Cash4Quilts

Made these for http://www.quilt.org.uk/page-83-Cash4Quilts.html

Had to use the heritage quilts as inspiration. This one was inspired

by a piece made from woollen flannels used for miners shirts and

the one below was inspired by the hexagon quilts.

JQ's

I took the plunge and signed up to take part in the

Journal Quilt Project with Contemporary Quilt of the

Quilters Guild.

My JQ's are based on the elements or the 'Elementals'

- earth, air fire and water and the Sketchbook Project.

I decided to try and figure out what the textile elementals

would be.

January - Textile Elemental: Idea or 'It's raining cats and

dogs and I'm thinking.......'

According to the classical Greek Elements

there is a fifth element 'aetha' which is idea or

divine thing. I thought It was quite fitting for this series.

February - Textile Elemental: Materials or 'A shop full of

goodies'.....

Without the basics of fabric and thread I wouldn't be

able to do what I enjoy. Of course there's always the

embellishments and the fantastic stuff for adding colour

and pattern to fabric. And so much more!!!

March - Textile Elemental: Design.....

A design wall is used by some to display their work in

progress. This piece is a play on that idea using the

elements and principles of design. I have noticed that

I tend to aways keep returning to certain ones.

April - Textile Elemental: Learning or 'Sowing the seeds'...

This started life as skills and techniques but I soon realised

it was much more than that. We are very much influenced

by 'who, where and how' as well as 'what' and also by the end

result.

May - Textile Elemental: Equipment.....

Absolutely no question, my sewing machine is

almost surgically attached to me along with a few

other basics. I'm not a huge gadget person but

sometimes they do make life easier.

BTW, fairies are also elementals.....

New neighbours

Went for a walk this morning and saw we had new

neighbours. Alpacas - they're quiet and unassuming.

Also this miniature shetland pony was proud and

protective of it's very new baby.

Solubles

Isn't technology wonderful!

I've been stitching on a heavy weight cold water

soluble today making moss. The first cold water

soluble I used (30 years ago) was thin and tore

very easily when trying to put it in a hoop for stitching.

Just the usual polyester thread and 2 layers of soluble.

I think I could have managed with one layer.

After lots of stitching this was the result.

Flash Quilt

There's always something to celebrate. Last Saturday was the
third Saturday in March therefore it must be International
Quilting Day. I first learned of it here and it set me thinking.
Last weekend was also free entry at some National Trust
properties = lots of people. I got permission to sit and stitch
at Calke Abbey with a friend to raise the profile of quilting.
We sat outside Sqiurts Stable, in the sunshine, for 3 hours.
We stitched, listened and chatted.I kept wanting to call us a
'flash mob' but as there were only two of us it was a bit daft
so I called it a 'flash quilt'.
People were interested. We were asked questions by
people who were stitchers already. We hopefully encouraged
those who had ufo's hidden away to finish them; some started
by mums or themselves. Some were interested in work that
was hand stitched only and some were interested in machining
techniques.
This has set me thinking for Quip Day in June.

More Journal Quilts

After finishing last years JQ's that I'd started I decided
to fish out the 2009 JQ's. Yet again not much needed
doing some quilting and edge finishing. I've been taking
photos of foot prints, tyre tracks and animal and bird tracks
for some years with the intention of putting them into
textiles. The JQ's were the perfect opportunity to get started.

Contemporary Quilt

I belong to a group called 'Contemporary Quilt' and
each year a challenge is issued to the members to
produce a journal quilt every month for a year. I
I always begin the year with good intentions and make
a start but something always happens to stop the
creative flow. After making, and finishing, the raggy
quilt I decided to finish some old journal quilts. Not
much needed doing really - little bit of hand stitching
and some edge finishing.
I like taking something ordinary and using it in a different
way. These four were a series based on buttonholes.

The fabric was an old, hardly used linen tea towel

from an army surplus store, a finer cotton fabric

for the binding and the backing was my OH old work

shirts. The wadding was the thinnest I had. I used two

types of thread - an ordinary polyester sewing thread for

hand and machine stitching; a thicker silk thread for hand

stitching. The silk thread is a pale duck egg blue and this

dictated the colour of the lino print. Polyester organza

was used to suggest buttons.