am exhibiting focus on transitions in my life.  This includes the quilt already shown as part of the last Contemporary Quilt Dislocation exhibition:

 

This quilts was made after coming to terms with my husband's alcoholism, which caused his death.  After dealing with the issues described in my last post I decided that I didn't want to struggle with this on my own, and luckily found an excellent therapist who helped me deal with it.  This included writing letters to my husband's demons, which I did in huge letters on the walls of a room due for redecoration, and wallpaper which I then proceeded to strip off.  It occurred to me that the words, disguied by being written in different directions, would make interesting fabric.  Painted, handwritten and screen-printed fabrics formed the basis of the quilt, which was then cut back to allow the red silk shape through - just as the process of writing the letters had allowed me to see him again and to grieve for him which I had not done properly before.  The quilt, Letters to the Demons will be accompanied by three mixed media pieces, combining painted canvas, fabric and stitch,  Anger, Recrimination and Resolution.  The last was finished first, possibly because it describes where I am now:

 

 

The other two pieces - more painful to produce because I needed to go back there to do it - will be completed shortly.

 

I did promise to make cheerful quilts this year - and at last this has happened.  The second quilt, in the process of being made, is called Moving On, and is about the realisation that I now have to leave the past behind and focus on my life now and in the future.  It relates to a recent walk in Northumberland along the coast between Craster and Beadnell.  In the earlier part of the walk I recollected the past, and felt acutely the lack of someone to share the walk with but by the time I reached Football Hole, I realised that my husband's alcoholism had, by our last visit to the area, made that sharing impossible, and that there was a sense that I was clinging to an illusion: anything that was to happen in the future would be a different kind of life.  Maybe in some ways a hard-won realisation, but one which enabled me to finish the walk in a much happier frame of mind, in the company of numerous black-headed gulls, terns and only a few - very civilised - people.  Even getting wet up to the knees crossing Long Nanny (the stream that runs into the sea) was fun - at least until I realised that walking in wet socks and boots might mean blisters, and I really should have taken off my boots and socks - but after deciding to get a bus rather than walk the last few miles to Seahouses I was able to encounter two brown hares (or maybe the same one getting around a bit) in Beadnell village...

 

The resulting quilt is well on the way to completion.  Reference to Beadnell beach and walking across Long Nanny - but with conmplete disregard for geographical accuracy (artistic licence here):

 

 

This is only a detail, not the whole quilt, which is currently being quilted, but it does give some idea of the joyfulness of it, the bright colours, the strange sgapes and so on,  The two fabrics are dye-printed, the blueish one from my husband's shoes (it turned out to be a good ides to keep them after all) and the red and yellow one a version of my own footprints (I tried printing from my own feet but it just looked blobby and I ended up with yellow feet for a few days).  It's even brighter than the picture suggests and I hope people will smile as much as I do when they see it.  It has been and is being so much fun to make and is possibly the most joyful thing I have ever done.  And judging by the smiles on the faces of Ryedale Embroiderers Guild members, who I showed it to when I gave them a talk on Saturday,  it may convey that sense of enjoyment to other people.  I hope so! 

That Dragonfly!

You may have seen it at Festival of Quilts.  It was also featured on The Quilt Show in the US as one of a small selection of art quilts.  And it won the Art Quilt prize and Sylvia Critcher's Judges Choice at the Harrogate show.  It was originally supposed to go to Uttoxeter in April but took longer than I expected (a lot longer in fact - one of my quilting friends kept sending me emails headed "The Curse of the Dragonfly")  It's actually work towards - hopefully - an exhibition by the recently-formed Etcetera group, on the theme of transition and is the first of a series of pieces on this theme.

It's gestation - as is usual with me - took a long time, partly because the format (landscape rather than portrait) was a requirement for the first group piece and it took time to get to grips with it).  After chucking around all sorts of ways of exploring it finally came up with the somewhat obvious idea of huge dragonfly (the quilt is 64" x 48" and it bleeds off the edge with reverse applique wings based fairly closely on real dragonfly wings.  Obvious but I thought it would work visually.  Ok - let's be honest -  I thought it might look spectacular and people might not walk straight past it as happened with the rather quieter Sea Edges at the NEC last year.  One doesn't like to see all that effort go unnoticed.

Though the project started as an investigation of the natural history of the dragonfly (having been fascinated ever since an Emperor Dragonfly accompanied me on a walk through Wytham Woods many years ago) the whole thing quickly acquire a symbolic significance.  Dragonflies can spend up to five years going through all the various stages it takes to grow and spread their wings.  As someone who, for various reasons I won't go into here, was unable fully to spread her creative wings until later in life, this had a particular significance for me.  Added to that dragonflies in some cultures are a symbol of self-realisation and suddenly the whole thing became powerfully meaningful...

For those of you who like to know these things, the background is simply patchwork with stitch-drawn pictures of the various stages in dragonfly development.  The dragonfly itself is cut-back applique in silk/metallic, silk and nylon crystal organzas, all hand-dyed.  The whole thing machine-appliqued and quilted.  It was the cutting back that took the time.  And I am still finding bit of "confetti" around the house even now

Django and the quilts

This one goes well with my fur...

...but this one matches my eyes!

http://lilypadquilting.blogspot.co.uk/2012/08/the-2012-pets-on-quilts-show-is-here.html

From the Salon des Refuses

The Contemporary Quilt Group, of which I am a member, has an exhibition at Festival of Quilts this year and I was one of the sixty-plus members who entered a quilt.  Unfortunately I was one of the ones whose work didn't get chosen.  I did discover however that I am in excellent company: people who have produced much better pieces than I did also didn't get their work chosen.  I suspect the standard of the exhibition will be extremely high.

The theme of the exhibition was Tin and the starting-point was a photograph by Tony Howell of East Pool Tin Mine, a restored tin mine in Cornwall.  A comment by an historian friend about Cornish miners who had migrated to the north of England being known as "Cousin Jacks" led me into spending some time doing historical research of my own, and being deeply moved by the way in which the closure of the mines in Cornwall in the nineteenth century led to mass migration and emigration from the county - a quarter of a million men, mainly miners, emigrated between 1841 and 1901; whole villages could disappear from the census in a ten-year period; there was a twenty percent reduction in the male population in each ten-year period between those years.  At the beginning of the twentieth century the total population - male and female, including children - was less than half a million.  "Cousin Jacks" took their skills to the far corners of the world - including North and South America, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa. There's a saying: "A mine is a hole in the ground, anywhere in the world, with at least one Cornishman at the bottom of it", and to this day people all over the world celebrate their Cornish ancestry.

I suppose one of the reasons for my response is that I come, a couple of generations back, from a mining family myself.  Not Cornwall, but South Wales, and there and in parts of Yorkshire I have seen the effects of pit closures on local communities - not as devastating or dramatic as in nineteenth century Cornwall, but still a sense of the lifeblood draining out of the community when the mines close.

This became the basis of the quilt above.  Unfortunately, though there is a thematic link to the original photograph, the visual links to it have mostly disappeared - it seemed appropriate to use a ruined mine rather than a restored mine as the main image and the only bit of the photograph I've actually been able to use is the texture of the stone.  So yes  I would acknowledge that it may not have fulfilled the criterion of having a specific (i.e. visual) reference to the original image.  The jurors also felt that there were some pieces where an interest in the history had taken over rather than the consideration of the visual impact of the piece, and I accept this criticism too.

My personal feelings about this piece is that there are things in it that I like but also things that are unresolved.  I think I distracted myself with two things: firstly the attempt to convey a message visually, which is a very difficult thing to do and which I don't think worked out effectively (I have a tendency to believe that a piece of work should be able to communicate independently of artists statements or footnotes) and secondly the decision to include a "picture", however simplified.

It has not been wasted: I learnt a great deal from doing it.  And I do like the lettering (dyed fabric hand-painted with discharge paste), the story of the "Cousin Jacks" half hidden behind the image, and covered with layers of silk organza.

Only problem is - what do I do with it now?  It is a somewhat bleak image, not one that fits easily on the walls of my home!

A Really Good Day - with Wonky Bits!

Saturday was the latest meeting of Contemporary Quilt Region 14, a workshop with tutor Janet Bottomley on Liberated Piecing.  One of the best workshops I've ever been to - loads of fun, excellent teaching, and plenty of ideas for future projects (just need the time to make them now).  You can find out more about Janet from her blogs:  A Quilters Journal  (her personal blog), her City and Guilds/Contemporary Quilt blog, and her teaching blog.  For anyone involved in running a quilting group she would be an excellent choice for a workshop that could appeal to both traditional and contemporary quilters.

For those who, like me, were unclear about the difference between liberated and improvisational quilting, liberated quilting involves putting together traditional blocks in a non-traditional way, with a minimum of measuring, as in much African American quilting.  Improvisational or freeform quilting doesn't use blocks.

Below are some of the samples Janet brought, and you can see a corner of one of her quilts above (I wish I'd taken more photographs, but you can see more of Janet's work on her blogs.  I especially love her use of bright colours and fresh-looking fabrics, in particular her use of stripes - the blue quilt just peeping out in the picture above is particularly good.

 Anyway we were quickly on with the first blocks - stars and square in a square (occasionally pausing to flick through the books Janet brought)

and by lunchtime we'd completed our first blocks.  Being an adventurous group we soon discovered how to make things wonky, adapt and experiment with the techniques, and have lots of fun playing.

And - probably Janet's influence - there was a lot of orange about.  And some really nice fabrics, as in Lesley's beautifully wonky star.  

In the afternoon we experimented with asterix blocks, hash signs, and wonky houses and trees, but I got so caught up in the process I forgot to take photographs.

And we all went home grinning from ear to ear, with a new challenge - to use the techniques in our own pieces to be revealed at the next meeting.  Watch this space!

Quilts finished for FOQ

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)

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

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.

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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.

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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:

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

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 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

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:

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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

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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:

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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

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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:

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 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:

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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:

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 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:

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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:

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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.

Breakthrough exhibition: Spring Ferns

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.

the quilts I made for Christmas (well almost!)

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

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...