Still more quilting

I've been wanting to make a dent into my stash of fabrics for some time now and decided to make a quilt from "Quilts Made Modern" by Weekes Rinkle. I started cutting it last weekend having decided to make one that involved simple straight rows of 12 different colours. Little did I know how much cutting and seaming this would include! I would have thought twice before starting and now, having started, 'm rather underwhelmed by it and not very motivated to continue...... What to do?

Strips of colour were cut and then pieced together in a series of steps before arriving at a quilt cver comprised of alternate coloured and plain strips.

 I think its boring and I'm not really getting any pleasure from it - first time for a quilt. The colours are the problem as the creamy plain colour adds nothing to the overall feel of the quilt. Oh the horror of having to unpick the strips I've done already........................
Bye for now.

More Quilting

A few weeks ago I made a quilt to hang down in Devon. I've wanted to make a quilt with bold text for some time now and which expressed what everyone says when they first visit us and see out of the window.

Now I'm starting a new project which is also for Devon but is very different from the one above. It's a modern quilt pattern and I'm using up some of my stash to complete it. I've decided I have to start to make inroads into this stash as it's beginning to worry me - lol! Anyway, the quilt is very easy in construction as it's basically straight lines but it's extremely time consuming in cutting up, sewing together strips, recutting the strips and sewing them together in new formations.
1. to start with I have cut 80 x 13" strips in 12 different colours and I have paired these colours together and sewed them into strips.

Two colours sewed together and ready to be pressed.

Voila! These now need to be paired together to make units of 4 colour strips - the next step.
I am timing myself during this project to see how long roughly it will take me to complete the quilt.

NB: Not quilting but I made a cushion for a friend who's been poorly over the past few months. This was the first time I sewed with linen which, surprisingly, was a bit difficult as it seemed to shift about a bit. Probably just my inexperience with sewing. Anyway I was quite pleased in the end and I think she liked it as well!

Long time no see......

Have been off writing up this blog although have been doing quite a lot so here goes....

yesterday a friend came round and we carved some block printing patterns from small erasers . We had great fun and you get some very satisfying results from small beginnings. This is the eraser block I carved last week:

Then I tried it out on paper:

before finally having a go on fabric

I think this might make some very lovely cushions.

I then thought I would play with scale so made another block with larger image using the same pattern. Again, first on paper:

And then onto fabric using either acrylic paints mixed with screen print binder or fabric paints:

This design could also be used as an overall design and in contrast to the smaller version.

Two weeks ago I had a four day short course at West Dean on 3D machine embroidered flowers using soluble fabric. I was very excited before going but was very disappointed by the end of the course. The tutor was inexperienced at teaching and it showed but she was energetic and clearly wanted to please her students. it was however a big disappointment - but that's another story.
I thought we were going to work from sketches we would make from actual flowers but this didn't happen and we somehow just launched straight into our project. Not the way I like to work....

Anyhow, I used a beautiful photograph taken by a friend of mine and worked from that. First I drew some petal shapes onto the soluble fabric ( this is a fabric that washes away when placed in water leaving the stitched shape/pattern), and sewed densely with a focus on colour mixing:

I cut out the flowers and then ran them under the tap to remove the glue.

I then sewed the feathery fronds that are part of the clematis seed pods after the plant has died:

These too needed to cut out and the glue washed away -  a fiddly business!

I then attached the fronds to the ends of the seed pods:

Before finally arranging them into a more pleasing style with a more visual link to the photograph:

Sadly, the rest of the course was very repetitive and I didn't produce anything else that I was satisfied with - enough said!!