"Gridded" again

Two of the required journal quilts are ready, facings stitched and all! They don't have titles yet.

Frottage with those chunky Stabilo crayons, on organza 

Frottage again, on paper

 The sequins glint so nicely -

This next photo isn't a lesson in how to distort a photo, but does show two methods of "invisibly" binding small quilts. I used the facing, cutting a slit to turn it inside out, on the "city grid" and as a result the paper is now a bit more crinkled than expected. It's hard to turn it rightside out! 

The facing strips are easier. I used Kathy Loomis's "cut away the corners" technique and it works a treat, thanks Kathy.

Poetry Thursday - Short Ode to the Cuckoo by W.H.Auden

Not a pretty sight, perhaps - but cleverly adapted

Short Ode to the Cuckoo

No one now imagines you answer idle questions
— How long shall I live?  How long remain single?
Will butter be cheaper? — nor does your shout make
husbands uneasy.

Compared with arias by the great performers
such as the merle, your two-note act is kid-stuff:
our most hardened crooks are sincerely shocked by
your nesting habits.

Science, Aesthetics, Ethics, may huff and puff but they
cannot extinguish your magic:  you marvel
the commuter as you wondered the savage.
Hence, in my diary,

where I normally enter nothing but social
engagements and, lately, the death of friends, I
scribble year after year when I first hear you,
of a holy moment.

- W.H. Auden (via)

Discovered on Natural Histories (Radio 4), a programme of observation and information and sometimes poetic delights. Hear the cuckoo programme here.

The cuckoo is "one of nature's most fascinating cheats" (hear about it here, another BBC programme, from 2011). It can lay its egg in 10 seconds (discovered  by Edgar Chance in the 1920s), and when the egg hatches, the chick will toss the other eggs out of the nest. The female lays 8 or so eggs as season, in separate nests - the record is 25.

They fly to equatorial Africa every year (each chick all by itself!), leaving in summer and returning in spring; there's a traditional verse about it -

The cuckoo comes in April
he sings his song in May

in June he changes the tune
and in July flies away.

Only the male makes the two-note sound. The female is busy removing an egg before she lays hers ... but the host doesn't notice. It's thought that she does this so the host's incubation limit isn't exceeded.

I was thrilled to hear a cuckoo "in the wild" earlier this year on a walk in the Lee Valley, I'm amazed (having listened to the two BBC programmes) to find out what the bird gets up to, and how scientists found all this out.

Extreme thrift

So there I was, piecing together some bits of polyester wadding to go inside journal quilts! Daft or what ...

The remaining bits got smaller and smaller ... and three "innards" came out of something that could, or even should, have been thrown away -

I even used up odd bits of thread that were to hand, which wasn't about thrift but about making it more interesting to myself, during the doing. And hey, no-one would be seeing this!

As I was about to add the innards to the pile of materials for possible JQs, I saw the results in terms of shapes and compositions, and liked what I saw. 

Randomness has yielded inspiration - a design source. The middle on particularly pleases me, the way the long strips fit into the angle, and the shorter strip, itself angled, into the other angle. I couldn't have made that up ... it had to "just happen". And now that it has ... how to take it further? 

For now - I need to use this wadding and make some JQs, the deadline is approaching - I've traced the shapes. What happens when they're layered up, in various orientations?

Tracing the design, to make it more complex, which lines would you leave in and which would you take out?

Later I'll scale the original shapes down to fit many-on-a-sketchbook-page and play with colours and arrangements, juxtaposition and composition, balance and tonal value, contrast and highlight.

Drawing Tuesday - Horniman Museum

The heavens smiled and some of us spent the morning in the garden -

 I was intrigued by the bees on the solidago (golden rod) and on the nearby rudbekia -

 with this result, "from life", looking and looking -

 Sue untangled the relation between a yarn "intervention" and a huge plant -

 Jo found alpacas, or were they llamas -

 Carol's patient pumpkins -

 Najlaa was in the museum, finding seaweed in the galleries -

 and patterns on pots from the Pani display (till 26 November)

Mags too was drawing "things that live under the sea" -

 Judith turned from flowers to the Bengal tiger (on display till 17 May 2019)-

Snap! city views by Jo and Judith -

Extracurricular activities

Among Carol's many drawings done on holiday is this view of Brixham -

 And Mags, along with winning the Fine Art Quilt Masters at Festival of Quilts, had been to an eco-dyeing workshop

 Sue showed us how a section of a photograph can be abstracted in various ways; this was done in a course at City Lit -

A grisly note - I was surprised and rather horrified by the dogs' heads in this display in the "evolution" section of the museum's natural history gallery. The museum was opened in 1901 and these displays date back to a long time ago -

To counteract that, a nice bit of geometry! -

Studio Monday

Lunch is late today because I've been immersed in the studio all morning. Which is unusual, these days, but hopefully will be less so now...

It was the arrival of not just the carpet but of The Sheep that made the difference.

Obviously The Sheep is nothing more than a fleecy skin (£4 of cosiness, found in a charity shop in Salisbury) over a solid wooden stepstool, but it's starting to feel like a friend. It's nice to spend time with it, and a coffee, and podcasts, and some sewing (on the chair is a little bag that badly needed some "boro" attention - sorted!).

Also I needed to get together some fabric for a quilty day later this week, so out came the box of scraps -

which led to this'n'that and even involved getting the iron out!

(Unironed) "muted/desaturated" scraps

A maelstorm of tiny scraps to add to the journal quilts currently under construction

One such use for a tiny scrap

Lovely big scrap, and some smaller ones

Frottage on organza

... and some "what next" thoughts

 The frottage is derived from "the pink bit" -

Samples of couching that had found their way into the
scrap box; the backgrounds have been tinted with ink

Housing then and now

Fascinating local walk today, about the way the Tollington/Archway area was dairy farms and then built on in the 19th century, not good quality housing, and soon it was a poor ghetto, many workhouses ... postwar, lots of housing was pulled down, estates built, until the 1970s when tenants/owners got organised and the council changed policy and repaired existing houses.

At least some green space came out of the pulling-down; Islington is very short on green space and public parks. Elthorne Park was created, and now is slightly sinister because the trees have grown so large and dense, and much drinking takes place at all hours. Nor is the Peace Garden looking at its best - the ponds were having some work done -

 A while back this mound received archaeological attention - the mounds were formed by the rubble from the demolished houses -

 Nearby, Sunnyside (community) Gardens have been going for 40 years -

 This is what's left of an enormous workhouse that housed 1300 of the poorest poor -

 Tucked in among the newer estates are some of the older "saved" houses -

 Caxton House was part of a "settlement", a middle-class attempt to provide education and life-skills in the 19th century; obviously the building is newer than that -

 Up the hill lived the better-off, and the Whitehall Park estate was privately developed in the late 1880s and 90s by a series of builders -

 A few of the houses show inventive animal carving -

More estates along the Archway Road, some spared by eventual decision not to further widen it - but the Tollgate was lost early on, 1864 in fact -

Also nearby, the Whittington almshouses had been knocked down -

 The Whittington Stone (topped by a cat since the 1960s) has been replaced several times, and was originally a place to leave donations to the leper hospital nearly; it dates back to 1473 -

 In the grounds of what is now the Whittington Hospital is the Small Pox and Vaccination Hospital, dating to the 1830s -

 and near it are two of the three workhouse infirmaries of the area -

 1880 is writ large (top left) in the brickwork  of this Victorian school, built in the early days of mandated education -

In the sunshine, and seeing how some things had improved for many people over the years, this walk was hardly depressing. I wish the same could be said of the current housing crisis, as "luxury flat" developments and the lack of affordable rentals and social housing drive the poorest and most vulnerable from pillar to post and shatter communities. Grenfell has crystallised this for many people, as was evident in the film "Dispossession" and the discussion afterwards -

It left me feeling appalled and impotent, and full of admiration for the articulate and dedicated people who give up free time to "do battle". Sometimes good things do happen; good luck to them.