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.

Wildwood - Part One

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.

Belatedly - Festival of Quilts

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

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!

Busy

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.

Fashion and Embroidery Show in Harrogate

On Sunday I paid a visit to the Fashion and Embroidery Show in Harrogate. This used to be my favourite show in the days when it was run by Madeira Threads when it was run as a showcase for textile students and makers. Though it has changed since being taken over by a commercial organisation there were still exhibits from colleges and makers and groups as well as some interesting exhibitions; though it lacks the "buzz" it used to have it was still an enjoyable and inspiring day out, with a couple of particularly good exhibitions from the Quilters Guild.

Photographs of the exhibitions were not allowed. I'd planned to take some of some of the trading stands instead but only managed to get to Oliver Twists before the batteries ran out:


I always find Jean Oliver's displays and products very inspiring: I've known her since I used to trade in dyed fabrics and she was one of the people who was really helpful to me from the beginning. Nowadays we bump into each other only a couple of times a year when I visit shows and try tocatch up between customers. This time I was very good and didn't buy any of the dyed stuff (thus avoiding being told off for not dyeing it myself) but did come away with a big bag of silk rods and another of throwsters waste for dyeing.

Other favourite traders were Ario , Art Van Go, Colourcraft, Magie Relph's African Fabric Shop, and Bombay Stores so though I kept, broadly speaking, to my shopping list, I did come away with a lot of stuff to play with. I also managed a chat with Kim Thittichai (her book Hot Textiles has recently been published) and the people on the Braidmakers Society stand who showed me several easy and inexpensive ways to make braids (watch this space!)