Obsessed, me?

Perhaps, as the weekend has produced this 14inch square.  Cotton, two layers of 80:20 wadding, 60 weight thread.  All white stitching on one side, and mixed white and blue stitching on the other.  I marked the circles, the grids and the main radiating lines with washable blue pen and quilted them with the walking foot.  I then just quilted the rest freeform.  It has still to be trimmed to its final size.  Looking at it with a critical eye, it would be more balanced by lining up the middle row of diamonds with the very base of the circles, but live and learn.
White thread

White and blue thread

Detail

Dense

Thinking about the quilts that I was most drawn to at the exhibition last week, it seemed to be those with very dense machine quilting.  As the June journal challenge is due, I took the machine quilting inspiration in to this month’s piece.  Below is 6 x 12 inches, cotton, two layers of 80:20 wadding,  60 weight thread and a twisted yarn binding.  other inspiration came from the book, Graffiti Quilting, lent by Plum. I like very much the effect of the two layers of wadding, but I think it would be too heavy and cumbersome to manage the quilting in a large quilt.

Details

Quilts, by other makers

It is a few years since I have visited the National Quilt Exhibition at Sandown.   This year, our quilt group had a group quilt in for exhibition, a Dear Jane, started by one of our members who was a terrific hand piecer and quilter.  Sadly, she died, before finishing the quilt, and as a memorial to her, many of us finished off the remaining blocks.  We could not get to the triangle borders, that would just have been a task too far, but we did get it professionally long-arm quilted by Isabel Compton.  It was very moving to see it finally exhibited.  We are also raffling the quilt for funds for the hospice where our friend died.

The show was much smaller than when I last attended, with far fewer quilts on display.  That did give time however, to see all of those that were there.  New to me was the fantastic long-arm quilting of Janette Chilver, fantastic use of negative space.

Best in show was this masterpiece go piecing and quilting, by Gilli Theokritoff.  The photograph does not do justice to the quilting, which is the story of David, quilted in text across the whole surface.

More to blog about on this show, but i need to gather my thoughts before writing.

Drawing on a coloured ground

I have been very busy with  a local campaign, therefore time for drawing has been limited.

 I did not complete an exercise from last week's class, on identifying tone in a painted portrait and felt a bit despondent about that.  Thank goodness I was more successful with these week's efforts, drawing a vase of flowers using charcoal and chalk in to a coloured ground.

I quite like this as it looks rather Victorian and gothic, which I think is due to the purple ground.

Click… in two senses of the word

An art day today.  First a visit to the Jerwood Space to see the work of  two new artists, in Jerwood Encounters.  Interesting pieces of work, but I'm not sure that they really said much to my psyche.  Then to Tate Modern for a quick art-based shop, and a great photo of the now filled-in crack, by Doris Salcedo.  I can't believe that it is 8 years ago that my lads had such a great time interacting with this piece.

Next to Bankside Gallery to drool over the prints on display, particularly those of Norman Ackroyd, Meg Dutton, John Duffin, John Bryce and Jeremy Blighton.  Close by, the sun had come out, I think that is the window cleaners at the top right.

After all that stimulation, we then studied tonal drawing at Mary Ward, and I really think something finally clicked about assessing tone, resulting in this, of which I am very proud.  Pencil on a graphite powder ground, about A2 size.

Still has many wonky bits ( and I doubt whether that table would stand up on is own) but real progress.  Thank you Sophie.