Class at FOQ

The three-day masterclass with Dorothy Caldwell was a delight - "The expressive stitch". We were nine in the class, and the first thing we did was to use a long strip of paper and make stitch marks on one half and inky fingermarks on the other. Put together, they show nine personalities in search of expression

Here we are looking at and thinking about the work -
On the first day we did mark-making on small sheets of nice thick paper, and started small "kantha" pieces, using simple shapes and seeing what happened with the stitching. Dorothy said that on the third day we'd be making our stitched and on-paper work into a book. We continued, or finished, the stitched pieces as homework that evening.
Anyone walking past the classroom the next day might have seen an unusual sight - nine women sat round stitching, with blindfolds on! We'd cleared our worktables and threaded five needles, then basted two pieces of cloth together and made five french knots evenly spaced down the left side. Dorothy read us words, and their definition, from an art dictionary, and we stitched our response to each word. They were: gesture; contrast; shape; transformation; intuition.
We did some rubbing with graphite, painted pages with black gesso, and tried piercing and punching of paper, then moved on to couching thread onto stiff, semi-transparent cotton, adding other stitches as desired.
Above is my work table, below an example of what other people did.
My favourite marks were made with india ink on sheer fabric that had been laid over a nice thick paper. The dark areas are where the ink went through to the paper, and the ink on just the cloth gives a mottled effect.By now we were getting lots of "pages" together for the book that we'd be making at the end of the class. Next day Dorothy showed us slides of the development of her work and we went to see her exhibition, then on to use wax in a corner of the Virtual Studio, and discharge with chlorine bleach outside, where it was blowing a gale but not raining.
Some results - discharged with chlorine bleach, either painted over completely or dabbed with the end of a small foam brush -
We spent the afternoon organising our pages into signatures, and sewing them together - and admiring our work -
What better tangible outcome than a book to look through, or add to?

Catching up

"Don't say that you want to give, but go ahead and give! You'll never catch up with a mere hope." - Goethe

Even after so few days away from home and computer, there's so much catching up to do - with family, at work, with myself - putting things away, doing the laundry, answering emails, writing the blog, catching up on sleep - where does "getting going in the studio" fit in? Is it a mere hope? Sitting at the computer is not the same as going into the studio and going on with the work. Sitting at the computer is a distraction. Distractions are the enemy of hopes.

Now let's have a photo.

These four "bon mots" are some of the ancient work that emerged druing my recent studio blitz. They're freely couched onto silk dupion scraps and measure 4" x 6":

- Snatch the eternal from the desperately fleeting

- What is unsought will be undetected

- The appetite comes by eating

- No-one can make you feel inferior without your consent

Festival of Quilts

Where to start? The long-awaited Festival of Quilts was the usual mixture of visual overload, gabfest, and spending spree. For me the highlight was Dorothy Caldwell's exhibition, and her class, which I'll write about later.

Wandering around the rows of quilts, I came across someone photographing my "And Flowers Almost Poems" -But I forgot to get a photo of "Rainstorms".

Of course, people were intent on photographing everything everywhere:Some impressions of the overall show:The bag tombola raised £4800 for the St Anthony's Hall, new home of the Quilters' Guild, and that's a small part of the button-up quilt that went right round the large eating and seating area -
And didn't the CQ stand look good, with some of this year's journal quilts, and a few of the Thin Blue Line pieces -
Di Goodison, president of the Quilters Guild of the British Isles, was obviously impressed -Part of the fun, of course, is the people watching - especially the patched and quilted bags they're carrying. And they're certainly very willing to tell you about them - this one was made while travelling - she had some threads along, so she bought a piece of batik fabric and, essentially, followed the lines - isn't it glorious! Even the rubbish bins seemed to be a quilt in the making -

Amerikaner

My sister loves these, and is working on replicating the ones Mom used to make. (They were never Dad's favourite cookie.)

Mix together:
1/2 cup milk
2 eggs
1 t vanilla extract
1/2 t almond extract
Mix together:
2 cups flour
1 T baking powder
1/4 t salt
3 T custard powder
Cream:
1/2 cup butter
Mix in:
1/2 cup plus 1T sugar
Add wet ingredients and mix well.
Add dry ingredients in several steps blending well after each.
Put 2T mounds on greased cookie sheets and flatten them a little.
Bake at 325F for 15 to 20 minutes brushing tops with a little milk after 10 mins.
Bake only until dough turns golden brown. Do not overbake.
Glaze with icing sugar mixed with a little hot water.
Makes at least 16 cookies.

Edward Bawden, Eric Ravilious

The Royal Academy shop has a range of items based on designs by Edward Bawdenincluding a rather nice book, which includes this watercolour of trees, from his trip to the Canadian Rockies in 1949 (exhibited in London in 1951):
Bawden was a prolific designer and artist, friends with Eric Ravilious; I get confused, their styles are similar. The Imperial War Museum had an exhibition of Ravilious's work in 2004 (he was a war artist, on submarines) - you can still visit that exhibition online: click here.
Ravilious designed this coronation mug for Wedgwood - first for Edward VIII in 1936, then altered it for George VI in 1937 - and it was issued again in 1953.

Dear Jane and good causes

London Quilters' group quilt was shown at the group's show at Swiss Cottage Library in May and June. It will be raffled, with proceeds going to two charities - North London Hospice, and Hope for Grace Kodindo. Tickets are £1 each, and the draw is at the Knitting and Stitching Show on Sunday 12 October. Hope for Grace Kodindo works to make birth safer for 11,000 women a year in the main hospital in Chad, central Africa. Outside the developed world, childbirth is dangerous, even deadly. In the UK, maternal mortality is 1 in 5000. In Chad, the figure is 1 in 11; they have a saying, "a pregnant woman has one foot in the grave." And 40% of women have at least one child, or are pregnant, by age 17; 6.3 children are born per woman. Life expectancy is 47 years (it's 78 years in the UK). And in Chad, infant mortality is 93 per 1000, compared with 1.6 per 1000 in the UK. Amazing that just £5 will save the life of a pregnant woman in Chad.

Just 100 things

Could you get by in life if you owned just 100 things? This article explores the joys and dilemmas - and how to cheat. For instance, I count my many spools of thread as just one "thing."

Choose your categories and start counting!

And if it's a decluttering mantra you're after -- the best organising principle of all isn't "where should I put this" but -- "how can I get rid of this".

Quilts in books

First, for the academically-minded, a website that offers a list of books in which quilts are American symbols.

And for those who'd like a good read, Kate Grenville's The Idea of Perfection, in which a quilt figures importantly. One commentator on the BBC's item on the book (years ago) - a man - says: "...amazing book. Incidentally the engineering is real. I bet the quilting is too."

What stays with me from this very enjoyable book is the passage when the heroine is thinking back to her childhood, of lying under the wool quilts that her grandmother made (this is in Australia), and noticing the alternation of dark and light, light and dark. Perhaps it was a quilt like this one, made from tailor's samples (picture found in Miranda Innes, Traditional quilts from around the world):

You can read the first few chapters here.

As good as it gets

I'm heading off to Birmingham, for the Festival of Quilts, and a three-day class that starts tomorrow. Before going, I decided to get the workroom in good shape to come back to. For months the bed had been heaped, dauntingly, with ... everything - but no longer!

I found that long piece lying cumpled among the heaps, and have started to rescue it. It will have more layers of sheers, and then be quilted with close parallel rows lengthwise. The quilting will pause for rows of bugle beads to be added, going across the piece like snow fences across the prairie.

This photo is by Richard A Shuff. While I was living on the prairie - 1979 or so - I never thought to take photos of the snow fences.

Shisha galore

Shisha mirrors adorn a marriage shawl from north-west India. Beyond the border there's another area of overall patterning - with the corner unfinished.
This used to be used as a sort of headboard in my small bedroom, but currently it's draped over the sofa, where the mirrors really sparkle. Such exuberance.

08:08, 08/08/08

Sky

Rag knitting, plastic bag crocheting

Too much fabric? Tear it up and turn it into "yarn" - knit yourself a bath mat - http://www.cocoknits.com/info/tutorials/ragknit.html

The finesse is in joining the strips by threading them through slits, rather than by knotting.

Oh and if you were thinking of cutting up and crocheting plastic bags, do it quickly - they are disappearing (hurrah!) as the grocery stores start to charge for them. See how here and here, for example. (Door mats, anyone? Backpacks? Koozies?) Again, preparing your "yarn" is crucial.
Or branch out into sea creatures - these sinister beauties come from the coral reef "rubbish vortex" project.

Consumer culture mentality

"Any time people are using their time and resources to make things, it's a gain on that consumer culture mentality" - I read that somewhere, a while ago. Yes; let's all look around and see what we can DO, not what we "need" to buy!And yet, and yet ... the cyclical make-it crazes spawn their own consumer culture, feeding into the "I shop therefore I am" mentality. Quilters need ever more of the latest fat quarters. Sewers are bombarded with blandishments to buy the latest computerised machine. Knitters know the brands, varieties, and colour codes of every yarn.

In an austere time, Theodore Roosevelt said: "Do what you can, with what you have, where you are." In a time of plenty (in the West, at least), another slogan is: "Just do it." We could be spending (aha, spending...) our time, and perhaps effort, "doing" it rather than rationalising why we aren't. But life gets cluttered, and it's easier to escape those pressures by switching off and going shopping. Spending money makes you feel powerful - you are seen to be exercising a choice - but decide to spend your evening knitting or sewing and you become invisible, even a stereotyped object of pity.
Pass the bamboo (or vintage plastic) knitting needles - I need to use up my wool before the moths eat it all.

Moths! ... that's a rant for another time ...

Bag that quilt

When you're sending a quilt off to a show, it doesn't take long to make a nice drawstring bag for it. Use calico/muslin for the outside, and something slippery for the inside - this is a good use for the lining of those old garments you're recycling (small bits can be pieced together). For drawstrings, you can use those saved selvedges that you tore off the backing fabric - or ribbons, or cords.

First, cover a cardboard tube that's a little longer than your quilt with bubblewrap or calico. (Label the tube with your name, so that it doesn't get lost!) Roll your quilt round it - right side out, to minimise creases.

Measure around the rolled quilt, and from the centre of the roll to the edge of the quilt and back to the centre of the roll. Add 4" (10 cm) to the measurement round the quilt, and 2"(5 cm) to the length measurement, for leeway. Now divide the width measurement in half to get your "cutting size". For this bag my quilt measured 12" round and 16" long, which gave a cutting size of 8" width and 18" length. The two drawstrings each need to be 1.5 - 2 times the measurement round the quilt. Use half inch (1 cm) seams throughout. First sew the lining to the outside. Then turn in about 1.5" (4 cm) on either side of the join, and sew it down. This is where the drawstrings will come out.
Put the two pieces together and sew the bag part, and the lining part, together, backstitching when you get as close as you can to the bits you've already sewn down. (This is not couture sewing, this is a utility bag - a bit of roughness and fudging is permitted here!)
A nice touch, but not strictly necessary, is to square up the bottom corners - match the bottom seam and the side seam, and sew across the corner, then cut off the triangle.Turn the bag and lining inside out through one of the holes.
Tuck the lining into the bag, and insert the drawstrings between the lining and the bag.
Tie the drawstring ends together. Push the strings as near to the top as you can, and then pin in the clear space below that. Sew each half of the bag, making sure you don't catch the drawstrings in the sewing.
Write your details on the bag with an indelible pen. Add quilt; pull and tie drawstrings; wrap the bagged quilt (in brown paper) ready to mail (don't forget to include the return label). There's no need for tissue paper, or for little ribbons round the quilt that need to be untied - the people at the show who unwrap all those quilts won't thank you for the extra work.
(Oops, got the phone number wrong!)

Transformation

Inspired by Deb Lacativa's "summer garden" and Jude Hill's work, as well as by Dijanne's "traveller's blanket", I've set about transforming what was once a stained tablecloth.It will stay in the tablecloth category, but move into the subcategories "special cloth" and "picnic blanket".
Once the front is done, the centre of the circle gets cut away and another patch added. Or not.