. . . by the Skin of their Teeth - part 2

I promised to tell about the second quilt for the Quilters' Guild Region 3 By the Sea challenge.

Even though I had known about the challenge for a long time (I was at the committee meeting where it was first discussed!) it was still last minute. The fabric was dyed/printed on April 16th and the final stitch went in on April 27th - some kind of record I'm sure.

The challenge was to create a quilt 10" wide by 50" long. I have been working on some fabric at Committed to Cloth on a sea theme (one of my recurring themes) which was going to be ideal for this quilt. Trouble was, none of the pieces I had was long enough, and it needed to be wholecloth (you'll see why if you look at the photos). So last time I was there I made a piece specially for this quilt. The fabric is inspired by photos of West Wittering beach, particularly the row of old groynes at the top of the beach near the river/ harbour mouth. They keep cropping up in my work - I have drawn them (see the sketch book in February) and collaged them and I'm sure they'll be around for a while longer.

The marks on the quilt are printed using thickened procion dye and  an old credit card. The credit card is also used to scrape dye mixed with varying amounts of manutex over the rest of the cloth to colour it. The colours used were black (it tends to look blue when diluted), rust orange, petrol green and red-brown. The top of the fabric represents the sky, then the sea (lots of it) with the beach and the groynes in the foreground (lots of artistic license here - as anyone who knows this beach well will tell you!).

I thought, as time was short, that I would simply machine quilt in wavy lines to represent the sea, and do something different for the beach and the sky. However, nothing is ever that simple, and after I had machine quilted lines to supplement the grasses in the middle the beach, and the FMQ'd the wood of the groynes and the puddles at their bases,  the beach was crying out for texture. So I hand-couched a thread, and then another, and another.

The slippery slope!

Having started I had to continue adding hand stitching to the beach - first my favourite seeding to blend the areas round the groynes, and then I needed something quicker to fill the background. I tried a large-ish quilting stitch but as I wasn't able to get it really even I didn't like the effect, so out it came. As I started to unpick, I noticed that the smaller stitches visible on the back, spaced at about 1/4", looked really effective, so that's what ended up on the front - they give a Kantha-style effect en masse - and the ripples are just right for sand.

Now anyone who is a quilter will know that dense quilting significantly reduces the size of the piece. So by now the bottom of the quilt was 3/4" narrower that the top! There was nothing for it but to hand quilt the top section and the sea as well!

So the sea has straight lines of running stitch in various thick threads. The sky, which is pale grey with a pale orangey-yellow, prompting the naming of the quilt Early Morning, has more seeding and  the same tiny, spaced-out running stitch, this time in curved lines reminiscent of aeroplane trails. Then all I had to do was add a faced binding and a sleeve (at the Stitch Witches' meeting that evening) and it was done.

The thing I forgot to do before taking it to the Regional Day in New Milton the next day was photograph it. So these photos are dreadful - poorly lit (in a school library) and not facing straight on to the camera for the full length, which is why the rows of stitching under the groynes look curved.

We had 28 entries, all of a very high standard and so diverse. These quilts will all be displayed at the Quilt Museum and Gallery in York during July and August, so if you're near go and have a look.

And the best thing? Against all the odds, my quilt was selected as the winner of the challenge by our two speaker/ judges, Janet Twinn and Gill Turley. So sometimes last minute pays off, although I wouldn't recommend it as a way of life!

...by the Skin of their Teeth...

That should be my motto!

I have just completed the fourth set of work to meet its deadline by the skin of its teeth. This time it was the first four journal quilts for Contemporary Quilt's Journal Quilt project. The project runs every year, the goal being to make one small quilt every month for a year, and to post the resulting quiltlets on the group pages on Yahoo. Each year there are specific crteria, usually relating to size, and sometimes specifying a theme. This year the JQs are to be A4 portrait size, and the theme is 'Shades of . . .' with the first 4 being  red, the next 4 yellow and the final 4 blue.

You will have noticed that I said 'one small quilt every month'; not 4 small quilts on the final day of the 4th month, which of course is exactly what I did! Why do I have to be such a deadline person? I can think all round a subject for days, weeks, months even, but until the deadline is looming I cannot seem to get down to work. As it was I had planned to add my own extra theme of text to the challenge, using words in different languages to represent the colours, pigment names, wavelengths etc. I had done all the research, worked in my sketchbook, dyed and printed fabric, even made a thermofax screen . . . But I left it so late that all those plans had to be abandoned in the execution, in favour of something simple and achievable in a day.

So they are just simple explorations of colour and composition.
January's is just Red & Blue, February's is inspired by the daffodils that were in my garden in February, March's is green for spring, and April's (above) is purple - Purple Rain! (it was teeming down all day on Sunday when I made them).

And why was I so late in starting these JQs? Because I have recently completed not one, but two more quilts just in time for their deadlines too!

The first was also for Contemporary Quilt, this time for their tenth birthday challenge, CQ@10. The theme was tin (10th anniversary) and the source a stunning black and white photo by Tony Howell which you can see here. I really enjoyed the research for this piece, as tin mines have been part of my psyche since we used to holiday in west Cornwall when I was a child. And we were going down to stay near Falmouth before the deadline so there was plenty of opportunity for a close look at the remains which are everywhere. Here are some pics of Wheal Coates, on the coast near St Agnes - probably the most photographed mine in Cornwall (with the exception perhaps of Botallak Crowns, which are perched precariously on the cliffs near St Just).

The visit was just two weeks before the deadline, but I knew I could do it - I had dyed and printed fabric and worked out various designs in my sketchbook, so being able to look at the real thing rather than photos was just going to add authenticity. And the quilt was finished (albeit with no hand stitch due to time - and maybe the edges were't quite done before the photo was taken, but they are now!) and photographed, and the photo and sample submitted the day before the deadline on the 31st March.







Here's a detail - the quilt itself is actually landscape format.

The background is simple strip-piecing using fabric that has been dyed in combinations of royal blue and petrol green. Some has been screen printed using a screen developed from a drawing of the headgear at South Crofty mine. Other marks have been made using an old credit card (my favourite technique). Another (the one that looks like vertical white and green stripes) has had the colour discharged using a thermofax screen. The stripes are actually words describing the geology of the tin-mining districts. The chimney fabric was printed with a breakdown screen to represent the stonework of the walls. The whole is densely machine quilted in straight lines using a variety of threads.

And on Friday I heard that it had been selected for the CQ exhibition at the Festival of Quilts this year! One of 23 chosen from a total of 61.

The theme of tin mines is sure to feature in future work as it has loads of potential. And I have a whole palette of suitable fabrics developed just for this.


And the second quilt was for the 'By the Sea' challenge for the Region Three regional day on Saturday. That one was made in record time, but more of that in another post.

Sketchbook Part 2

The sketchbook arrived safely!

And it has been catalogued at the Brooklyn Art Library with a call number of 148L.5-5 (whatever that means!). In time it will also be digitalised, so able to be viewed on-line. The full Sketchbook tour starts in the US in April, and the European books will come to London in October. Exciting!

The Sketchbook Project

My book for the Sketchbook Project made it to the post office by the skin of its teeth - 4.15pm yesterday - the last date for postmarking. The theme is Along the Line and I decided to narrow this down to the shore/coast line so I could work with an old favourite - after all it was supposed to be enjoyable.

Sketch Book Project

As usual despite all good intentions I left it till the last minute and it was a mad scramble to get it done on time - never underestimate how long it takes to fill a page. Thank goodness for matte medium photo transfers - a relatively quick way of creating a background for text. All papers are not equal - the paper in this book was less equal than some! It's fine for drawing on with pencil and drawing pen, but doesn't like wet media at all. I took it apart and replaced some of the pages with 140gsm cartridge paper and thick tracing paper - with hindsight I should have done them all, and included watercolour paper too, but I was wary of making it too bulky. Inevitably, with mixed pages, I ended up wanting to put wet media on the drawing paper - which went straight through. This is why the pebbles have a green background!


Here are a few close-ups - the rest are in the album above. Had trouble photographing these as the book wouldn't lie flat. Of course, I should have scanned it, but I didn't think of that in my rush to meet the deadline. More haste, less speed . . . 

Ammonites at Lyme Regis - Brusho and pen on tracing paper

Seascape - acrylic applied with credit card on cartridge

Gulls on a telegraph wire at Dungeness

Old groynes at West Wittering - brusho and pen on cartridge and tracing paper

Mackerel - pencil and brusho on drawing paper (the one that bled trough!)

Boat at Clovelly - pencil on cartridge

Animated Quilts

Someone sent me a link to an animated quilt block video by Gayle Thomas - looks a bit like a kaleidoscope, set to music. Its great for those of us interested in pattern and the effect of colour. See the box opposite if you'd like to see it too.

Wow!

Just received this parcel today. It's an old out of print book I ordered via superfastbooksales on Amazon marketplace - and they were.


But look at the stamps - aren't they wonderful? They are mostly special issues from the 70s and I had several of them in my collection at the time. They're in perfect condition and what I like is that someone has taken the trouble to preserve them and stick them all on my parcel! Really appealed to my magpie instinct - and the designer in me. Made my day!

And now I've discovered mobile blogging - so I might manage to post more regularly. And pigs might fly . . . !

On displacement activity and being distracted

Can't believe it has been 20 months since I have published anything here!

A lot has happened in that time. Hazel and I have had a second set of C&G certificate students successfully complete their course. We have also developed two new courses - a one-year level 2 certificate course in response to requests from some of our beginners who didn't have time to commit to the longer course, and a level 3 diploma course to provide progression for those who'd completed the certificate. And that is a lot of work, believe me!

We also had a student, Anna Jenkins, selected for the Further Education Gallery at the Festival of Quilts last year. That was a huge achievement for Anna, who was living with cancer at the time, and who was determined to make the most of every minute of her life. Her accomplished work was admired by many people, and we all enjoyed the experience, as Hazel and I went along to help her set up and man her stand. Sadly, Anna died just after Christmas, but it was a joy to have known her and be part of her life for a short time, seeing how she just got on with things and achieved so much. My lesson from her is to cut the displacement activity (this blog??) and JUST DO IT!

Hazel and I also had the brilliant news that we had been selected to receive the Quilters' Guild first Travel and Education Bursary for teachers. This has enabled us to do a monthly course (Wet'n'Wild) with Claire and Leslie at Committed to Cloth, which I for one am enjoying immensely! It covers all wet processes for surface decoration of cloth - either to be used as art cloth in its own right or to be cut up and stitched into, as is the wont of quilters.

The first two months were spent looking at dyeing processes and produced a 'family' of cloth dyed progressively from two colours, in light, medium and dark values, which were then overdyed in light medium and dark values of the second colour making a range of 16 different pieces in all. I chose black and brown for my colours, as I have never really worked with neutrals before. Boring! I hear you cry - but the fabrics produced were very interesting, and can now be printed on and further worked into - the focus of the next few months' work.

The other fabrics were dyed using tray dyeing techniques, which produce stunning marks on the fabric. Although I have done this before, there is nothing like being taught exactly how to do something and then encouraged to experiment to improve the results. Both multicoloured pieces shown here were dyed in the same tray, and I got a bit trigger happy with the colours! I discovered that I don't like the effect of lemon yellow and scarlet together, and I positively hate the sludgy purple formed by scarlet and royal blue.On the positive side the markings on the top piece are great. I really like the depth in the middle. So encouraged by Claire, I overdyed it with 'double red' and the result can be seen below - it still has the depth, but the colours are a bit more unified.

The other piece was overdyed in 'double blue' , which has improved it, but it would still benefit from something else. It's a bit too busy to use as a background for printing, but I might discharge some of the colour and see what happens ...

And here's a picture of Godfrey P Pussycat supervising the whole process! He's another thing that has happened (almost) since I've been gone. A native of Torquay, he was a new arrival in August 2009 as a kitten - and nearly lost one of his nine lives last week by getting himself shut in a shed over Easter - luckily the owner wasn't away for both bank holidays. He hasn't learnt his lesson though (typical boy!), and was straight into our shed when I opened the door the very next day!

Well, the title of this post was about displacement activity and being distracted, and that was because I came to it on a circuitous route via another blog, which was in turn a distraction from displacement activity - reading emails instead of planning next week's lesson for diploma students. Luckily tomorrow's another day, so I can do it then, and I'll post some more pics of fabric from the course, on a planned break from work - important for recharging creative energies - not displacement activity at all.