Letting go of quilts

It's easier to let go of your "old" quilts and quiltlets when you know they're going on to a new life, or are helping a good cause. I met Ruth in a textiles class at City Lit and over the years she has had several "tea and textiles" events in aid of various charities, Greenpeace among them.

This time she's fundraising for Medecins Sans Frontieres. I'm happy to contribute some of the quilts made for Contemporary Quilt's challenges, and also some journal quilts (those will be mounted on board to fit into a standard frame, or glued to deep-edged commercial canvases), as well as embroidery that dates back before The Quilting Years.

Here's the selection so far -

Celtic Connections

Verge Blur

"The Rose in Winter" was in the "Figure it Out" suitcase collection

"And Flowers Almost Poems" incorporates old
silks from a friend's mother's stash

"It was her favourite tipple and it done her in" was made
in 1999, before I knew anything about dyeing fabric, and
many of the squares were appliqued on car journeys.
The long thing shape rather reminded me of a coffin cover
(hardly cosy!), hence the title

The theme for the fabric-printing challenge on the Quiltart list
in about 2001 was "Ten" - I hadn't learnt how to photo edit then, in fact
hadn't moved to digital camera, so it had to be text...

Columns were constructed by randomly pulling strips from
one or another bag of fabric, then sewn together. These fabrics were
mostly samples made in a textile printing class in the late 90s
and finallyput to some use. They look rather geological.

Same construction method; the fabrics are mostly silk,
but don't seem to have been affected by hanging in a
bathroom for a few years!

Made in Calgary or Halifax, Canada, late 70s. Hand quilted.

Sunshine and Shadows; made in Halifax, 1979. It hung in a
staff exhibition at the university and I was surprised to see how
small it looked on the wall!

More pink - the largest of the three, and made in the late 90s.
Enlivened by confetti and some rather "electric" machine quilting.

If you'd like to come along to have tea and cake, and be tempted not so much by my textiles but by the prints and ceramics, photography and smaller items that are being contributed by others, get in touch and I'll send you details. Ruth's home is in Camden (north London) and we'll be there on the last weekend in March and the first two weekends in April.  All proceeds go to MSF.

Making a container out of a "work in progress" (started last century!) -

Before - it measures about 45cm x 35cm (20" x 14")

During

After

CQ London

To Contemporary Quilt's 15 regional/local groups, another has been added. It will meet in London at 6-week intervals.

CQ London was born in a cafe at the Royal Festival Hall, attended by beverages and mince pies.

We'd been asked to bring along some work to show, so that we'd all get a sense of what the others were "about". These 6"-square, moody landscapes happened to be on my design board - I quickly added the final stitches -

Blast from the past - a table runner

Sometimes the samples made in workshops turn into "something". This strip was printed in a masterclass with Els van Baarle in 2007 at Festival of Quilts. The flowers are shapes made of wire and dipped into wax; the squares were once a foam brush, cut into "teeth" - one dipping gives a lot of wax prints -

 Pink, red, and purple were added, with more waxing between each -

When as much wax as possible was ironed out, I liked the stiffness and didn't bother getting it drycleaned to get the rest of the wax out, but added wadding and backing, then put it under the machine and finished with a few french knots.

One day... maybe ...

Some UFOs that emerged recently. Do I ruthlessly discard them, or will I ever make them into Linus quilts?

pieced over papers

scraps

about a metre square - it could maybe be salvaged by a nice border and some interesting quilting?

You know how it is - you don't want to "waste" the time you've already put into them, but surely it's more of a waste of time to continue? Yet the idea of salvaging them - making a silk purse out of a sow's ear, or making something useful - has its appeal.

"Please do not touch the quilts"

The "do not touch, please" sign is all too often ignored at quilt shows, and it can be an unpleasant duty to remind people (though there are ways, and ways, to do this...).

Human nature being what it is, seeing the do-not-touch sign is likely to make people want to touch!

Here are some attempts at a solution to this dilemma.

"You may be stitched in the ditch"
"Unauthorized touching causes chocolate to taste like brussel sprouts"
"Unauthorized touching cuases adult children to return to your home forever"
"You may be cut into half square triangles"
also
"You may be stacked and whacked"
Displayed in Utah (via)

Nice little (or larger) quilted signs -

California (via)

From North Carolina (via)

At a show in Canberra (via)

Made by members of a quilt guild in Richmond (VA?) (via)

 I'm less than impressed by this sign, in a shop rather than a show -

 Ah, the irony of this quilt by Elizabeth Hartmann -

Note the reminder!

Other aspects of quilt-minding are considered in "White Gloves at the Ready!" on Ragged Cloth Cafe.

A quiltlet that might not fly

While pawing through yet another bag of "bits" I rescued these tending-towards-neutral offcuts saved from making journal quilts and bookwraps, thinking they could be part of an A3-sized quilt on a theme I had in mind, onto which would go some of the buttons etc printed onto transfer paper that had turned up some time earlier. Originally this quiltlet was going to be about "sampling, stitching, sewing" ... I had planned log-cabin type borders, in calico/muslin, around little pieces of various samples, with buttons etc ironed onto the neutral fabric. [Sudden thought: why not have the buttons etc images in the centre of the squares...]

But these bits cried out to be used, so I laid them out and then ransacked the rest of the bag to find patches for the missing areas and to improve the design. The bits are all quilted, and need some way of being put together - and the title that is running through my head in relation to this is along the lines of "Sampling, stitching ... piecing, patching ... making, mending".

The problem is, it looks too busy, too last-century. It'll probably stay laid out, on the shelf, till the deadline has passed, and the bits will go back into the bag. Some of my best (most useful, most compelling, most inspiring) materials are the scraps and bits - it's the quintessential link with the patchwork heritage.

Starfish "mosaic" cushion finished

As soon as I got home after the Mosaic Quilts workshop I carried on with finishing the project, adding the rest of the squares. What started out as basting to hold the layers together ended up as big-stitch hand quilting, and thus it languished for nearly a month, the stars having been picked out with machine quilting -

A recent flurry of studio reorganisation not only cleared enough space around the sewing machine for further work but also turned up the bondawebbed fabric from which the squares had been cut -

The next step was to make some piping -

and to put on a backing - hey presto, one cushion finished, one UFO vanquished -

Piping improves a cushion, imho, and next time I'll round the corners more. The spots of colour make a subtle but important difference -

As for the design as a whole - next time I'll pay more attention to the tonal value, rather than just the colour, and to the negative space.

At last, a quilt

A baby quilt - made from  flannelette/wynceyette left over from various projects in Canada. It's backed in blue fabric and has no wadding - more of a play mat than a quilt. Measurements are approximately 60cm x 80cm, and with stops and starts (mostly stops!) it took about six months to make, trying to get a balance between using up as much of the fabric as possible, and making the quilt as quickly as possible. It's been through the washing machine to check that the colour didn't run.

Sewing Sunday

Trying to bring my "journey lines" into small-quilt format, I spent most of Sunday making these, aligned on a sort of horizon line :

They're approximately A4 size -- too large. Unsatisfactory. But I did enjoy the sewing!

The quick drawings came closer to what I wanted them to end up like. Rather than spending all that time sewing, it was more satisfying to scribble down some marks, cover them with wax, and put ink over that.

 The blue lines are ink drawn across wet white (acrylic) paint.

Gridded

Work by Debra M Smith ... an excellent way of displaying textiles (very suitable for square "journal quilts"...) -- suddenly "quilts" are transformed into "art".

Here are some of Debra's larger works, also framed beautifully -

She has been working with textiles for over 20 years and says: "I am not a poet or someone who draws, but I feel that my use of vintage textiles as a medium brings a history, a weight, a poetry to the work before I even begin to cut, sew, and piece the work back together. Allowing the work to intuitively flow thru me I do feel the end result is similar to a drawing or poetry. "

White on white

Postcard-sized quilting samples from long ago. The plan was to paint the surface so that the quilting lines would stay white. Might try that someday, just to see if the "plan" works as hoped...

From the scrap box

The first stage and finished project for two little (7" x 10") quilts.

In this one, I was aiming to use some of the fabric printed from the "journey lines" -

I haven't the least idea what it all "means", or whether it makes compositional sense; it was simply a pleasure to put the fabrics and colours together! The title started as "Shooting Stars" but now "Bomber's Moon" seems better -The second quiltlet also grew like topsy -
The title is "Night Flower" -
Much as I love using scraps and having lots on hand to choose from, I've sorted through one scrapbag and discarded three-quarters of it ... probably some good stuff has gone, but there are several other scrap bags that need a similar purge. There comes a point when you know you'll never use it all. Most of my scraps are quite small - a 3" wide strip would be a larger scrap, and once they get the size of a plate, I consider them to be yardage.

"Murky Weather" I and II

These little quilts (7"x10") were inspired by a piece of grey(ish) hand dye. After I used some of it for Conundrum, there was enough left for four more small pieces.

The first, "Endless Rain", got made all in a rush (as you can probably guess from the wobbly stitching; must try harder...) - it still needs the edges finishing -
Next, "Passing Shower" - here's the layout and thread audition -Some of the pieces are removed and the stitching happens in layers. Lots of ends to tie off on the back (but I won't be burying the threads!) -
The final stitching is with invisible thread -