Thanks for voting, if you did. If you didn’t, make a note of 02 September

Unfolding the Quilts has reached the finals of the National Lottery Awards for Best heritage Project.  If you clicked on the button, thanks a lot.  If not, please vote in the finals from 02 – 26 September.

Indigo, indigo, indigo….

Morley last Wednesday and the indigo vat was in action again.  My wrapped objects gave some interesting effects, shown below.

Wrapped pine cone, linen, front and back

Wrapped gravel, on linen

  Loosely wrapped pine cone,  on linen, interesting corona effect

Wrapped rope, not damp enough.  so indigo did not penetrate far enough into the calico fabric

Clamped CDs. left hand one kept dry and right hand one dampened, calico.

Clamped CDs, on poplin.

I need a laugh today…. and this did it

“Pop” Courtesy of Terry Border, at Bent Objects

Cracked, not twisted

No, not my mind or my threads.  After sleepless nights, an inability to laugh without pain, some self diagnosis on the internet and a call to a helpful GP, it seems I have a cracked rib, in addition to the cut eyebrow.  Not a lot to do about it, except dose up with painkillers and wait it out.  It did mean that I  couldn’t face going to Morley, which was a pity as I have created all sort of interesting wrapped objects to go in the indigo vat.

Can you guess what they are yet?

The bruises are becoming  some very interesting shades now but I will spare the squeamish.

Bike, brake, BQL and binding

An accident on my bike, led to me spending some time yesterday at our local minor injuries unit.  Nothing serious, just a cut on the eyebrow, but deep enough to elicit a “hhmmm” from my husband after it was cleaned.  Waiting to be glued ( superglue has many uses), I finished the binding on the first of a pair of A4 quilts for a BQL swap in July.

 

Feather motif from Anita Shackleford “ Infinite Feathers” , back stitch quilted using Jacquie Harvey method, using superior Rainbows thread, freehand extra hyperquilting in the motifs a la Patsy Thompson added after initial quilting, echo machine quilting with Bottomline thread.

Philip Jacobs, new designer to me

A visit to our quilting group last night by the supreme quilting enthusiast, Izzy from Creative Quilting to let us see her finds from Quilt Market last year.  She also brought along an ecelctic range of fabrics, including some by a designer new to me, Philip Jacobs.  My favourites were the shells patterns in some amazing colour schemes.

I was able to exercise restraint, and only a small piece of one of these came home with me.

There we go…. indigo

Indigo dyeing at Morley this week.  rough calico, squashed, tied , stitched and then dipped in to the indigo vat.

Even the wrapping strings and the rubber bands come out beautiful colours.

And my little pleated piece will be very interesting when unfurled.

Planes of pleating

A morning with stitching friends this week to try out various gadgets including a fabric pleating machine.

Designed for gathering fabric for smocking, we saw much more creative uses for it. These samples will be manipulated in the next few weeks if all goes to plan.

London larks

Off to the Mall Gallery last week to see the Prism exhibition. This is so inspirational, and was even better this year as I met one of my Morley classmates there and so had someone to rhapsodise with.

There is a “no publication policy” of photos from the exhibition, so I’ve posted some links below to a few of the artists who had pieces on display.

Gina Ferrari lace book

Rachel Gornall

Anita Bruce

Fiona Rainford

I was also intrigued by the work of Bea Sewell, who had a tree draped with samples of textiles dyed with plant and mineral dyes. she had some charming miniature notebooks with scraps f dyeing experiments, accompanied by a tiny sketch on each page. She also had a basket of tiny samples inviting attendees to have a rummage and take a tied bundle away. A lovely touch.

This exhibition really stretches the boundaries of textile art: photos of flowers, cut in to circles and appliquéd on to calico in the shape of a DNA double helix; wooden wall-mounted boxes with only the smallest amount of textile in them; embroidered organza strips sandwiched between blocks of glass , giving a completely different look to the organza. Wonderful.

Then out in to the Mall for some very different textiles.

Statue with a mischievous addition in the eye socket

Colour and form inspiration

Finished off with a dash round Anthropologie, with some quirky textile inspiration as ever

Calico bag, painted to look like a jotter

and then off to Liberty to try on the Richard Weston scarves

and have a scarf tying lesson with the great assistants in the scarf hall ( thank goodness I was wearing my one and only large Liberty scarf already).

Great fun.