200th post - busy, busy , busy

After a bit of melt-down at the weekend due to too many half finished projects, too much craft-related mess, and general concern about Christmas plans, I managed to get my head together to do a major tidy up and get some project finished.  So here they are.

Indigo dyed, shibori-tied velvet, with silk hand-pulled flowers and hand-rolled organdie leaves, so an online swap.

10 x 10 journal for the Contemporary Quilt Group challenge.  disperse-dyed macho overlaid on viscose dyed with Procion MX.  Button from the Karen Ruane course, painted with dye and then attached ( haven't quite got the hang of photo editing on the new computer yet).

Button detail.

Hand-rolled organdie leaves, attached to one of the brooches / buttons from the Karen Ruane course.  One of the participants on the Morley course is a milliner, and showed us how to make these leaves.  i like the idea of having a set of these to add or remove from the brooch as you wish.

Close up of the leaves.

As this is my 200th post, I am going to have a giveaway of one of these that are all now brooches.  I can also include some white or green leaves if you wish, but I'll need to get on  and make some.

Leave a comment, with which one you would like and why, and I will do a draw next Monday to see who gets one.

Did you guess?

 

Pole dyed cotton sheeting, with good definition of the wrapping cord on the cloth.  As a bonus, you also get lovely, dyed cords to play with.

The lower piece is cotton organdy, which is actually a more vivid green than this photo depicts.  It stays curiously crunchy when dry, despite vigorous washing and rinsing .   I might give this to one of my Morley mates who is a milliner and who uses a lot of organdy.

This is my 199th post – amazing.

Can you guess what it is yet?

I’ve actually made something from the dyed fabric

Machine pieced, insert circles, using the technique from “ Pieced Curves So simple” by Dale Fleming.  Machine quilted using two threads through one needle to get a really heavy quilted line,  This one is going in the final online swap of the year

The art of looking

I made it to “The Art of Mapping”, well worth a look if you are in London.  I liked the work of Nigel Peake

which reminded me in a way of some of the mark making in “ The London Jungle Book”

It was also great to see the iconic “Great Bear” on loan from the London Transport Museum.

and an intriguing work by Grayson Perry ( am I a philistine for wondering if some spelling mistakes were deliberate, or are they part of the art work?)
Then off to look at some intriguing fabric in Dover Street Market, above my budget, but no cost to look.
Peter Pilotto, gorgeous silk

Comme des Garcons, origami shirt

Notan morphing

    An exercise in Notan papercutting, quickly lost focus,

and morphed into this ( approximately A4) papercut.

More than likely influenced by recently read  blog posts from here, here and here.  Not a lost few hours, but hopefully will be useful for Morley.

More dyeing

 

White viscose, resist with rubber bands, 5 minutes in the indigo vat.

Tight twist, tray dyed with twice the concentrations of last week’s dyes

 

White cotton, loosely pleated, tray dyed with twice the concentrations of last week’s dyes

Close ups – where did that orange thread come from?

The Art of Mapping

 

I love maps, so I hope to get to this exhibition at The Air Gallery, Dover Street, London(14- 26 November ).  A long term project has been to do some sort of quilted / stitched  map along the lines of these artists

Emily Fischer of Haptic Lab

Shellie Holden

Leah Evans

Design briefs – feels more like twisted knickers

I have two current design briefs, one for the Morley course and one for my local quilting group.  They are respectively, “The Olympics” and “ My local area”.  As I was unsuccessful in the bid for any Olympics tickets, and the only immediate impact on our family I see is total traffic chaos on the days of the cycling events, I’m not wildly enthusiastic about this topic.

I’m considering the architecture of the Olympics, as each one seems to bring a surge of new building.  I wish this design, Ron Arad,  was being implemented for London.

More inspirational is “ my local area” and I’m veering between The Sackler Crossing at Kew Gardens, by John Pawson ( lots of inspiration in these sinuous curves)

and the madness   of The Great River Race, an annual rowed race on the Thames that for the past few years has finished in Twickenham.

Dyed and gone to heaven

 

Tray-dyeing at Morley this week, so lots of guddly mess with precision application of  the Procion MX dyes.  The piece above is cotton, dyed with a mixture of blues, lemon yellow and a tiny bit of black.  Beautiful painterly effects with some detail shown below.

Trying to get a purple was not successful, and resulted in an overpowering magenta.  Not shown here yet, as I think I’ll try overdyeing it.

Toggles

Indigo shibori dyed muslin, screen printed on top.  Rolled in to a log, then stitched at the ends.  Laborious and strangely relaxing..

Filophilia