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.

Felt and Stitch Day

I belong to a Women's Art Group called KAIROS, and on Saturday, four of us met up for a day of "Felting and Stitch". Jackie led the workshop, which we all thoroughly enjoyed, and I've put the results of my efforts here.    

I've done a small amount of wet felting before, but it has always been a very energetic, and quite exhausting process. However, the technique that Jackie demonstrated was far more gentle, and quite relaxing, so I think this could be something I'll be doing more of in the near future. My two samples are above, and as you can see I've started to stitch into one piece. I plan to do more, so will post the finished results at a later date.The group has also decided to make a wall hanging that we can all contribute to, and then raffle in aid of The Smile Train charity. We are all making a 6"x8" panel, with a theme of "The Sea". We have all exchanged some of the fabrics we are going to use, so that hopefully, the finished result will have some uniformity to hold it all together. The only other stipulation was to design a panel that was not too representational. My panel is above, and I started by weaving together some of the fabrics I was given, plus a few of my own. It has turned out to look a bit on the solid side, although I hope that by indicating some wave movement, and some seagulls, it will have a hint of the ocean about it. I may do another one so that I have a choice, but I just need to sit on it for a bit I think.

                                                              

                        

cqgb March Journal Quilt

This is my March Journal Quilt for the cqgb. For the first four months I'm exploring texture, and I used the same technique for this as for the textile piece "Experimenting" on the 19th Feb. The only difference with this quilt, is that I stuffed some of the sections from a small cut in the felt backing before adding wadding and backing fabric. A bit like trapunto I suppose.

There is a small problem though, and that is because the needle punch machine has caused some of the fabric to become quite fragile, so that when I pushed the stuffing in, a couple of areas started to fray away at the edges. Something to consider if I use this technique again!

Last Autumn's colour.

Last Autumn was particularly colourful, I thought. I took quite a few photos of the autumn trees, and leaves and decided to try and capture it all in the piece above.I made the background first, by meshing fabrics onto a base material with my needle felting machine. The leaves were then cut out of a selection of fabrics, appliqued onto the background and the vien details free machine embroidered. I then decided that the background needed to be darker, so I free motion machined heavily with some dark greens, blues and purple threads. I finished off by applying some more detail to the leaves with water soluble crayons, and some hand stitching.

Photos that I took last Autumn, and used as inspiration for the above piece.                                                  

Experimenting

I've been "playing" with my embellishing machine today, and produced this piece. I haven't used it that much lately, and really enjoyed just experimenting, and letting my intuition lead the way! I decided to make my Journal Quilt for March using a similar technique, but won't post a photo just yet. I'll wait until it goes onto the Yahoo cqg site next month.

I randomly meshed the pieces of fabric onto some white felt, and then outlined areas with either black or very dark grey wool. It does look a bit like stained glass, and when I held it up to the light, the colours really glowed. Maybe I will experiment further, and try to build up a simple image instead of just the random colours.                                                                                                                                            

Dyed and pieced.....what next?

This is the result of piecing some of my recently dyed fabrics. I shall be taking it to my next Wet'n wild C2C workshop on 5th March. I'm not quite sure yet what I will do with it, but I would quite like to do some discharge work on the plain dark areas.                                                                                                                 

Saturday 13th February 2010

Today I collected what was left of my work from The Corner Gallery.

It has been a really positive experience, and I've enjoyed having my work "out there" for people to see and hopefully enjoy.

I came home with far less than I delivered, and Jackie Khan who owns and runs the gallery has been fantastic, and so enthusiastic about it all. Thankyou Jackie for all your hard work and encouragement, I'm already looking forward to Trainer's Day at Epsom on 8th August when we will hopefully have another brilliant day.

Good luck with your launch tomorrow of the Jack Vettriano prints, I'm sure it will also be another huge success.

If you are in the area, check out The Corner gallery, 11a Beeches Avenue, Carshlton Beeches, Surrey.

My finished February Journal Quilt. After weaving and stitching down the woven strips, I embellished the surface by using some textural techniques. These included couching down embroidery threads, stitching rows 1/4" apart, then slashing through between the rows, free machine embroidery, sewing on beads, using puff paint, and finally binding the edges with the backing fabric, and leaving the edges raw to fray for extra texture.

February JQ, The Making.

For February's JQ, I decided to tear up some strips of hand dyed fabric (I didn't particularly like it so thought it would be a good way to use it up!!) This was then woven together, some pale turqoise knitting wool included.

I finished weaving the strips, carefully placed the piece onto some batting and machined rows of stitching across and down to hold everything in place.                                                                     

Trimmed, ready to bind, I tried placing some snowflake sequins on the surface, but didn't like the effect so removed them.     I backed the quilt in white, bringing it to the front, and stitching down by machine, I          purposefully left a raw edge for extra texture.   I've also started to         embellish the surface to give a textured finish.                                       

Journal Quilts, 10th Feb 2010

I enjoy making Journal Quilts, and last year I made two every month. An A4 sized one using a new technique each time, which was a challenge set by the Popular Patchwork website. The other was a 6"x12" quilt which was set by the Specialist Contemporary Branch of the Quilters' Guild of The British Isles, and we were free to use any technique.

The cqg is running the JQ challenge again this year, the new size being 7"x10" I've decided that for the first four months at least, I will use them to explore texture. I was a bit stuck for January, and all I could think about for a theme was snow! While picking up all the threads and bits of snipped off fabric from the floor around my machine, I had a sudden flash of inspiration! They were all so colourful, with some glitzy bits of fabric and thread giving some sparkle, and too good to throw away. When I teased them out and placed them onto a piece of black felt, the first part of the quilt was there! I sprinkled over some star and snowflake sequins, covered it all with some dark net, backed it and quilted with some  free machine stitching. To finish off, I found some white snowflake buttons which I placed randomly and  stitched down. It reminded me of a dark, snowy night.

Still 7/02/10

On Friday we also started to experiment with Tray Dyeing. I must have been having a "petrol blue" day, because my first piece was pleated up in a cat litter tray and then dyed  this colour. My second piece, a whole metre was arranged in the tray by artistically scrunching it up. This time I decided to go for some punchy colours, so I used a combination of magenta and rust orange. Colours I remember being fond of using together in the 60's when I was at Art College. Today, I ripped half of the pleated piece in half, and have overdyed it in the tray again with three more colours! I've done the same with the metre piece, and divided it into three, keeping one as the original colour, but tray dyeing the other two with a different selection of

dyes. They are still sitting in their dye solutions, so I'm hoping for some exciting results this time. More later!

Results of overdyeing Sunday 7th Feb 2010

It was a difficult decision, deciding what colour to over-dye my fist nine fat quarters. The first colour was a mixture of royal blue and turquoise, in light, medium and dark. I did think about golden yellow which would have resulted in some greens going thru to blue/green and of course yellow and blue. Nice. Then again, I considered orange, giving me some interesting dirty greens, greygreens/blues and ofcourse orange and blue. Interesting. In the end I went for petrol blue with a small pinch of lemon yellow. As you can see this mixture has given me a range of teal blues, grey blues, very dark blue greys and ofcourse the original blues. I do quite like them, but I think I was playing a bit too safe.

Friday 5th Feb 2010

I've had a great day today, over-dyeing the fabrics from last month, (see below) and they don't look like that any more!! Will be washing them over the weekend, so no pics yet. Also did some tray dyeing, and I think it's going to be one of my favourite techniques, pics of those pieces too coming later! watch this space.

Thursday 4th Feb 2010 Committed 2 Cloth

I'm looking forward to tomorrow, Friday, my second Wet'n'Wild workshop with Claire Benn and Leslie Morgan of C2C. Last month we spent the day learning about dyes, how they react according to temperature, water softness, room humidity etc., and the use of chemicals such as soda ash, urea and salt.

We completed stage one of our family dyeing session, and produced twelve fat quarters, dyed to a colour of our choice, but in three values. That meant that we each ended up with four fat quarters in one of three values of our chosen colour. This process was done in buckets. I decided to go for a mixture of turquoise and royal blue, because I had this idea in my head of going for a range of seaside colours.

Tomorrow, we will be overdyeing some of these pieces, and to give me the seaside colours I want, I shall probably go for a yellow ochre shade, giving me, hopefully, some greens as well as the blues, and some sand colours. Watch this space! Left are the results of the first dyeing process.

We also dyed a one metre piece, and we had the choice of going for flat colour or texture. This piece of fabric will be used later to over-dye, print on, discharge, or paint on, so I decided to go for flat colour. If I had chosen texture, it would have meant that my dye bath didn't need the addition of urea, and wouldn't have needed any agitation. I decided to mix magenta and black, which has given me a lovely rich plummy colour.

2nd February 2010 Baby paraphernalia bag

I wanted to make a "Baby Paraphernalia Bag" for our daughter's first baby, due in April. I mixed together a couple of ideas from two bags I saw in a magazine, and this is the result. Plenty of compartments for all those bits and pieces that todays Mums seem to need, and when the babe becomes a toddler, it can be used for storing games, small toys, crayons, books etc.

I must say I'm rather pleased with the result, all I have to do now is get it over to New Zealand!!