Journal quilts continued, August, Brexit - has all hope gone?

Newspaper painted with a mix of red, white and blue giving a murky grey.

Flash of yellow fabric to celebrate the Liberal Democrat win in the Brecon and Radnorshire by-election, and to represent the conservative party majority of 1 in the House of Commons.

EU stars and blue thread showing inter-connectedness of 'just-in-time" delivery and manufacturing across the EU which the UK will lose access to if Brexit happens on 31 October.

Edged with black mourning ribbon.

Journal quilts continued, July 2019, Brexit, my hope is fading

Politics alert.
Painted newspaper backed with cotton woven interfacing: red, white and blue paint mixed to a drab purplish grey. Quilted with wave forms in black and white variegated thread, because the benefits of Brexit are patently apparent in the black and white arguments being put forward,  and of course, Britannia rules those waves.
Appliqued, foam, Brexit blue, unicorns disappearing up their own rhetoric and off to the far right. Note that the unicorns have no eyes to see.

Edged with black mourning ribbon.

Journal quilt, March 2019, Brexit 3

Twenty seven different yellow fabrics in fourteen foundation-pieced triangles. Inserted, with curved piecing and appliqué,  in to a rather crumpled and tired looking background. Union Jack fabric at the bottom, tea-stained and of nondescript shape, dissolving into tattered threads at the far right. ( This is straight - unlike UK politics, just distorted by the medium - like UK politics).

December bling, with golden eagle

The last journal quilt of the year, in a nod to seasonal bling, is golden eagle.

Three layers of wadding in the trapunto, and I think this is the most successful amount to use to give volume without distorting the appliqué shape.

November went past in a flash.....

…. but a colourful one, with this interpretation of the beak of a puffin.

Four layers of wadding in the trapunto on this one, but really difficult to see when the piece is photographed flat. There is a better impression of the volume in the next photograph.

October, in December

Journal for October was an interpretation of the beak of an avocet.

Two layers of wadding in the trapunto shape.

Dashing through the quilts.......not the snow

With the panto’ commitments over, I’ve returned to finishing off my journal quilts for this year.  Continuing on the theme of abstracted birds, the last four concentrate on beaks.

Crossbill.

Abstract birds, this series of four is about beaks.

 

Hand-dyed cotton fabrics. Experimenting in this series with increasing thickness of machine trapunto using water soluble thread. Very difficult to photograph the trapunto as a flat photo. One layer of trapunto wadding here.

Pleasures of a wet bank holiday weekend

Lots of time to quilt

Stippling may be a bit of a cliche, but it is fun to do and works well with complex feathers.

Too long a break, what have I achieved?

Too much going on with the building project to allow much time for art or sitting, but that should be no excuse for not blogging. What have I been doing?

Attended the anti-Trump demo, and broke my wooden spoon during the “Make the noise” part

Enjoyed more grids at the Manchester Art Gallery

Made journal quilts for May, June, July and August on the theme of abstracted birds: swan, heron, bittern, grebe. Hand-dyed, rust dyed and screen printed re-purposed sheet.

Went to the last art classes of the term, here we developed our drawings from here, with drawing, collage or paint

Learned to live with this

Baked sourdough bread

Made jewellery on a two day course with Penny Akester

Day 1, silver clay. A pendant cast from a conker case

Day 2, silver sheet. Earrings made to replace a loved and lost pair

Appreciated the beauty of our water lily, which did not flower last year

 

Return to autumn

Winter is in full sway,  with decaying foliage lit by low-lying sun.

Stitching has however been on an autumnal theme, as part of our quilt group’s A3 challenge on the seasons. My theme is autumn and I wanted to get away from leaves, conkers, acorns and berries, lovely though they are.  I brainstormed and the word that kept coming up was rain. What comes out when the rain comes down? Wellies and brollies.

Machine trapunto, machine quilting, machine applique, hand beading.

Bling bacteria, sleep and stitching on wood

The last journal quilt has been completed, the third on the theme of bacteria. Photographed on a sheet ( I don’t like ironing!) to show the extended, wired threads. A single antibiotic-resistant, flagellate bacterium swimming in a soup of over-used antibiotics. Bling for December.

Hand-dyed applique on commercial fabric with appliquéd threads, some hand-wired, which was much trickier than I had anticipated.

My copy of the book of The Sleep Quilt arrived this week, so I am setting aside time in the Christmas melee to enjoy that and think on how it was made. There is a superb blogpost about the project here.

A visit to Manchester allowed time to visit the Manchester Craft and Design Centre. This is lovely space, with a current exhibition of work by Kate Colin whose skill in paper folding is terrific.

Intriguing work with punched and stitched wood veneers by Jane Blease has gone on my long term wishlist.

From poppies to dahlias, planted and stitched

Seen at Festival of Quilts

End(ish) of July - I'm still catching up with June

Blue-green algae series number 3. Block-printed cloth, hand-dyed background, machine quilted. The blue-green algae strand has 3 or 4 graduated layers of wadding sewn within it.

Now on to July, and I need to decide whether to start the "Seed"series or the "Bacteria"series.

Too much inspiration about microscopic detail from a visit to the Whitworth Gallery to see "Verso" by Cornelia Parker and the astonishingly lush and complex paintings by Raqib Shaw.

April journal - turning to fresh water

Blue-green algae

Algal “blooms” form in both salt water and fresh water, but I wanted to focus on a microscopic form that grows in fresh water, hence blue-green algae.  While algae are needed and are beneficial in many aquatic ecosystems, excessive nitrogen and phosphorous, caused by farm or industrial run-off can cause overgrowth and “blooms”. These can be toxic, particularly to animals.

Hand-dyed fabric, experimenting with bobbin work, gathered ribbon, and chain stitch embroidery by machine ( great fun).