Quilt Art in London

I managed to see an interesting exhibition called Material Evidence this week at the Menier Gallery by the group of artists called Quilt Art. Many of these artists are well known in the quilt art world, and deserve to be better recognised in the more general art world.

Sara Impey’s work focused again on the historical value of stitch, rendered in stitched text

Karina Thompson had a beautiful digitally-stitched piece, apparently made with Japanese fabrics, titled, Let Go

It was only after thinking about this piece on the way home that I realised that this was the same Karina Thompson who made the long, long, long stitched piece showing ECG traces and Doppler ultrasound images at “Cloth and Memory 2"

 Christine Chester displayed an impressive paper-laminated piece based on a historical quilt.

The most moving piece for me was by Charlotte Yde,  titled “The Ones That Got Away”. This is a large scale triptych, stitched on transparent cloth

It brought back memories of the work of Issam Kourbaj and Ruth Padel seen at the Islamic Gallery at the British Museum a couple of years ago.

 

 

Using the gifts from Norfolk

I am very behind with making my journal quilts for March and April.  Work has been a bit busy and, I have to confess, I've become a bit obsessed with following the general election on Twitter.  

As I am a Scot, but one who has  lived in London for longer than I lived in Scotland, I am fascinated by what is happening politically in Scotland, and how it is being portrayed in the, supposedly British, media.  Surprisingly to me, Twitter gives a more balanced picture of the reasons why there has been such a surge to the SNP, and the wit and humour of the supporters, in the face of political vitriol, really brighten the day.  It will be very intriguing to see how this carried through on 7th May.

Anyway to the journals.  April uses the rust-dyed cloth.  As this was small strips from a bag of shirt offcuts from Lorraine Pugh, I had to be judicious in deciding which pieces to use.  Too late in the process, I realised that some of the pieces were too imbued with the rust for my machine to be able to stitch through the cloth ( a lesson learned), so I had to re-make this.  The circles are bonded on, and then stitched with raw-edge appliqué.  It does have straight sides, just photographed on a curved bench.  I threw this together at the last moment, as the deadline for submitting journals for the first 4 months of the year is on 30th April.  Inevitably, it is the one I like best of the first four of the year.

March was a response to finally seeing some colour in the garden.  Experimenting with home-made bias binding of different widths, woven at random.  Blooms are raw edge strips of bias binding, folded and stitched, all n a background of tray-dyed cloth.   As I have been travelling for work, I had to revert to some hand-quilting.  I tried again with the plastic thimble from Thimblelady, and although i can feel that this is easier on the hand, I am still not sure that hand-quilting is for me.

Found and finished

I find that some textile pieces  just languish, momentum is lost, inspiration fades and the object lies reproachfully somewhere, often out of sight.  I'm therefore trying a "finish, donate or bin" approach to these objects.  In this spirit, I had a finish last night.

This quilt made up from two different planned quilts, neither of which came out as I envisioned.  As it is so busy, I've used it to practice my machine quilting and a binding method applying the binding to the back, and then securing to the front with a three-stitch zigzag.   The wobbly edges are due to the hanging, I hope.  I had some pieces left over, so had made a pieced back.

I'm not sure about this now, as it could be interpreted as having a religious element, which was not intended at all.

Learning from this one - watercolour pencils will not necessarily wash out, particularly red ones!

Improvisational curved piecing

These fabrics have been lying loved but unused for too long, so I decided to use them in some improvised, curved piecing exercises, trying to be logical in my order of cuts.  Each unit ended up being cut to 5 x 9 inches.

Interesting to look at the blocks in black and white to see that the red reads as a medium/dark value.

2013 challenge

I am so glad I got my energy back to finish this challenge.   The successful parts of this for me have been learning how to colour cloth with watercolour pencils, testing out various types of  bonding materials, and actually following through on a theme.  Next year's challenge is due to be announced soon, so I hope it will be one that I can learn from.

Merry Christmas all.

Water back in its right place

The lurgy has gone, so I got out to Henley on Thames, usually associated with rowing, to see the Water, Water exhibition, curated by Kate Findlay, she of the series of quilts based on the Large Hadron Collider.    I did my helper stint with Kate and with Delia Salter, she of "The Shipping Forecast" fame, ( blog post by Margaret Cooter, here).  The venue was lovely, lots of natural light from roof windows, and a nifty front door that slides down the side of the building.  Not surprisingly given the theme, the overwhelming impression of this exhibition is blue, in all shades, with some taupes, greens and flashes of red and orange.  Photos below of my favourites ( and my own quilts in situ) not in any particular order.  I didn't get  a photo of the lovely piece based on Skye, by Delia Salter, as it was tricky to photograph and I didn't get every artists' name, so apologies.

Kate Findlay

Brenda Wroe

Mary Munday ( and me)

Amanda Wright

Penny Kurowski

Caroline Wilkinson

Annelize Littlefair

Joanna O'Neill

Sue Hotchkis

Alicia Merrett ( that's the radiator at the bottom, no matter how much it looks like two lines of stitching)

 

Jane Wheeler

Chris Dobson

Hilary Richardson

Artists' names not noted

Even after all of that inspiration, the quilter in me couldn't resist these pavement slabs round the corner.

First stitching of 2012 - and it was difficult

Our quilt group's first meeting of 2012 is several demonstrations of different methods of curved piecing. As one of the demonstrators, I though I had better try out a few methods before doing my demonstration. Some of these were much more successful than others.

First, using the Creative Curves Ruler. While the cutting of the pieces using this ruler was super fast, easy and accurate, my machine sewing just didn't do them justice, and the sorry lot that follows were the result.
.

I think this ruler could be going to a swap near you sometime soon.

Next using the "drawing pin/ thumbtack" method for sewing circles. Good results and worth exploring for appliqué, but fiddly.


Losing heart a bit, next on to Dale Fleming " Pinless Piecing", adapted a bit here. Really smooth curves on a circle only 7.5 cm / 3 inches in diameter.


Back to trying traditional marking and pinning techniques on a long curve, too many wrinkles for my liking


Back again to the Dale Fleming method, using only one piece of freezer paper this time, beautiful, smooth, sinuous curves.



I'll be taking all samples along to the demonstration, in order that everyone can see the options and find their favourite method.

Words - round robin

My quilting group is about to start a round robin. We take a very liberal interpretation of the round robin concept, and ask participants to set a theme and then other participants can add to it as the originator specifies. We will have 6 rounds in the round robin.

I am increasingly interested in using words in quilts and so have set the theme for my round robin as " Words, words, words.....". My starter block uses the free-piecing letter technique as demonstrated by Tonya of Lazy Gal Quilting. The word I have used is a word coined by my younger son to describe his duvet when the filling was distributed unevenly.

This is the first time I've used this technique and the liberated approach appeals to me.