pieces and patches and studio helpers

During the studio makeover, which was at times more like an excavation, I found several pieces of patchwork I did some time ago. This is a sample I made for a workshop I taught on using mathematical progressions (I will do a tutorial on this in the new year) - hand-dyed fabrics and machine quilting.

The second is a different mathematical idea - I like the way the shapes form and unform in different parts of the piece.
I also found a number of improvisationally pieced bits. One I bound and kept separate as a small quiltlet (8" square). The colours were based on summer fields and landscapes and seascapes near Berwick-upon-Tweed.


At my friend Judith's suggestion I stitched three of these together to make a long thin wallhanging - a reminder of those warm summer days!


As usual while I was photographing these Django came along and insisted on having his photograph taken:



And for once I managed to get Pepper - who's somewhat camera-shy -


to pose for the camera! Pepper is, without a doubt, the nicest-natured cat I've ever known; he's even nice to other cats, even ones that he doesn't live with!

a couple of new pieces

This piece is called Untangling - the meaning is both literal and metaphorical: at the moment I am trying to get the various strands of my life untangled and sorted out and - the literal bit - it started with a tangle of hand-dyed twisty rayon thread - very strong (it was once used in the making of car tyres) but twists and coils like snakes when it gets wet; it is also impossible to take through any fabric that isn't very loosely woven - beautiful, with immense possibilities but intensely frustrating to work with (two of those could also apply to me, though I was quite pretty in my youth!). Started by simply attaching (machine zigzag) to the centre of the fabric sandwich that forms the base, then pulled out and couched down coils one by one. When I started I thought that was all I was going to do, but when I looked again it looked rather stark and unfinished, so filled in some of the space with free-machining in my favourite rayon thread, Natesh and various rayons bought from Asian shops in the neighbourhood: I find Indian rayon thread wonderful to use - runs smoothly, rarely breaks and costs a lot less than rayon thread I've seen elsewhere - highly recommended. I cut off the remaining threads at the centre and let them coil. It still needed more. Had bought some beads on impulse in the sales and dug through these, adding them a few at a time over a period of several days (one of the risks I run is overdoing things) until it looked finished. Here's a close-up of the beads:

and finally a picture that shows the stitching a bit better, though it is a little pale:

The second piece is called Mellow Fruitfulness (I'm definitely in Autumn mode these days) and is based on a notion of seed-pods (don't bother consulting the botany books, this species exists only in my imagination).

The idea with this one was to try the approach I used with the previous one (do - question - respond -do and so on) but shorten the time-scale.

When I began it I had a very definite idea of what I was going to do - very simple fused cotton in autumn colours on bright blue - and I did get as far as making a quilt sandwich with the blue on top. At that point I started to play with fabrics, tried out a bit of scrim, ir0ned it and placed it on top of the blue:

Loved the effect of this so decided to use the combination as my base fabric. Auditioned various fabrics and eventually settled for some dark rust-coloured dyed cotton wadding - takes rich colour and really soft after dyeing: you can also get sculptural effects with stitching. Cut shapes directly into the fabric (fun - if it goes wrong it's only a bit of fabric and you can probably use it for something else anyway) and laid them on the base then stitched:

Next the seeds - what to use? The only beads I had were too big and looked clumsy. Felt was too like the wadding in texture. Could have made 3D seeds in fabric but difficult to do them in scale. Tried rolling some silk roving bits into seed-shapes but difficult to get them to stay in shape without lots of stitching or alternatively using fabric medium and waiting for them to dry (getting impatient by this time. Eventually settled on silk noils, which had the right nubbly texture - put a lump of fibre in each pod and used free-machining to anchor:

and then stitched in circles to suggest seeds using a polyester trilobal variegated thread which had touches of turquoise with a lot of orange which I thought would help bring the whole thing together.

Finally I quilted the whole thing with the same thread using a sort of free contouring (a doodle I've been doing since I was a kid - it used to fascinate me the way that by changing the contour slightly you could gradually change the whole shape. I left gaps in the contouring which I filled with shapes that echoed the groups of seeds.

I tried satin-stitching the edge - lazy thinking and it didn't work - but eventually used a chunky chenille thread I'd dyed some time ago which did. I used a blind hem stitch to couch it (I'd already brought the dges together with the satin stitch) which worked better than a zigzag in that it didn't flatten the thread.

All done in under three hours (including a very brief coffee-break). This is what the cutting/putting together area in my studio looked like when I'd finished:

What I've been doing - or not!

Apologies to those who've been logging in for not having any updates for such a long time - I can't believe it's been two months since my last post!

Firstly, one of the things I did do was manage some more dyeing:

This is some stitched and gathered (nui) silk habotai - Django didn't get dyed but he wanted in on the act.

Silk chiffon knotted and dyed.

And a length of muslin (cheesecloth for US readers) which already had the white leaves printed on:

As far as quilting goes I've been working on my journal quilt and my offering for the Quiltart "Symbols of our Culture" challenge, neither of which I can post pictures of until the date when they're made public. The journal quilt in particular I found difficult to get started on - possibly a bit scared of what I'd done in committing to it - Houston seems like such a ginormous and important event, especially from this side of the pond, and I was convinced I wouldn't produce anything good enough, so I got myself in a right tangle. Eventually it got started and actually became enjoyable, but that's all I'm saying for the moment... Both are in the process of being finished, so I am at least confident of meeting the deadline.

The studio makeover continues: I've been determined to get it right and keep rejigging and adapting, not to mention some heavy and exhausting work like lugging furniture around (in some cases up two flights of stairs) not to mention reassembling the kitchen units I bought through e-bay which will give me loads of storage.

My work area is just as I want it but at present is covered in stuff:

Ok so it doesn't look very user-friendly at the moment - but there's plenty of sewing surface, places for threads, needles, etc, and the grid on the right is where I'm going to hang all my pairs of scissors: I have numerous pairs of scissors because I keep losing them, give up trying to find them and eventually end up buying more. There's a cutting surface at the right height (spent hours adjusting the legs on the kitchen units - the air turned blue and I probably shocked the builders working on the roof next door the other side of the open skylight); and a pressing surface (the actual pressing board still has to be constructed so for the moment I'm improvising) also of the right height, and a comfortable chair (which is very heavy so I'm waiting for a neighbour to lug it up the stairs for me).

I cannot believe how much stuff I've accumulated: I've unpacked some but still have (at the last count) 44 boxes to unpack:

I'm beginning to wonder if I have a problem here. Is there a cure? Do I need help? Some of it I can give away, but that still leaves an awful lot. Good job I've built in plenty of storage. And there's still stuff in the spare room I'm not looking at yet. Not to mention the books...

However the dyed fabric (loads more still to unpack) is beginning to look nice on its wraparound shelves:

The room is going to be a joy to work in but I shall have to sort it in stages I think: I intend to get as many boxes as possible unpacked by the weekend and clear the decks, then back to finishing off my two quilts before I do more. I think it might be a work in progress for a while yet. What I've really enjoyed is finding lots of nice bits of fabric I'd forgotten about.

Of course the gap in my blogging hasn't all been down to doing lots - some of it has been about sheer idleness, and some the result of feeling under the weather (what a strange expression - wonder where it came from?) much of the time, generally feeling down and extremely tired, falling asleep all the time and so on. This now, I'm pleased to say, seems to be on the wane.

Another reason is that one of my other cats has been ill:

Nibs arrived as a stray two years ago: attempts to find his owner were unsuccessful, and though there were difficulties for a while he eventually fitted in with the rest of the tribe. He's an older cat but of course I don't know how old he actually is - the vet thinks about twelve but he may be older. Soon after his arrival he was diagnosed as hyperthyroid and since then has been treated with a daily tablet. However his thryoid levels have gone up recently without him exhibiting any noticeable symptoms.

One evening he woke up and went to jump off the sofa and stopped - he wanted to jump off but couldn't bring himself to do so. To check whether he'd hurt a paw I pur him on the floor and he started walking around in a very disorientated way. Then I noticed his eyes were all pupil and rang the emergency vet (by this time it was midnight) who reassured me about what it might be, said there was nothing he could do tonight and to keep him quiet and get him to my vet the next morning.

Once I'd made up a comfy bed for him on the bedroom floor (he normally sleeps on the bed but I was scared he'd fall off) he settled down quite comfortably, which was more than I was able to do. Four hours later he jumped onto the bed for a cuddle; I dozed a bit and was woken at six by him jumping off the bed and demanding to go downstairs to use the litter tray: it was obvious a miracle had occurred and he could see again.

To cut a long story short, it was thought he had had a minor stroke. His thyroid levels have been retested and his medication adjusted, and he is now taking two other tablets including betablockers. He had another episode a fortnight later when a blood-vessel broke in his eye, but after his tablets were adjusted again he had no further problems - fingers crossed. His eyesight is now improving though he seems to have no peripheral vision (he gets taken for a prowl round the neighbourhood twice a day - three times if he's very persuasive - which keeps me up to date on all the neighbourhood gossip). He's now also beginning to regain his confidence but I don't want to let him out on his own as he still has impaired vision. I'm planning a fence so that he can go in my tiny garden on his own with no risk of him getting out. His blood-pressure is now beginning to get back to normal. Sighs of relief all round!

studio - before the makeover

Have been uninspired and stagnating for the last few weeks - not sure why. Anyway I decided that if I could lose a large white cat in my studio it must need sorting and signed up for Myrna Giesbrecht's Quilt University class, Studio Makeover.

The first thing we've been asked to do is send in photos of studio before sorting it out. Oh the shame of it! My studio was possibly the worst it's ever been. Partly because of the large white cat hunt which involved pulling out stuff everywhere. (BTW Bixy is now pretty well back to normal but has to have more blood tests on Friday to make sure there's no pancreatitis lurking - luckily the previous blood tests showed no sign of liver or other problems. My only worry is that he might be eating too much of his diet food, though he's much livelier and lighter than when he started the diet. The scales at the vet's will tell all on Friday). Anyway, this is what it looked like after the Bixy hunt:

Bixy himself was holed up under the bottom shelves. My sewing table was just as bad, though, and I can't blame Bixy for that:

Seeing this I can understand why I haven't been doing much sewing lately - no space left!

Had decided to cheat and tidy up before sending photographs, but by the end it looked so suspiciously tidy (for me) that I sent in both lots. Now the sewing table looks positively inviting:

And the storage area looks distinctly improved (though I'm not sure I know what's where, having simply stuffed it all in boxes - one of the things I do need to do is to work out a more user-friendly system:

I have found a home for films, Angelina fibres and so on - at least for the time being until I improve on this:

The remainder of the room is the narrow portion of an L and houses more storage plus cat-beds:

There's a cutting/design table (you can see the paint and dye) plus a stand that holds fabrics for dyeing:

The pile of white fabric in the corner is a bolt-end of fabric I bought from a Lancashire cotton-mill for a price too good to miss: trouble if it has to be taken off the roll and stuffed into a black plastic bag to fit in the coach home, there's at least a hundred metres (the person who sold it me thought it had got in the wrong bin by mistake and must have been a full bolt but let me have it for £5 anyway - no-one in my quilting-group coule believe I got it for that and just thought I'd been really spendthrift). Since getting it home I've never been able to find the beginning or end of it and have just kept chopping lengths out of the middle, though it doesn't seem to have gone down much at all. I keep promising myself I'll at least cut it into 10-metre lengths one day.

Target areas now are sorting the stash and weeding out what I'm never going to use: there are people in my quilting group who might want it, and there's some suitable for children's quilts for Project Linus, making quilts for children in hospital, hospices, refuges and so on which is a project we're involved in as a group. A friend has already offered to take my Laura Ashleys off my hands (though I feel a bit guilty about this as her house is even more cluttered than mine! - sorry Elaine but you know it's true). I also want to display my stash most of which is left over from when I had my fabric-dyeing business, and have some inspirational stuff like photographs around as well as finding space to shelve the books (I have to sort through those too).

I expect great things from Myrna's class and judging by the others of hers I've taken I don't think I'll be disappointed. Watch this space!