Wednesday Pear

Pear
Originally uploaded by crafty mathea

It is Wednesday again, and time for playing with the Art Quilt Workbook. I'm taking my own sweet time here, doing just a little bit each week, because I'm working towards a deadline on another project. I've decided not to get all stressed out about this, though, but to take time to play and have fun. I have just been cutting and fusing today, no sewing at all, as my machine was giving me a lot of trouble yesterday. I think it needs a good cleaning and oiling session before I sew anything at all. I'll get to that later, but for now I have some hand stitching to get to. More from the Wednesday Workbook project here.

New book, new inspiration

It's finally arrived! Ever since I first heard that Jane Brocket was writing a quilting book, I have been looking forward to holding it in my hands. Her previous blog "Yarnstorm" was one of the first blogs I started following when I stumbled into blogland years ago and I have been enjoying her way with words and her beautiful photos of knitting, fabrics, quilts, flowers and sumptuous cakes ever since. Jane has published several books already, and I have enjoyed them all, and being a quilter, this was another one I just had to have. And it doesn't disappoint.

You know that a quilt book is working for you when you have to stop reading mid-sentence to start pulling fabric out of your stash! But the book is well worth reading and full of great pictures of the 15 quilts presented. They are fairly simple quilts - mainly squares and strips -but the way Jane has made her fabric choices work together, make them much more sophisticated than you would have thouht from looking at sketches of the layouts of the quilts. The book would be a great one for a beginning quilter, giving lots of sound advice about buying fabric and how to approach the quiltmaking process. But it is also a very good read, and full of inspiration for long-time quilters such as myself when she talks about the story behind each of her quilts: what inspired the quilt, how she went about choosing her fabrics, where she found them and who they are by (something we quilters always want to know, right?), how she made them, how she changed her mind during the process, removed some fabrics, added new ones etc. I think this book would give new quilters a boost of confidence - learning that great quilts don't always get thrown together by a snap of your fingers, but that you actually might have to let go of your initial ideas and change direction during the process of choosing fabrics and shapes, and that it is perfectly all right to do so.

All in all this is a very enjoyable book, and if only I find the time to actually make them, it will inspire me to make several quilts in future. Or at least dream up several more quilts I want to make, and thats half the fun of quiltmaking, isn't it? -)

Workbook Wednesday Chapter 2 - Perspective

Chapter 2 - Perspective
Originally uploaded by crafty mathea

Yay, I have got to the sewing part of Workbook Wednesday now, and yesterday I managed to ge my batting and backing sorted out and cut to the right sizes and started pulling out fabrics to use for the projects in the workbook. We will be making several small quilts (9 x 12) and this way I should have everything I need at the ready when I can grab a moment to do one of the exercises. I have decided on windows as a theme, and in this perspective excercise I'm looking out, as you can see...
I found a quiet background, and I suppose this choice means going with a more Tuscan colourway than the blue/teal/green I had in mind at first, but we'll see as I get going - things may change...

Furrows

furrows2
Originally uploaded by crafty mathea

I'm keeping myself busy, alternating between machine and hand quilting on my Harvest quilt. It just dawned on me how appropriate it actually is to quilt what seems like furrows on this, it beeing a harvest quilt and all... It might have been my subconcious that helped me choose this quilting, perhaps...
- Or just that I'm inspired by BooDilly's quilts again, except from the fact that I have deliberately stitched wonky lines because I know I'd have trouble keeping my lines straight. I'm also choosing the easy route by stitching one line the right way, then 3/4 of an inch (or so) to the right, before hitting the reverse button on the machine and going back to the top - as little twisting and turning of the quilt as possible! I thought at first that I would just machine stitch this quilt, but realized that the lines would have had to be much closer to get the effect I wanted, so after a little deliberation I ended up handquilting in between the rows of machine stitching. I'm using Sulky Blendable 12 weight thread and intentionally keeping my stitches fairly large and uneven. That's my story and I'm sticking to it ;-) Actually I think I quite like the effect...

Poignant sampler

I was browsing through the digital archives of the V&A (Victoria and Albert museum, London) looking at quilts in their current exhibition and other textiles, when I came across this amazing sampler that I just had to share.

It is a unique piece of embroidery so poignant that it brought tears to my eyes. Apparently it is the confessions of a young woman about her lot in life, done entirely in cross stitch, embroidered with silk on linen in tiny stitches. The young woman, Elizabeth Parker, was born in 1813 and was working as a nursery maid when she committed her thoughts to fabric.

According to the description on the web-page:

“She describes what she sees as her own weaknesses and sins, and the trials she had to face from employers who treated her 'with cruelty too horrible to mention', in this deeply personal confession of her temptation to suicide. As the text continues her desperation increases, '..which way can I turn oh whither must I flee to find the Lord wretch wretch that I am …what will become of me ah me what will become of me'.”

I find it amazing that she would choose to use fabric and thread to express her thoughts. The slowness of the process must have given her time to work out what she wanted to say, and weigh her words accordingly, and still she felt the urge to pour it all out for the world to see. Or maybe her choice of medium actually made it more private than a journal would have been for her? I’m thinking that maybe a woman’s embroidery held so little significance for her contemporaries, that it was the best way of keeping her thoughts to herself? It was just a piece of cloth stuffed in her work basket, after all. Or maybe it was just the opposite -that she felt so angry and bitter that she wanted the world to see what she was going through, so this was actually an early piece of subversive cross-stitch? Whatever the reason, we’ll never know, and although her sampler breaks off in mid-sentence with the words “What will become of my soul “, we can at least take comfort in the fact that historians have discovered that Elizabeth lived to be 76, became a schoolteacher, raised her sister’s daughter and lived what is described as “a moderately comfortable life”. We’ll never know what went on in her mind, in those later years though.

You can look at other interesting textiles in the V&A archives here.

Workbook Wednesday

And we're off and running! I have joined Upstatelisa's Workbook Wednesday project in an effort to learn more about art quilting. It's early days yet, and so far, I think Lisa is the only one who has actually started a quilt.

We will be working our way through this book: "Art Quilt Workbook" by Jane Davila and Elin Waterston. The first two chapters are all about colour theory and things like perspective and such. Had I been doing this on my own, I suppose I would just have skimmed through these chapters and thrown myself into the quiltmaking part. But that's actually one of the advantages of doing this with somebody else - you keep on the straight and narrow and actually do those excercises, and there is actually something to learn from having to think things through, do the sketching (I'm definitely no artist when it comes to figurative drawing!), cut the fabric squares and make your choices based on word prompts and such.

We are supposed to choose a theme for the series of quilts we are making, and after a lot of thinking back and forth, I have decided on windows. That can be taken literally: windows on buildings, with a choice of looking in or out. But there are other options: windows of opportunity, eyes being the windows of the soul etc, so I'm leaving myself several choices along the way here.

I have been thinking of a palette for the series as well, and I suppose the jury is still out on that. I tend to go for blues, greens, aquas and maybe a bit of fuchsia thrown in for contrast, but that might just be taking the easy way out. Maybe something more earthy? Terracotta, ochre, olive and pine green, sunflower yellow - and suddenly I have a Tuscan summer in mind.

That's definitely where I was going when I was pulling out these first fabrics, but I do realize that the background here will be far too busy for the trees to stand out. If I go with that Tuscan colour story it might come in handy later, though. I didn't get time to start sewing today, but I'll be working steadily along and report my progress next Wednesday. Meanwhile, check out what we're all doing in the Workbook Wednesday pool.

Get a life?

getalife
Originally uploaded by crafty mathea

I just finished this little quilt. It's not as impressive as it might seem, it's actually a Mary Engelbreit panel and I've just added the blue border. There's a lot of quilting on it though - the entire black background is covered in scattered seed stitches, I have added quilting lines around the borders of the panel and alternating lines of machine stitching and handquilting in the blue border ( a Jane Sassaman print), inspired by the wonderful works of BooDilly. By the time I had finished quilting everything else, the cheeky little girl had lost her perkiness and seemed to be wearing a dress several sizes too big for her. I amended that by cutting a slit in the backing fabric and lightly stuffing her with fiberfill before adding a patch to cover the scar. I hung her in my office today, and my was she popular! Everybody seemed to feel an urge to come over and touch the surface and study the different textures. At this rate I'll have to take her home for a good wash soon! Never mind - it made people interested in what I do, and that makes a change. We don't all have to talk about soccer all of the time, do we?

Coasting through

How many silly puns can you take? That's just how it is here, I'm afraid. I finally remembered to take a picture of the round coasters I made just after I finished the square ones. I found the pictures here, and printed them out on fabric. After a quick spiral of quilting on each, I added binding cut on the bias. Well, actually, I managed to cut a piece of fabric to use this method, and cut my strips along the straight of grain anyway. I don't know what I was thinking! Well, I wasn't thinking, I suppose!! I couldnt for the life of me understand why I couldnt get the first coaster to lie flat and tried pressing it, spraying it with water, dunking it in water and press, press, press, but no luck. When it finally dawned on me that it wasn't cut on the bias, the coaster (the red one) looked a bit worse for wear, but I removed the binding and attached a new bias strip anyway. Hopefully I'll remember next time...

Owl be making more of these...

I know, I know - silly pun! But sometimes I just can't resist them :-) I made some of these for my sister earlier for her to give to her friends, but she loved them so much that I could see she was reluctant to give them away. Today is her birthday, so I made her one to keep. No doubt the other two will want some as well, but thankfully they are easy to make. Maybe I should put the pattern up here as well?
This is also for my sister. Pattern from this book - except that I didn't actually follow the pattern, just had the picture in mind and winged it - sometimes I'm just too lazy to go get the instructions... But it turned out quite well, anyway I think. Let's hope she likes it.

Dog kite

In one of the blogs I visit, Wednesday's Child, Joanne shares her everyday life with a wry humour that I really appreciate. She talks about life as it is, and comes across as very open and honest, something which I admire a lot. Still there is always that sense of humour and the ability to stand back and look at what others might see.

In her January 24th post she wrote:

"I wish I had someone walking the dog with me. So I could have a photo to show you. Me, walking on the street and Riley, walking up on top of the tallest snowbanks he can find. We bring joy to every passing car. Or at least a big smile. A woman with a dog kite." This idea of the dog kite just got stuck in my mind, and soon the creative cogs and wheels started whizzing and churning. Now, I'm not all that good at drawing, but I made a few sketches, searched the internet for photos of snowdrifts and walking dogs, and gradually improved my sketch so at least you could see that there was a woman and a dog there. As I mentioned in the previous post, I admire the work of Janet Bolton, and wanted to try a similair method of appliqué. I used a piece of osnaburg for my background, and stitched my picture on to a felt backing. So there you have it. Woman With a Dog Kite. I hope you like it Joanna!

New inspiration

News items about the recently opened quilt exhibition in London's V&A have been popping up everywhere lately. The exhibition even has it's own blog. I knew I wouldn't be able to visit in person before it closes this summer, so once I realized there was a new book out for the occasion, my finger didn't hover over the pre-order button on Amazon more than a few seconds before I pushed it firmly ;-) The book arrived a week ago, and I have been sneaking peeks all week, postponing the savouring of the book until I had enough time to really enjoy it. A few days off from work now seems the perfect opportunity to settle down with some choice books and a nice cup of tea.
I don't know if I have mentioned it here before (I know I keep doing so in a lot of comments I leave...), but I absolutely love the V&A! Ever since my first visit at 19 I have been enthralled by this treasure trove of crafts and art pieces. The textile collection in particular, so I just knew that this was I book I had to get. In fact, I believe that it was in the V&A I first saw patchwork and quilts in "real life" - if you can call exhibitions in a museum real life, that is.

I remember being particularily taken with this patchwork coverlet (ca 1860-70) on my first visit. Made of tiny pieces of dressmaker's silks it has a stunning 3D effect. What made it particularily endearing to me though, was that it seemed to have been worked at over a period of ten years, but it had not been finished, so you also got to see the construction: each little piece stitched around a carefully cut out piece of paper from a newspaper, complete with news, ads and all. The fact that the maker's relatives had seen enough value in this unfinished piece to think it worthy of a museum instead of throwing it out, was also very moving to me. I have made up lots of scenarios in my head about how this patchwork got to be made and by whom, and always made a point of seeking it out when it has been on display on my visits - like meeting up with an old friend. I'm looking forward to settling down with my new book over the next couple of days to see if I can learn more about it.

My book parcel contained another treasure, very different from the first one, although this too is about patchwork and quilting. I have long admired the work of Janet Bolton, and could hardly bring myself to leave her exibition at the Festival of Quilts in Birmingham a few years back. Her work has a certain naivite, a bit like folk art, yet at the same time they are sophisticated, creating emotions and waking memories in the viewer with simple lines and gentle curves. In this book she explains how she goes about creating her pictures. How she plans the designs and the techniques she uses to appliqué her little figures. I wish I had known more about this before I started my little picture, which I'll show tomorrow, but maybe

I'll pick up a few pointers for the next one, although I daresay I'll never make anything quite like a Janet Bolton piece. But that's not the point, though, is it? I have my own journey to travel and my work will be my own. But learning new skills is never a waste of time. And looking at pretty pictures nourishes the soul. Aren't her giraffes sweet? And have a look at her Three Happy Girls Flying Kites or her Three Ladies Crossing the Wide Beach. You can actually feel yourself straining against the wind of a blustery seaside afternoon, can't you? Ah, I think I need a nice cup of tea.

A glimpse of Spring

Yesterday was the warmest day we've had for ages, the snow has been gone for almost a week and the temperature was high enough to let one's shoulders down and fill one's lungs with sweet fresh air. The sun was out, and although I lovingly welcomed that old friend again, it sternly pointed out to me that I had been neglecting a few things. Oh well, cleaning windows is not so bad once you get started, and while I was out on the balcony I also enjoyed the first spring preparations in the various pots and planters out there, pruning, cleaning and tidying. My friend the sun pointed out to me that some dusting was required indoors too, but never mind, with the door open and all that fresh air filling my rooms, the job was almost pleasant... The ranunculus (or should that be ranunculi in plural?) I bought a week ago looked a bit peaky, with the lower half of their stems grown soft and mouldy so I took advantage of the clean windowsill with all the candleholders and vases on display, cut the stems of and distributed the flowers among them. How's that for a nice little Welcome Spring tableau? It turned out that Spring wasn't all that interested, so this morning I woke up to a world covered in white again. Most of it has melted by now, but there is still enough of it on the hillside to see our Mountain Man. Hopefully for the last time on this side of summer. Can you see him?

Oh well, I'll just stay in and make another quilt backing for now, and enjoy my new quilt books. More about those later.

And now for something completely different...

There's a limit to how many blog posts I can use to talking about the backing of my quilt, isn't there? So, while the work continues, here are some coasters I have been working on. I needed to print a picture for my sister on a sheet of ink-jet printing fabric and was casting about for other images to print at the same time to get the most of the fabric. In my files I found these fruit crate labels I had downloaded from Dover previously. You can subscribe to their newsletter, and each week you get the opportunity to download images from their books of old drawings, pictures etc. I have a folder full of these by now and have been using them for all sorts of things. The victorian Christmas selection make nice Christmas cards, for instance.

I filled my page with different labels, but I must admit to beeing a bit stingy about space, so I got very scant seam allowances, which is why these labels are a bit cropped, but it was a nice try, anyway. I added strips of white cotton on all four sides, placed all the pieces on a a piece of batting with backing fabric underneath and quilted them all in one go. Then I cut them apart and added single fold binding. Vintage labels are so pretty. Now why don't they make them like that anymore? You can also find a lot of vintage labels and other images on this site.

Elusive stars

One problem with choosing a new cover for your ironing board in your favourite colours is having trouble finding your work in progress on it... :-D

I've been having fun making some intricate double stars from Judy Martin's book Knockout Blocks and Sampler Quilts. They are all made in different shades of turqouise/aqua/teal, making them blend into their backgrounds pretty well. I am adding these to solid squares in the same colours to make the backing for my Autumn quilt. Now, why put such a lot of work into something that will hardly show, you may ask? Well, just for the fun of it, I suppose. I like the idea of having a backing with some nice surprises in it that you don't see right away.

And actually, the work wasn't all that complicated really. These blocks consist of many pieces, and seem very intricate, so I guess I have been feeling a bit intimidated and reluctant to try them out until now - I have had this book since it first came out in 2004, but this is my first attempt at actually making any of the blocks. I redrafted them in EQ6 which let me print templates in the size I needed, without any complicated maths. Then I just cut the pieces using ruler and rotary cutter, placing the templates under the ruler as a guide. I finger pressed the seams open along the way on the small stars within the large stars, and pressed the seams to one side once I begun to stitch the larger pieces together, to avoid too much bulk at the intersections. And the great thing was that they all came together beautifully, and I didn't have to rip any seams along the way! And even better: they were all a perfect 9 1/2" when I was finished. Now when I first started quilting I did it all in "the old way" with cardboard templates, but I have abandoned that method a long time ago, preferring rotary cutting and speed piecing methods, and just avoiding complicated blocks. Now it turns out that this is a method that actually works for me, so I will definitely use this again.

I almost finished stitching the backing yesterday, but wouldn't you know it - I'm coming down with another cold tonight, so there has been precious little sewing - somehow my bed seems more tempting. But tomorrow is another day...

Enough fabric?

I did manage to get all my fabric tucked into the mushroom crates I use for storage (I should look into som better storage solutions, I suppose...), but only after pulling out a lot of older stuff. It is very obvious when I look at these latest photos where my colour preferences lie. I can't seem to resist light greens, aquas or any shade of turquoise - I really need to use them more!

I'm making a dent in my turquoise stash at the moment though, working on the backing for my Lonni Rossi autumn quilt. I have stitched eight star blocks (five of them today!) and cut several large squares that I'm going to stitch together tomorrow. I finally managed to find some 505 basting spray (my favourite) and bought three cans, so I should have enough to

tide me over for a while. That's good, because I seem to have a lot going on all of a sudden!

I mentioned pulling out some old fabrics: I've decided to piece a green backing for my woven quilt, using all my darker, mossy, leafy greens that I never actually use in quilts anyway. I found a couple of yards of black fabric with green leaves, and some bright blue bits in between. I will use this in strips in between the greens to give them a bit of a lift, and to tie all the different shades together, I think.

I also pulled out a lot of old blue fabric to make into a simple utility quilt for one of my nephews - he just turned 13 and suddenly the quilt I made for him some years ago with kittens and frogs is very embarassing to have lying around... I've decided to make a blue quilt: just big squares, with the occasional dash of orange, and just back it with orange fleece (blue and orange are the colours of his favourite football team) - cool enough for a young man, yet warm enough for a chilly night. Hm, this might just mean that I'm setting myself up for a new round of quiltmaking - the other five might want new ones too... Oh well, that will keep me busy for a while, I guess!

But where does it all go?

Scattered

I seem to be all over the place, crafting wise, these days. I pick up one thing, work on it for a while, sigh, put it down and go for something else. I can't seem to settle down to working on one thing for long enough to actually make any progress. Now, winter is not really my kind of season, and it has been a long and cold one this year. I just want to bury myself under a heap of blankets not to resurface until Spring. Of course, that is an urge I cannot give in to - one has to make a living, and that means actually showing up for work ;-)

Oh well, time to pull myself together, isn't it? Working on lots of little bits and pieces the way I've been doing creates a lot of mess: patterns pulled out, stuffed half heartedly almost back, but not quite.. Knitting needles and wool migrating from its basket, ribbons, floss, fabric - I tell you: the stuff gets everywhere!

So today was my first designated clean-up day in a while. I've been sorting through my stash of fancy yarns - I realized that I need to find some one- or two-skein patterns to make a dent in that stash (and I don't even think of myself as a knitter - why did I buy it all?). I resisted the urge to start looking for patterns while I was sorting though - keep your nose to the grindstone girl...

I'm happy to say that things are looking much better now. My ribbons are wound up and placed in a pretty little tin I just had to have, but never found a use for, magazines are lined up in new magazine files and stacks of fabric from recent projects and newly purchased ones are sorted, ready to be put away.

I'm planning to "prune" my stash of old fabric by making some utility quilts for family members - big squares and fleece backing - just something quick and easy to keep them warm through the rest of this intermittent winter. Then I might actually find room for my recent purchases...

I'll see how much of it I actually manage to find room for now, though, and then I'll settle in a cozy corner with some ofmy ongoing projects and see if I actually may finish some of them, and then I just might share with you what they all are... Riveting, stuff, isn't it? :-D

Woven

After a very unproductive period, I managed to get my quilt top together this weekend. It still needs a border (black), but at least I can give a preview of sorts. I find it difficult to photograph large quilts, because there isn't much wall space to hang them from, but I think I might have come up with a solution - I'll let you know. For now, I just draped this top over the bookshelf without moving stuff away, but you get the idea. This is made from a designer roll of 2 1/2 " strips from Westminster Fabrics. It's all florals designed by Philip Jacobs. I just stitched two and two half strips together (to get more variety than if I had stitched the whole strips together), and cut them up to make fourpatches. I think the black edges set them off nicely, and I really like the woven effect you get at a distance.

I'm thinking of piecing the back from my stash of green fabrics. What do you think? There are several there which never seem to be just the right green for whatever I'm working on, so it might be a good way of pressing them into service. I think green would be OK as a complement to all those florals - you need some foilage to go with them, right? And since there are all sorts of greens in the florals, I have an idea that I might make this work.

Woo hoo!

Woo hoo
Originally uploaded by crafty mathea

Meet my new little friends. They are just flying through, on their way to my little sis. She suddenly got this bee in her bonnet about needing some feathered friends as gifts for her college friends, and who does one turn to when such needs arise? The Crafty Sister, of course ;-)
Actually, making them was a delight, from getting the idea, to going through several drafts to get the look I wanted, and then trying to translate that into these finished critters.
Oh, and in case you didn't guess: they are supposed to be owls!

And I never learn...

... that stating on the blog that "tomorrow I will make..." is the best way of making sure that it doesn't happen! Sure enough, I woke up the next day feeling terrible, and spent most of my time Sunday through Tuesday sneezing and coughing, huddled under a quilt on the sofa, watching some 28 episodes or so of Friends. So, at least I've gone through the whole boxed set of DVDs now, but not done as much sewing as I had planned. I did spend some time at the sewing machine, though, so I've finished adding the black strips to my blocks. So as not to jinx it, I'll say nothing about stitching them together until it is actually done.
Not today, though, I will do a bit of hand stitching while listening to my new favourite CD: "The Sea" by Corinne Bailey Rae - love it!