Losing my Muse!

I've lost my Muse.....hopefully only temporarily. Such a frustrating experience, to go into my sewing room with no ideas or inspiration as to what I'm going to do!! I think I'm suffering from some sort of "overload". All those photographs and sketches I produced at Dungeness, and then going to the Festival of Quilts in Birmingham, and trying to remember all the wonderful art quilts I saw there has just fried my brain!!

Fortunately, I think I may have discovered an antidote to all this frantic "input". I've recently been following a blog called spiritcloth.com which is all about a much more meditative and thoughtful approach to stitch and art cloth. Obviously a far slower technique to what I'm used to, but I've produced a couple of pieces of work that have given me a surprising feeling of satisfaction. I don't think that they have necessarily been that successful as stand alone art works, but they have calmed my mind and helped to quell that feeling of panic. One piece has been produced as a possible entry for a challenge that I'm hoping to take part in, so for that reason I'm only showing a small part of it. The challenge is to produce a small quiltlet entitled "Childhood Memories", and I have to say that using this slower, meditative approach has  been really helpful. A very personal memory map, and something that seemed to evolve as I slowly stitched and "remembered".

This second piece was inspired by the view from my sewing room window, all the lush greens in our garden and beyond. I just picked small bits of fabric from my "bits" box, and then hand stitched them down, allowing their shapes and patterns to dictate how and where I stitched.  Hopefully this slower pace of working will give my Muse a chance to recover and return, with a fully charged battery!!!

Meeting other Artists

Today I had the pleasure of sharing "a selling space" with Oliver Lett, a very talented young artist. He paints funky dogs, cats and London Scenes, and is also awaiting the publication of a new childrens' book that he has illustrated. Visit his website http://www.oliverlett.co.uk/  We were at a the Epsom Downs Trainers Day at the invitation of Jackie Kahn, the owner of the Corner Gallery in Carshalton Beeches, Surrey. Both myself and Ollie have exhibited very successfully at Jackie's gallery, but it was good to take our art out to the masses for a change.

Out and About.

Two more observations from my sketch book. The first I made  recently while sitting on the beach at East Wittering as the tide was coming in. The second was made in Dungeness, Kent, and is a study of the late Brian Yales cottage and garden. There are some amazing sculptures and artworks in his garden, but too difficult to see properly or to reproduce in a sketch like this. I have just drawn some very vague shapes in the foreground to indicate where a few of these amazing pieces are.

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• Dungeness nature reserve: Secret life of Britain's only desert (telegraph.co.uk)

Reference material.

Photos of rocks on the beach at Pett Level, East Sussex. I just love the colours and markings, good references for future textile work. Below is a sketch I made from another piece of rock, I should have photographed it too, but forgot as I was concentrating  too hard on "looking".

I've started to quilt the panel that I dyed, printed, discharge printed, and overdyed a few weeks ago at the Wet n Wild workshop I'm doing with Clair and Leslie of Committed to Cloth. I'm not sure yet how far I'll go with this, it seems at the moment that the more I quilt, the more I feel I need to quilt! I don't want to make that fatal mistake of not knowing when to stop, so I'm taking it in small easy stages. This is just a small section of the overall panel, I'll post a full picture Once I know it's finished. I just love free machine quilting, I could "draw" with my needle and thread all day.                                                                                                                                                                                                       

I've also edited last weeks post, and have made some changes to my Autumn trees piece.

The fourth, and last of the Hundertwasser inspired JQ's. This one is also applique but I've heavily satin stitched in white between the pieces to give the mosaic effect. I've free machine quilted three different leaf shapes, and an insect on four of the areas. I've enjoyed making these four little quilts, and now have to decide a theme for the last four months of 2010. Not too sure yet what I'm going to do but I'm working on it. I would also like to take part in the new CQGB challenge for 2011. The theme for this is to produce an A3 sized quilt called "Childhood Memories". I'm actually finding this quite difficult, but I think I may have the germ of an idea beginning to form, so another autumn project in the pipeline.

Here is the finished article from the piece I started at the weekend. I have to say that it hasn't really lived up to my expectations, not sure what the problem is, but maybe I'll put it away for a week or two, then have another look and maybe re-consider whether to make any changes. I suppose that when  we decide to experiment with something, with no real idea of what we want the outcome to be, we're taking a risk! Sometimes it pays off, sometimes it doesn't. The main thing is to have fun though, and to be honest, I'm not sure what else I could have used this fabric for anyway, so there we go!!

Well, I've made a few changes to try and improve things, it is better, still not as I'd hoped, but that is definitely it now, no more messing about. I took Maggi's advice and tried some darker values at the top, and some lighter ones in the distance. It has certainly helped, so thanks Maggi, a fresh eye can often see what is needed.

A busy day!

I've been feeling a bit uninspired recently, so decided to play around with some leftover bits and pieces and trials from other projects. No pressure to create a wonderful piece of art, but to simply enjoy playing! I jiggled the bits around on top of some wadding until I felt they made a pleasing arrangement, and then filled in the gaps with some hand dyed cottons and silk. I quilted all this down, then covered the joins with some black/purple knitting wool which I couched down by machine. Certainly not a great masterpiece, but I had fun, and it's given me an idea for a fure project!

I came across some fabric today that I had tray dyed, but wasn't particularly fond of. Some of it reminded me of Autumn trees against a blue sky, so I decided to cut this section out. Another section had lots of green, a very grassy green, so I cut this out too, turned it on it's side, and placed it below the first piece as a foreground. I also found some pinky, orangy brown cotton that I had hand dyed, and decided that this would look good as tree trunks in the foreground too. That's as far as I've got so far, but will continue to work on this as I feel it has promise.

I wish I'd taken a photo of the screen after I'd prepared it for this print. It was a "breakdown" screen, and to start I dropped lots and lots of elastic bands down onto a large piece of clingfilm. I placed the screen down on top, and then spooned petrol blue and golden yellow print paste into the well of the screen. I pulled the squeegee across the screen four or five times to make sure the paste had really penetrated through the mesh. I carefully pulled off the clingfilm, but left the elastic bands on the screen until the print paste had thoroughly dried. Once I'd removed the bands, I used uncoloured printe paste on the screen, because the dried paste gradually "broke down" as I printed onto the dried, pre-soda soaked cotton cloth. Each print has a slightly different depth of colour, but I'm quite pleased with the results, although I'm not sure yet what I'll use them for.

Nature's own patterns!

I recently spent a day at Box Hill in Surrey, and as we went to sit on an old log to rest from the hot sun, we noticed these amazing patterns. Where the bark had fallen off it had exposed what had been going on underneath, surely the work of some beetle or other insect that had been burrowing beneath the bark. I just had to take some photos, because I'm sure I will be using these wonderful patterns created by nature to inspire some of my own stitch art.

Finished Hanging!

If you look back at my post for 17th February you'll see the pieced quilt top that I had constructed from the hand dyed fabrics produced on my C2C workshop. Well, having looked  and pondered over it for the last few months, I decided against the discharge work on the dark areas, and instead, appliqued some extra dark pieces onto the lighter areas, and then used three colours from some markal sticks to colour  areas of the dark strips. I've also heavily quilted the whole surface, but used the markings of the lighter areas to dictate the patterning, and used sraight lines on the plain surfaces. Hopefully some of this quilting will be visible from the close-up photos below. 

Hundertwasser inspired July JQ.

Here is my July Journal Quilt for the cqgb. The same techniques were used as for the May and June quilts, small pieces of fabric bonded onto background fabric to build up a mosaic like pattern. Machine quilted and finished with metallic fabric paints.

Working on cloth.

Two months ago I started by mixing up some dye paste, quite a dark greeny grey, almost black, and decided to have a go at sucking it into a pipette and then "drawing with it onto a metre of cotton sateen. I had previously scraped with an old credit card over the surface of this fabric using a dark brown dye paste which had given it a bit of background texture. The dye paste was a bit too runny, and the pipette had quite a large hole, so my results were a bit dissapointing and too splodgy. (Top left)

I decided to overdye the piece with an olive green which I quite liked, but the whole effect was rather dark. I was still unhappy with the heavy splodgy pattern, so decided to use some discharge paste over this area to see if I could improve it. You can see the results above.

   

Today, I have used even more discharge paste, and having washed it and hung it out to dry, (bottom photo) I think my next step will be to overdye the whole piece yet again. I may use lemon yellow, or maybe a light blue. Either way, the olive green shouldn't be affected too much, but the discharged areas should take up the colour. The fabric looks more yellow in the bottom photo, because I photographed it on the washing line with the sun shining through it!! I will keep working on this piece until I'm satisfied with it, which at the moment I'm not, but this is what makes it such an interesting challenge.

                                                                          Two sample pieces that I've made and stuck into my sketch book. I seem to be wanting to use "green" at the moment, not just because I'm always attracted to this colour anyway, but because I'm working from photos of foliage that I took in New Zealand earlier this year. The second sample piece above is something that I'd particularly like to work on with those wonderful fern like leaf shapes, and sunlight creating shadows behind them.

Must try harder!!

                                                         

I've decided that my blog needs more input, and more detail about how I plan and prepare for my finished pieces, so here goes.                                                                                                                               

Our son keeps an allotment, so today we thought we'd take a look to see how things are growing and going. I think we may have chosen the wrong day, it was so cold....not like June at all, especially considering that it's nearly midsummer!!! The wind was coming from the north west and blowing an icey blast on the exposed and open site. None the less, there were plenty of hardy folk out there tending to their veggies. While the two men got stuck into a bit of planting, I sketched, huddled in my coat and trying hard to shelter by the shed. I think this is something I really do need to do more often, and the quick sketches of them in "gardening" pose proved to be quite difficult, so definitely more practise needed in that direction. Apart from the discomfort of the cold, I quite enjoyed myself, but maybe I would have been warmer if I'd helped with the planting instead!

June Journal Quilt.....Hundertwasser inspired.

Following on from May, my June JQ is again inspired by those Hundertwasser loos in Kawakawa N.Z. My July and August jq's will also be following the same theme, and I plan a small series of quilts along the same lines. The first of these is already finished, and you can see it immediately below this post. I'm having such fun with these, I don't want to do anything else at the moment so it's just as well it's half term this week!!!

A new piece inspired by the Hundertwasser toilets in Kawakawa N.Z.

                                                                                                      

This is my latest quilt inspired by the Hundertwasser toilets. It measures just over 12"x15", so not that large really, but I thoroughly enjoyed cutting up pieces of fabric and then fitting them together into what I considered a pleasing composition. I didn't really have much of an idea of what I was going to do when I started, but decided to use greens on a black background, and dark blue on white. I quite enjoy working like this, as I often find a more spontaneous approach stops me from being too precise and fiddly! Having put the background together, I decided that it reminded me of a fish/lily pond, so added the simple fish, lily and lily pad shapes. It is all raw edged applique and the shapes have been bonded and stitched down onto the background fabric. The quilt sandwich was then put together, and I quilted through all three layers in between the mosaic shapes. The backing wraps onto the front edges to bind them.

May Journal Quilt, Cracked Tiles.

My May Journal Quilt, inspired by the Hundertwasser Toilets in Kawakawa New Zealand. I used raw edge applique, and machine embroidery and quilting.

The Hundertwasser Toilets in Kawakawa New Zealand.

During my recent trip to New Zealand, I visited the Hundertwasser Toilets in Kawakawa. What a fabulous place to spend the time answering the call of nature, I couldn't resist taking lots of photos, and spent far more time in this public loo than I would normally!!

My next four Journal Quilts for the Contemporary Quilters Guild will be inspired by the interior of these loos, the first one for May can be seen above.

Journal Quilt for April

For the first four months of 2010, I decided to explore texture for my JQ's. Last summer, while staying near Dunwich in Suffolk, I photographed some of the shallow cliffs, showing the exposed layers of strata.

This is my interpretation, which was built up on a layer of dyed wool felt, and embellished with wool roving, and strips and pieces of sheer and metallic fabrics and muslin. To finish, I hand stitched long vertical stitches in tapestry wool, and bound the edges with the discharge dyed backing fabric.

Breakthrough Challenge with cqgb

This is the quilt I made and entered for the Contemporary Quilt Challenge 2010. The title "Breakthrough" could be interpreted in whatever way we wanted, but the criteria was that the quilt be either 60x60, or 90x90 cm's, and at least two layers held together by some stitch.

I finally found inspiration at Denby's Vineyard near Dorking last summer when I went to view a textile exhibition. The car parking area was partially covered in concrete, but had rows of "X" shaped holes incorporated to allow grasses and meadow flowers to grow through. Out came my camera, and the grasses and flowers "breaking through" the x shaped holes were the answer to what I had been trying to work out for the challenge.

After experimenting with different interpretations from my photots, I finally decided to use a cotton wadding for the background, which I embellished from the front and back with some wool roving and sheer fabrics to create the texture of concrete. I then used a variety of fabrics which I felted onto the background with my embellishing machine into the x shapes, and gradually built up the layers with hand and machine quilting.

It was a real thrill to learn that my quilt had been accepted, and is at present in the Breakthrough" exhibition in the Bailey Gallery of the  Quilt Museum in York, until the 3rd July 2010.

I will be there on Friday 4th June, demonstrating some of the techniques I used to m ake this piece.