Two finishes

Rain at the weekend gave time to finish a couple of ongoing projects.  First of all " Morley Moons" indigo dyeing using resists,  pole-wrapping shibori and some Procion p dyeing with a thermofax screen.  Details of dyeing in this post.

Quilted with stippling and a design learned at a Philippa Naylor workshop.

Then, using the offcuts of the cloth, an A5 book wrap for the Bookwrap Gems stall at the Festival of Quilts.

Interior

All very satisfying.

What to do with a tangle of threads?

I found a huge tangle of threads in the back of my car after the most recent Region 1 Regional day. As these are my favourite colours I didn't want to throw them away.

Here they are on a Little Gem, called " The Big Tangle" . The hearts are an experiment with water-soluble stabiliser, sewn straight on to the stabiliser using a sprung embroidery hoop and then sewn on to this piece with invisible thread. The little hands were made with polymer clay and a push-out mould - a bit fiddly but good fun.

Reuse and recycle

My older son's school has been gathering fruit net bags to use in an art installation this term. I love the orange colour of the bags used for citrus fruit and wanted to make a little journal quilt with them. Many thoughts have gone in to this one, but particularly the pressure on young women to spend a fortune on wedding dresses that they will wear once.

In the spirit of recycling, the net is filled with scraps of offcuts from the birds quilt. The dress has machine trapunto behind it, and the upper torso is free-machine stitched onto the background calico. The words are written on with a pigma pen in red. I've left the bottom of the dress and the end of the quilt as a raw edge to give a bit of movement. I quilted round the edge and then added a few more wobbly contours for a play on body / geographical contours. The wording on the left side says "how many times will she get to wear that?", and on the right says " reduce, re-use, recycle, re-make, revamp, repair".

I quite like this, but my drawing skills need more work! This one is off to the Little Gems fundraiser.