Quilting as an outlet for crossness

Being a parent to male teenagers has seemed more straightforward to me than being a parent of  male toddlers, except when it comes to school reports.  Discussions seem to be on an annual loop, with major dips in December, followed by a steady climb through the rest of the year to good results at the end of the summer.  I should be used to this by now, but each December, I allow myself to become cross at seeing the same words again: careless, sloppy, no attention to detail, etc, etc, etc.  With some self discipline, I managed to channel this crossness into some machine quilting, rather than immediately entering the verbal jousting match.

I have bought a straight stitch foot plate as recommended by Philippa Naylor, and this does seem to make these intricate curls much easier to quilt repeatedly, although I did manage to break a needle when forgetting that the plate is not compatible with zig zag stitches.

I was evidently not completely  focussed though, as I managed to stitch the Supreme Slider mat directly to the back of the quilt sandwich.

Thankfully I could cut it free and it still seems to work.  Glass of something Christmassy needed now.

Testing, sampling, recording

Having wasted  yet another hour or two looking for a sample for a technique I know I tried, I am attempting to be more organised in keeping samples.  When I was at Raystitch last week, I liked how they had samples of fabric sewn on to pieces of card and hung up in the shop.  This reminded me of the mounting of my samples from the printed textiles courses at Morley, and a question to myself as to why I wasn't using that technique to keep my samples.  Therefore, 

testing out the trapunto technique from the workshop with Philippa Naylor , using folded fabric flowers from "Fantastic Fabric Folding" by Rebecca Wat.  In the end I starched the fabric for these flowers before folding them and that made the technique much more manageable.

The trapunto gives a good dimensional effect when the background is quilted.

Next up, was testing out the trapunto technique on bias strips of varying widths. 

Phlippa has a very straightforward technique fin her book, Applique Mastery for getting these single strips to vary in width down their length.  How straightforward this will be on strips longer that A4 remans to be seen, and may call for some "design solutions."  The lower strip has the trapunto, and even without background quilting, the raised effect can be seen clearly.

As part of the searching, I did find various blocks and bits, that in the spirit of " Found and Finished", have gone off to Project Linus as a contribution.

One of Philippa's comments on the workshop was about why she makes one quilt / year.  Admittedly she is a professional, and makes her living out of teaching, based around her quilts. but her comment about making one excellent quilt, rather than lots of OK quilts really rang true.

Philippa Naylor workshop piece, quilting completed

Even although the sun was shining on Sunday, I stayed in to stitch.   Guilt did kick in… a bit….. but I feel I've done my bit of compulsory being outside when our sons were young.  I completed all of the stitching on the piece started at the workshop with Philippa Naylor.

I love the fact that all of the colour on this piece comes only from the threads used ( Bottomline, Superior Rainbows, Alcazar, Lunatic Fringe for the heavy couching in the central symbol).  The workshop has given me the confidence to try out much more elaborate machine quilting patterns, to use the decorative stitches on the machine for quilting, and to understand that it doesn't all have to be done in a single line - it is possible to stop and restart with new thread.  Details below,

Just the binding to do now.

Inspirational weekend - sculpture and stitching

I have been away to the Contemporary Quilt Group Winter School at Alston Hall.  What a treat.
On the way, I visited the Yorkshire Sculpture Park to see the work of Ai Weiwei , Ursula von Rydingsvard and James Turrell.  Wow, on all counts.  The works by Ai Weiwei are as thought provoking as ever, the scale of Ursula von Rydingsvard's work is astonishing and the Skyspace is a mesmerising experience.  The Yorkshire countryside was at its autumnal best, so the sculptures were seen in glorious light.  This park is on such a scale, it is worth planning a weekend around it.

Iron tree, Ai Weiwei

Ursula von Rydingsvard

Skyspace
Nature provided its own shapes and colours

Blue and orange

Toadstool - thanks to my brother, now identified as a shaggy inkcap.

Toadstool
Then on to meet over 30 textile-obsessed women, all there to learn.  Seventeen of us crammed in to  a rather small room, with voluminous quantities of equipment, to learn about machine trapunto with Philippa Naylor.  Philippa is a generous, encouraging and inspirational teacher, so if you ever get the opportunity to do a workshop with her, grab it immediately.  Her new book , Appliqué Mastery, is full of tips, as well as a full size pattern for her award-winning quilt.
The view from my bedroom was inspiration in itself, changing as the light of the day changed.





The trapunto was a surprisingly straightforward technique, and I managed a whole weekend without breaking a single size 60 needle - Philippa's recommendation.  This needle made a huge difference to the quality and density of the machine quilting I could achieve on my machine.

I have of course come away from  the weekend with another object to finish, so the "unfinished list" has just got longer.

Two birds for two boys

Details of centre quilting

Detail of border quilting

Centre front panel showing detail of quilting ( photographed before final embroidery of bird details)

 

Pieced back ( against the advice of Plum, sorry!)

 

Front, abut 48 x 60 inches.

This quilt has been a long time in the making. It is a gift for my artist friend, in exchange for pencil portraits of my sons.  I did have two abortive starts on this gift, and both of those semi-complete tops are now in the ongoing project pile.  The central panel is from  a design in Material Obsession, with the tree trunk made from a horded piece of Joel Dewberry woodgrain fabric. Then I randomly pieced many, many rectangles in green and yellow.  I did not have enough of the light green leaf fabric for the back, so decided to make a pieced background, against all advice.

Free machine quilted with a selection of threads, mostly Bottomline, and with bird-related sayings quilted into the dark green inner border ( not seen well on this photo).  Other quilting patterns were either quilted without marking or drawn freehand and were inspired by Philippa Naylor.  Binding was embroidered as shown in the last post.

It looks a bit puffy in the bottom photograph, but it doesn’t in real life.

I’ve loved every minute of making this quilt, hope you enjoy it, Tracey.

Results of Class with Philippa Naylor

Excellent machine quilting class yesterday, taught by Philippa Naylor, organised by Creative Quilting and held at The Angel Pub.  This was the first time the landlord had hosted such an event, and I think he was somewhat surprised at the amount of equipment 18 women, plus one  teacher, could pack in to a rather small function room.

Philippa is a very encouraging teacher, and gave us well thought-out exercises to practice machine quilting.  My results are below and I’m off to practise some more today as Philippa is an example of Malcolm Gladwell’s 10000 hours hypothesis.