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.
Last journal quilts of the year, October, November and December, stitched in a flurry due to pressures of work and stress due to aircraft noise.
October, experiments in curved paper piecing. Stitched while on an idyllic two days staying in Lulworth Cove at Botany Farmhouse. Wonderful hosts, terrific breakfasts, more textile than you could imagine would fit in to one house - as the owners say, not for minimalists!
Back
November, inspiration from an experimental piece by Christine Risley at an exhibition in Goldsmith’s College. Machine -stitched threads pulled long and loose on the top of stencilled hearts and chains, with accent of pins wrapped with red thread.
Detail
December, inside out for Christmas. Polyester wading on the outside with pinked, folded circles for trees. Surprisingly difficult to sew through all of that.
Merry Christmas all.
….. in 28 months. I know this fact due to having my sewing machine serviced by the charming Brett at Sewworks last week. Much of that total is due to the denser machine quilting that I now find myself increasingly drawn to. Some examples from the weekend, in more signs for our quilt show ( 23 - 25 October, Landmark Centre, Teddington).
Quilting patterns are wonky Greek key and big toe, as described by my family.
If I got down to 1,900,000 pencil lines my drawing would improve at the same rate as my stitching.
It is a few years since I have visited the National Quilt Exhibition at Sandown. This year, our quilt group had a group quilt in for exhibition, a Dear Jane, started by one of our members who was a terrific hand piecer and quilter. Sadly, she died, before finishing the quilt, and as a memorial to her, many of us finished off the remaining blocks. We could not get to the triangle borders, that would just have been a task too far, but we did get it professionally long-arm quilted by Isabel Compton. It was very moving to see it finally exhibited. We are also raffling the quilt for funds for the hospice where our friend died.
The show was much smaller than when I last attended, with far fewer quilts on display. That did give time however, to see all of those that were there. New to me was the fantastic long-arm quilting of Janette Chilver, fantastic use of negative space.
Best in show was this masterpiece go piecing and quilting, by Gilli Theokritoff. The photograph does not do justice to the quilting, which is the story of David, quilted in text across the whole surface.
More to blog about on this show, but i need to gather my thoughts before writing.
….in the spirit of our quilting group's round robin / quilt consequence challenge, I will be showing only glimpses of my contributions to these.
However, that orange caught my colour sensors, as did the corn husks removed from corn cobs and led to this still life. (Morley starts today, so I'll need to get back to drawing.)
Then more orange, and inspired by the posts on this blog, about studio clearing, organising and unfinished projects, these little cats jumped out of storage, with some bits of yellow, orange and blue and led to some mindless piecing.
Therapeutic for the mind and the hands.
Needing respite from the wedding dramas on The Archers, I've been quilting the "Disclocate" quilt for the CQGB challenge. This wadding is bearding quite substantially through the black fabric, so I'm not sure how this is going to turn out.
It's now becoming a habit to find an appropriate song, and this one took me back a long way.
..to be sent to the fundraising "Hearts tombola" for the Quilters' Guild at Festival of Quilts. These little purses are surprisingly simple to make
and I find it much easier to get a consistent shape than it is with the same pouch pattern, but made in a circle.
(The title is from a song by Suzi Quattro.)
Plum and I are doing a demonstration of making buttons at our quilt group tomorrow. We both did an excellent online course with Karen Ruane two years ago.
In between business travel, London travel disruption, lost purse and travel card and coordinating elder son getting off to a trip to France, I've been stitching up some examples. I'll use these to demonstrate the mounting technique in to the button.
Beaded on hand-dyed velvet, about 29mm in diameter
Beaded and stitched on indigo - shibori cotton
Detail of beading, again about 29mm in diameter
Detail of "buttoned" button
and if you've ever wondered why you sometimes have difficulty threading a needle, could this be why? Image from here.
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Group meeting last night and a cascade of finished tops from our charity sew-a-thon. I think we made 10 tops and have 6 of them quilted and bound. Volunteer quilters, you know who you are, so many thanks.
