The Ones That (nearly) Got Away!

I've managed to catch up with the two ladies who hadn't resolved their curved piecing samples last week and can now show you how they did.  But first of all Lindsey has finished hers off and added some embroidery.

The stitching has really set it off.

Carol is the least experienced of the group in terms of machine stitching but has made a wonderful effort with her piece inspired by a Yorkshire garden.  She has added a satin stitch border and some hand stitching too and may add a little more.  She is now raring to start working on her interpretation of a favourite view in the Yorkshire Dales.  

I'm hoping I've put this piece the right way up.  Jane is primarily an embroiderer and her piece is very much a work in progress.  She has used some wonderful textured fabrics to describe the light on the water in her garden pond and I know this will be beautifully finished with embroidery and beads.  I can't wait to see how it progresses.

At the weekend DH and I took ourselves off to Patchings Art Festival which was celebrating its 20th anniversary.  I can remember going to the very first event which was exciting in itself but on a much smaller scale.  These days it's a big affair with around 200 crafts and art producers taking part.   Temptation was on all sides but I did manage to resist buying any art materials.  However, I was unable to resist buying this handsome chap.

I have been wanting a Green Man for the garden for a long time but have never found one that I really liked.  This gentleman really appealled to me and the oak leaves up his nose reminded me of my late husband and a trick he had with dandelions (don't ask!).  It made me smile so I had to bring him home.   Looking at the photo he looks a bit stary eyed but I don't get that feeling in reality.  We bought him from Caroline Lee Ceramics and I was quite tempted by their Green Ladies too.  My DH has fixed him on the front of my studio so he can look after it for me while I'm out.  

We also bought a bird for the garden from Gavin Darby who makes new work from recycled metal.  

 
Birdie stands about a foot tall and I can't wait to wrap some silk round all that rustiness!  I'm going to look out some metal pieces that I've got in my studio to pass on to Gavin as they have been languishing in there for a couple of years and aren't suitable to use for rust dyeing.  *Note to self - get out there and find the stuff!!!


I've been busy with my Horizons piece this week and have managed to start stitching some of the blocks together.

This is it laid out at Stitchcraft on Wednesday and I still need to fill in some of the gaps.  I am planning to have a day at Stitchcraft again next week when I hope to get the bulk of it stitched together.  I still have to make  20cm square sample (yes, I should have made that first but I made some mistakes so parts of the sample are now in the main piece), write an artist's statement, add a hanging sleeve and label and get it sent off to arrive by the deadline.  No pressure then!

My quilt for the main Festival of Quilts competition is coming along and is currently resting on my improvised design wall waiting to be stitched together.  Fingers crossed I will get there.  It has gone through several incarnations but I think I am nearly there. 

I just need to piece it all together, layer and quilt, add a binding, add the sleeve and a label, parcel it all up and send it off to arrive by 26 July.  That wouldn't be so bad if we weren't going on holiday before then.  Eeek!

Workshops - Real and Cyber

One full day of my stay at the Festival of Quilts was taken up with a Masterclass run by the textile artist Dionne Swift.   The workshop was titled Developing Sketchbooks and we were assured that by the end of the day we would have a sketchbook full of design ideas to carry forward.  I have never been very good about maintaining a sketchbook and some of the beautifully attractive ones that we see around the internet make me feel I shouldn't start because I could never keep up something so beautiful. 

Dionne was true to her word and de-mystified the whole process to the point that I can't wait to make more at home.  I've started on a new one to take on our next holiday to St Ives with us and aim to fill it with the marks I see around St Ives while we're there.  My head is full of ideas for more books that I can return to again and again for inspiration.

It would be wrong of me to go through Dionne's process but I will share the book I came away with and a collage of some of its pages.

As you can see the book is already bursing at the seams!

These are just a few of the pages within the book.  You may be able to guess that we were eventually encouraged to use 'circles' as our theme.  I even worked in the book during the evening in my hotel room.  The insert from my ice cream tub was soon wrapped in scraps of fabric and glued to one of the pages.   These are small steps into keeping sketchbooks but I do feel this is one version that I will come back to.  I have lots of workbooks from when I was painting and books of notes, brainstorming scrawls, and stuck in flyers and souvenirs of exhibitions I've been to but this feels like a very lively form of sketchbooking.

In addition to the live workshop I have been working on an online Screen Printing workshop with Dionne this week.  It may seem strange to work on such a physical project from online instruction but I have found Dionne to be a very calming influence via video streaming and her teaching style is very clear with full supporting notes.  So what have I done so far?

I cut a freezer paper stencil from two commercial stencils I already had and printed through that.  I amde some mistakes with the thickness of the manutex paste and with properly loading the screen but I will know better when I print again.

The next task was to play with breakdown printing.  I worked from 3 screens.

This first one is done in the style of Kerr Grabowski with lots of found objects.  

This second one is just the dye paste and ghost images left on the screen after I had taken off the freezer paper stencil.

This final one is from Dionne's instructions and is on a home made screen made from a picture frame and net curtain.  It didn't have as much tension as the commercial frames but it did work quite well.

And the results.....

I quite like these ghostly images from the gingko screen.   They could make interesting backgrounds.

More interesting marks here although they are loaded in the wrong order.  They should go from pale to strong as the dye paste released more of the dye on the screen.

The three from 'Dionne's' screen made first with clear dye paste and then with coloured dye paste.  The top image shouldn't be blue at all, I couldn't get rid of the blue cast my camera gave it.  I am pretty certain the lack of tension in the screen meant that these prints are not as strong so I will do some more using a proper screen.

I have several more processes to try as part of this online workshop but I have already learned a lot about the thickness of the dye paste and the fabrics I used.  Next step is some overprinting with a different texture of mark.  

I got very excited by these prints on silk, even though some of the marks resulted from the cloth flapping over on itself when I moved it to the airer to dry, but, sadly they all but washed out when I rinsed everything.  I think that's because I batched the cloth in the airing cupboard and didn't steam the silk.  Oh well, better luck next time!

Going back to the Festival of Quilts I was delighted to get my quilt back on Thursday morning, most particularly because it had been well packed and survived the journey (Many thanks to the organisers for its safe return).  Pinned to the back of the quilt was the 'Comments' envelope which I opened with some trepidation as I had strayed into mixed media as much as art quilting.  

 I got mostly 'Good's' and some 'Excellent's' and good comments so I am a very happy bunny.  (Just wish I could read the last word in the Comments on the bottom sheet.  I'm going to try and make an early start on next year's entry so that this time I know what I'm doing before I fill the final form in!  Why don't you join me and have a go?  It's a wonderful feeling to see your quilt hanging up with everyone else's and believe me, beginners do very well.  The quilters are the Festival of Quilts and noone says yay or nay, all quilts entered are hung.  Have a go!  You know you want to!

Festival of Quilts 2

My favourite exhibition stands:

Kate Dowty's work inspired by the coast and country of the Jurassic Coast.

 It Happens: Heavy metal - featuring the work of Gillian Arkley, Rose Stanley, Chris Dixon and Anne Tuck.  If you follow the link and scroll to the bottom there are links to all the It Happens: Heavy Metal pieces.

A glimpse of a corner of Pauline Burbidge's Retrospective. 

I was very impressed by the work of the Graduate Showcase.

Above is the work of Sarah Stewart who graduated from Duncan of Jordanstone College and who won the BA Bursary Award from Twisted Thread at Festival.

I was very attracted to the work of Katie Allerston above, especially the transparent layering and the textures in the barklike layers.

I had a lovely chat with Nadine Reid who made the pieces above and it was interesting to see her samples too.

I do not have the details of the artist above.

Enough!  I hear you cry!  A little more soon.....

Festival Of Quilts

I think I may well have a bit more to blog about our holiday but as I was at Festival of Quilts last week I thought I should show you the images from there while they are still fresh.

I went across to Birmingham for three days of the Show but one day was spent in a workshop with Dionne Swift, more of which later.  There were less individual, as in entered for the competitions, quilts this year but the quality was very high imho.  I particularly enjoyed the main exhibitions stands this year, although I still didn't manage to get round all of them.

Bragging first, I was really pleased that my own quilt had arrived safely and was hanging reasonably straight,

Mine is on the left and is hanging next to Sue Turner's Lime Avenue about the trees at Calke Abbey which won the Judge's Choice award. 

This exquisite little quilt titled 'Autumn' by Hilary Drake was a prize winner in the Miniature Group.  Can you believe the size of those strips and flying geese?

The concertina book above is by Sandra Wyman and is titled Land/Sea.  It features two views, land from sea and sea from land based on Northumberland coast maps, topography and colour.  The book alongside is by Marjory McKinven and explores Hips and Haws in applique, machine and hand stitching.

Luke Daymond, son of Angela Daymond, won third prize in Young Quilters age 12 to 16 years.

My dear friend Pam Pardoe from Art & Stitch in Peterborough entered 'Twenty Pieces of 8' above.

I love the use of breakdown printing and paper lamination in this quilt 'Eye of the Storm' by Sarah Welsby.

Angela Daymond's 'A Natural Landscape' quilt using her own plant-dyed fabrics.  

These wonderfully joyful trees were the work of French schoolchildren aged 5 to 14 years on a theme of 'Leaves'.

The quilts above were the result of a fabric exchange between members of the Quilters Guild of the British Isles and the Patchwork Gilde Deutschland.  Participants exchanged 4/6 fat quarters or a metre equivalent from their stash in a blind swap and could then add to it from their own stash.  30 quilts were chosen from 101 entries.

Life Map by Jackie Shackson, Cardiff.

Sea-Edges by Sandra Wyman with detail below.  This quilt was started at Summer School with Jo Budd last year and I was delighted to see it finished with such a variety of stitching.

 

Above and below Quilt Creations including below right, 'Pearly Girly' by Caroline Brown.

 Above, Sukeroku Paper Kimono by Elizabeth Crothers.  Elizabeth says of her creation 'In Kabuki theatre Sukeroku's Mother makes him a paper kimono so that he could ot fight or go to war'.

This fabulously textured quilt by Janine Visser of the Netherlands titled 'Lichen' was the Judge's Choice in the Art Quilt section.  

I havn't touched on the exhibiton stands yet or my workshop so I'll be back soon with more.