My relative’s suffering post-stroke has now ceased and we had her funeral on Friday. Very proud of my son, who even though very distressed, was able to get up and speak about her positive impact on his life.
Shuffling through some old hand-dyes, ( in the same colour palette as here ) and discovering some leftover hearts from the Alice quilt, led to an urge to get them stitched together.
Appliquéing the hearts on the tray-dyed cloth
Composing the 7 inch blocks on he temporary design wall.
There was not enough of the variegated solid ( a contradiction in terms?) so I had to fudge the edges a bit and lose some corners, therefore not one for the perfectionists I think.
Not bad for a sunny afternoon. Five years since the cloth was dyed, so hopefully the quilting will be faster than that.
……trying to make sure that all leftovers are transformed in to something useful, I’ve been working on the scraps from the Alice in Wonderland quilt. Triangles and strips,put together at random, quilted with close lines, and 4 appliqué hearts added. Just needs blocking and binding.
Quilting progress on a gloomy Sunday afternoon
Backing, bought at the bric-a-brac stall at our exhibition
Border quilting experimenting with inverting programmed, decorative stitches on the machine
Quilting in the body of the quilt
Appliqued corners
and a little postcard, sent for a German birthday.
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
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!
It helps to have a deadline for a long-term project. I have submitted an entry for the exhibition "Water, Water" to be held in November. Submitted work has to be completed by the end of September, so I've been quilting these pieces by hand and machine. The lovely, variegated thread is by Sulky.
Back stitch hand quilting a la Jacquie Harvey.
Hand and machine quilting side by side. I am really pleased with the even length of the hand stitches, and this was despite a fraught week on the ageing parent front.
I was on a training course this week in Goring by Sea. Coincidentally the premises where the training was held, Courtlands, contains pieces of architectural salvage from a house that was once in Twickenham, Mount Lebanon House. As it is only a few miles form Littlehampton, it was an opportunity to visit The Longest Bench and The East Beach Cafe, designed by Heatherwick Studio.
My photographs were taken on a drizzly, grey early evening, so they are not as joyous as those on the links.
I really like the way that the bench incorporates commemorative slats in to the overall design, a different take on the more customary memorial bench.
In the tradition of strippy quilts, (yes that is strippy, and not stripy spellchecker, no matter how many times you try to correct it), the most recent bookwrap was made from left-over strips of my hand-dyed fabrics, then hand embroidered with colours complementary to the colour of the cloth. The organisers of this project are so efficient, it is on their site already, so this is a picture of the back or the front, depending which way you put it on your book.
It's a while since I've used someone else's pattern to make my quilts. However, Plum lent me her 3 Ricky Tims' DVDs to watch over Xmas. I am now intrigued by the Kaleidoscope Quilt method, and have started a project using that technique.
Cutting the strips is a bit labour intensive ( Jacqui Harvey cushions in the background)
