Abstraction

I have signed up again to take part in the Contemporary Quilt Group monthly challenge.  The size this year is 7" x 9", in landscape format.  I've been dithering about for weeks deciding on a theme, not helped by the fact that group members post their pieces for viewing on Yahoo, and the platform seems to be broken. There are therefore very few finished pieces to look at to spur me on.

However, the snow paralysis n the UK gave me time to think, and I've decided that my theme will be "abstracting nature".

Taking the gannet photos from the art class as inspiration, ( I love watching gannets), I have worked on abstracting what, for me, makes them distinctive: the sharp, streamlined shape as the enter the water; the blue highlight around their eyes; the yellow neck feathers.

Sketching out ideas, and trying to explore geometry in my sketchbook, leading to an almost finished piece.  I'm still deciding on whether this needs more quilting and will add a two colour binding to disguise the wonky geometry of the two  triangles at the side.

Other creative tasks were knitting a hat with beautiful yarn found in a charity shop. It's a lovely hat, but it is not a good look for me, so it is off to a local charity who are collecting warm clothing for homeless people.

Last minute Christmas makes

A lovely workshop with Plum this week, making tree decorations from this tutorial

led to a few last minute makes when I should have been doing more boring tasks.

Drawing and domesticity

The art tutor took us to see a free exhibition of work, mostly drawings, by Maggi Hambling at the British Museum, called ‘Touch’. Maggi Hambling divides opinion, but I like a lot of her work particularly the Scallop sculpture. The exhibition is on until 29 January 2017.
Photography is allowed.  The intent of the visit was for us to study Hambling’s mark making and to study, through copying, those marks. As some of the work was mono printing, that was difficult to do, however just looking at the range of marks on the print of this figure was inspiring.

There are some very touching drawings of her friends and family close to death.

My own attempt at that figure, head and hand. Nowhere near, but closer than I was 2 years ago.

The next week, a replacement tutor catapulted us in to portraiture -aaarrrggghhh!. After I calmed myself down, I’m pleased with this ( A2 size, charcoal and chalk on a coloured paper), as it is recognisable as the sitter, though he said I had made him look much younger.

Stitching for the past few weeks has been very domestic.
Replacement curtains and cushions for the bedroom to replace the “temporary” curtains and cushions that had been put in 22 years ago. After 21 years of family life, including the dog choosing one of the cushions as his favoured favoured window-viewing spot, they finally had to go.
The pattern matching along the front of the past of cushions took much measuring and swearing to get correct.



Inherited Ercol chairs have arrive in our house ( let’s say that ours have more of the patina of age about them). Their cushions were also in a sorry state, so while my piping skills were honed by the 30 degree corners on the bedroom cushions, I could tackle four replacements for these. Not in the original style, but a lot more comfortable.

The swan has also been finished. Faced rather than bound and waiting for the right wall space to show it to advantage.

Resistance is futile

Missing Morley ( term has finished) I wanted to try some Procion dyeing using some of the resist techniques that I learned on the course.  I think,however, my dye stock has gone off, as these two pieces are supposed to be a deep , periwinkle blue.  While the masking tape resist has worked , the stitched resist shows almost no “resist” , so perhaps the thread was too fine.  Back to the dyeing board.

On another note, how can it take 1.5 hours on the phone and on the web to find out if a tap is compatible with a gravity feed domestic system?  Before today, I didn’t even know that technical term.