Vexed by vexillography

Our quilt group will have its tri-ennial exhibition from 23- 25 October in the Landmark Centre in Teddington.  We always try to have at least one group challenge to display, and have successfully had Round Robin challenges in the past.  I blogged in 2014 about my challenge to the group and the quilt above is the result.  No new fabrics bought, all from stash, or contributed by participants.

I have used this piece to practise several different quilting patterns and am very pleased with how it has turned out, (46 x 46 inches).

Border quilting with machine embroidered binding

Mixed designs in one block.

Superb applique dragon by one of the participants (thanks, Kay!) with flame quilting and geometric continuous pattern in the sashing to tone down the black

Feathers and stipple - always useful.

I gave participants these web sites as resources for the design of flags.

http://flagdesigner.appspot.com/#d=3&c1=4&c2=7&c3=2&o=11&c4=5&s=14&c5=7

 

http://www.scholastic.com/parents/resources/game/tools/flag-maker

 

http://scratch.mit.edu/projects/1908091/

Round robin, quilted cards and painting

Lots of small bits of creativity going on around the big project.  First of all, the round robin top.

I am so delighted with how much thought and effort the participants put into these blocks.  Each has a little narrative describing how they reached their designs, and i'll get those typed up at a later date.  Our quilt show is in October this year, so I'll need to get cracking with this one very soon.

Also for our Quilt Show, I'm on a card-making marathon to raise funds for the group.

Sorry for the angle on the next one.

I'm also getting more confident with the painting course, this week, painting in tones on a coloured ground.  In the studio,

from this object

and then at home,

wonky, and the bottle is very foreshortened, but recognisable, from this arrangement

Vexillography…..…..

………….is the art and practice of designing flags.  As a Scot who has lived outside Scotland for longer than I lived in it, I have no vote in the decision about Scottish independence. However, I have been pondering what might happen to the UK flag if the vote means that Scotland will leave the United Kingdom.  These thoughts have led to some questions and research about flags: who designs them; what size are they; what proportions do they have; how many colours make a distinctive flag?

Coinciding with the start of our quilt groups's round robin challenge, I had my subject.

I have started this quilt with a new flag for the remainder of the UK, without Scotland: running red, light blue waves, the dark blue of the Scottish saltire disappearing off in to the distance, and the black hole of “ what happens now?”.

This block is 9 x 15 inches and will hopefully return to me, in 5 months, accompanied by another 5 interpretations of a possible new flag.

Speech patterns

This is the result of the round robin on words that I started with our quilt group about 7 months ago. I asked each person to add a word that means something to them using any technique that they wished.

I've added a lime green inner border ( proper patchwork, using an old shirt) and an outer border. As usual, this developed rather than being planned, hence the triangles on only two sides. This staggered flying geese technique I saw demonstrated at Farnham Maltings about two weeks ago , it's a great technique - if you read the instructions correctly and don't miss out a crucial step. Due to missing this crucial step, some of these triangles will not pass msuter with the points police.

These colours are much brighter than they appear here, need to get a better photo. This is about 36 x 40, but may get larger.

Words, words , words for 2010

This is the unveiled result of the "Words" round robin that I started off 6 months ago with our local quilt group. I asked people to add a word that meant something to them, using any technique they chose. It was great that one of the participants used the Lazy Gal letters method that I had used in my starter word.

I'm not sure that my word has enough definition between the fabrics, so I may go round "bumphly" with some black embroidery or ribbon or something.

Now to put this together with suitable borders......., looking forward to it as it needs to be finished for our exhibition in early May.

Round Robin, glimpse

I'm on the third stage of the Round Robin that our quilt group is doing this year. I tried out a few different techniques in this one, including: pentagon flowers from Fantastic Flower Folding; applying bias strips by using the space on the full presser foot to feed the strip under the needle; 3D strips as used in the June challenge from British Quilt List; copying some flower centres that I saw on a dress I tried on recently - didn't like the dress, but liked the flower technique ( 3 pinked circles, each one gathered separately in to a clump and then sewn on very close to each other).

I can't show more of this as the ultimate owner may be looking in.

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.