Clamshell quilting

Started quilting this piece today - as I expected, I really like the pattern of the quilting with the design of the quilt. But then I like this quilting pattern on most anything, it's just time- and thread-consuming, so I don't use it on big pieces. At the moment, there's just one big clamshelly feather extending across the quilt - but I'll do more on it tomorrow - perhaps even finish, time permitting - it's not a big piece, after all...

X marks the spot

Here's a little top I made today - the plan was originally to use the V&A reproduction fabrics I bought, and I did use them a little, but in the end, I found myself going in another direction - the browns are from stash - they were 4.5" squares to start with; I sewed four of them together, then slashed those blocks up to insert the "X" strips - and those bits of fabric were from the V&A collection. I then trimmed the blocks to 8", so the finished top is about 22" square.

The design idea, I stole unashamedly from a lovely little quilt I own, which I got from Julie in a swap a while back. I love this quilt and have for a long time meant to make something using it (or rather, something more with the technique - I did make a little quilt as part of the BQL challenge using the idea).

I plan to quilt this fairly heavily, using a King Tut thread I have which I love (#944 - Karnak) which is brown and blue variegated. I've ordered another spool of it, just to be on the safe side, but I hope to be working on the quilting this weekend (tomorrow probably not so much as I am taking the kids swimming at a place with cool slides and whatnot, and running some errands) - I may use the clamshell pattern, which I think looks great on many designs. It's quite thread intensive, though, so it's not such a good one for larger pieces.

Canal House B

I decided to take a different approach to Canal House B - frankly, I'm making them all up as I go along, so I think every one will be different. But anyway, this one was inspired by a sponge I was about to throw away, when I suddenly thought - hey, I could make a stamp from this. It was quite a soft sponge, so the possibilities were a bit limited, but I thought I could probably get away with making windowframes from it, and as it happens, I could. This saves me the effort of stitching down a number of window frames on this piece, as well! The water and sky (better photos of those later) are both single pieces of fabric, as is the house - again, a better photo later when the piece is dryer and I have the sidewalk and canal walk added in and the bits sewn together. I just wanted to show this in progress as I am trying to get my blog posts to publish automatically on my facebook profile, and I wanted to test if it works or not!

V&A Visit

I like the V&A - lots of interesting things to see. We went up today to check out the Quilts Exhibition (which was good, but I still don't really get the point of choosing a number of works by non-quilt-artists to represent contemporary quilting. I mean, there are TONS of brilliant UK quilt & fibre artists to choose from, some of whom do quite traditional things and some of whom are completely wild & wacky and the rest of whom fit everywhere in between, so why not use some of them instead of, for example, Tracy Emin, who, whatever you might think of her art, isn't a quilter? But I digress...)* and had a poke around some of the other galleries, too. Not all of them, as I had two of three children with me - and there's only so much a 7YO can take of the V&A, bless him.

The kids also took part in a make your own patchwork-block-type-art-project that they had running, and these are the blocks they made - the actual blocks were left at the V&A for their project. The idea was to get inspiration for the design elements from around the museum and then use them in making the blocks...



This is Alex's - an elephant (from the India room) on a background of triangles taken from a rather fancy kimono in the Japan room.



And Olivia chose her inspiration in the Islamic Middle East room (I think) - anyway, it was the shape of the leaves in the above photo. I can see why she likes them - me too!



I did buy a few things in the shop (resisted the exhibition book, which was £25 even in paperback, though it did look nice), including a few FQs of the special fabric, which I intend to mix with some more calming fabrics and make something small from. I did find it a bit amusing that the FQs were selling for £3.50 each, but a bundle of 6, tied with a ribbon, was going for £25. I know, I can't do the maths on that, either...

Anyway, if you have the chance, I'd still recommend the exhibit, but for me, it was mostly the historical quilts which I was most interested in, rather than the contemporary stuff.


*Actually, not to go on and on about this, but can you imagine it happening in another field, for instance, if there was an exhibition of 300 years of British oil painting, and to represent the last 50 years, they chose 2 or 3 painters, and then half a dozen people in a totally different field, who created works to represent something about oil painting, possibly not even using oils as a medium? It wouldn't happen, would it!

(Which isn't to say I didn't like some of the pieces, I just feel that aren't perhaps the best choice for an exhibit like this - all the historical stuff is so interesting and varied and represents a good cross-section of the media in those times, but I felt that given that there are hundreds (thousands?) of works out there by contemporary British fibre & quilt artists which show a wide variety of styles, themes, media, messages, etc, why not use those rather than commission things from people in another field?? Or am I being too sensitive about this?)

Here's another thought - I've been thinking about this more, sorry! I can't quite put my finger on it, but I suppose I sort of felt that (the way it was presented) the older quilts in the exhibit gained their artistic validation by virtue of being old, detailed, having lots of pieces, etc (and by being beautiful, in many cases, of course!) but that all the recent quilts had to have some sort of artistic or political statement to them, a higher meaning, rather than just being excellent examples of using this media to create something beautiful (e.g. Grayson Perry's quilt about the politics of abortion; the piece with money; the Alzheimer's piece with the steel wool filling; the one which was very simple squares but which used dryer lint as wadding; and so on). But then again, many of the historical quilts focused on social and/or political aspects of quilting rather than just beauty, so perhaps they were trying to carry that theme throughout the exhibit.

I wonder what other quilters who have seen the exhibit thought!

Canal House A: Finished

So, all the bits are sewn down now, which brings Canal House A to a finish. Guess it's time to start thinking about Canal House B. Though not tomorrow, as I think I shall drag the kids up to town and force them to see the V&A quilt exhibit, lol.

Canal House again

The main thing I did today, I can't show on the blog (quilted a round robin), so I thought it was time to drag out the canal house again - I have now stitched down almost all of the windows - soon it will be on to the door, then sidewalk, canal wall and water. And then, on to the next house. Not sure what I will do yet for that one, but I have a few ideas - vague ones, at least. I'm sure they will all end up very different as I am just playing each one by ear and letting them speak to me as I work. I'm also trying not to dye any new fabric for this project (I might do a little painting or printing) so what I have in my stash will limit my choices - but not a lot, as I do have quite a stash! It's possible I may run low at some point, in which case I will dye, but frankly, I think it's unlikely, even with the blue issues for sky and water - the houses, of course, can be anything I like!

Momiji

Today was one of those days where it seems impossible that I got done all the things I got done - doncha love those days? They sure beat their opposites, the ones where you can't work out just what on earth you spent the entire day doing...

Alex and I had a quick trip to the Farmers' Market, first thing (by which I mean, 9am - it doesn't open until then), then I came home, did some sewing, had lunch, took Olivia and a friend over to a birthday party, came back, helped the others clean out the shed (a major spring undertaking), went to the park with Alex & some friends for an hour or so - and that was all before coming home to have dinner and watch the new Dr Who (which is on at the inconvenient time of 6.15 - really must update my television so I don't have to watch things when they are actually ON!).

Anyway. The sewing involved doing some of the satin stitching on the first canal house - not highly exciting to show, so will update later, when I have more of it done - and then making a set of ATCs using some of the spotty fabric I got from Karol-Ann the other day and a set of Japanese doll stickers (which are called Momiji, apparently, hence the title) I picked up at (I think) the V&A giftshop quite a while back. I found them during my tidy up and decided they really needed to be used in something. A few buttons and flowers and hey presto! I think they are really sweet, and they'll be good to put aside for birthday ladies in my ATC swap in a busy month, when I don't have time to make a set specially, which I'm sure will happen.

A few pieces

Luckily for me, I got something in the post today which I can share, as we have been quite busy and not much sewing has been done in the past few days. Although I did spend a large part of one day clearing out my sewing room, which was useful, as it had got to the point where I could hardly work on the table for the junk therein - plus it was feeling dusty and cluttered.

Anyway, today, I got these goodies in the post from Karol-Ann - an African block for our swap (so now it's my turn - but it will be a few weeks before I get to it, I know), plus some other goodies, for use in making ATCs, etc. I particularly have my eye on that spotty fabric (which has a great texture) - I think it may well feature in something very soon...

House A

I did some more work on the first canal house today - nothing is sewn down yet, only fused, in case I want to move something. I'm not sure I want to do that, but I do want to put some sort of border around the door so it shows up more. The piece looks a little strange at the moment as I have folded under the seam allowance along the sides of the house (this was to help with the window placements), but on the whole, I think it works fairly well. Once I'm sure I'm happy with the bits, I will start stitching it down a bit.

A bit of this & that

Lots of different things done today - first, I finished off the wonky shoo-fly blocks for the lotto. When it's light tomorrow, I will photograph all of them together for the block lotto blog - but it's too dark at the moment and anyway, too much effort! Some work better than others in terms of contrast, but in all, they should contribute to a nice, funky quilt or two.



I also put this together - this is a collection of Dear Jane blocks, 6", in Civil War Repros, which Cathi and I have been swapping for a while. We decided a while back to stop and DO something with the blocks, so today I dug them out and put them together. This will be a wall-hanging once it's quilted - not sure how I will do that yet, probably fairly simply, but it will definitely be by machine, not hand!





And finally, this is a project I am working on with my dyeing & surface art group - a fractured houses project. The top photo is the inspiration for the project, while an enlarged version of the line drawing is what we will work from - below the row of Dutch canal houses is approximately 8" of water, above is sky. The idea is that each person (there are 10) will make all 10 houses (separated), and then they will be swapped out so that each person gets a house from each other person. We can then join them up together. It's quite a large project - each house strip (including sky and water) is 33" high, and anywhere between about 6 and 12" wide. I started work on the far left house ("a" in the diagram) today, working on the water. Originally I was just going to use some strips of shibori fabric from my scrap basket, but didn't have quite enough to cover the area, so I ended up doing lots of piecing and patching. We all were given one piece of a common fabric, some of which has to be included in each house, somewhere. In house A, I think I am going to use it behind the windows; we'll see.



The project isn't due to the swap hostess's house until November, but time always runs out on these things, so I want to work on it in little bits and pieces through the year so it doesn't overwhelm me. I think it's going to be great fun, but a lot of work, too. And goodness knows what I'll do with the finished piece, which will be rather large!

We are working mostly in hand-dyes or altered fabrics, and should follow the shape of the houses, but otherwise, there is a lot of freedom in terms of colour (the colours in the first photo are irrelevant), style and method. I'm hoping to do a variety of things with my houses. We'll see. We can also embellish some, though not too much, as we will want to do that sort of finishing to our own pieces, once we have joined them all up...

Shoo-fly, don't bother me...

April's block lotto is Wonky Shoo-Fly blocks - these are 8" blocks and feature floral fabrics with a tonal (or white) fabric. I had a bit of time to sew (though not as much as I'd planned, as I ended up having a cup of tea and a chat with a neighbour who I don't see much any more due to us both working all the time!) so I made a few pairs. I have a few more to make tomorrow, and then, who knows, something else. Not sure what!

Marbled silk ATCs

So, in what I hope will be the first of several days of craft-related posts over this Easter holiday, here's one of the things I did on my first day off. I also finished the red, yellow & orange log cabin blocks, but I don't seem to have a photo yet - perhaps I'll save that for a day when I don't actually do any craft-related things.

The kids (well, the two who were home) and I did a little marbling on paper with some marbling inks I had knocking around, and I also had a bit of silk that I thought would work nicely - so these are marbled silk, with some free-motion stitching and a large metal grommit. I also used a bit of ribbon at the bottom and some decorative stitching. I debated back and forth adding something else towards the bottom left of the card, but couldn't find anything I liked to balance the large metal discs, so in the end, decided to leave them fairly minimalist. These are ATCs (Artist Trading Cards - 2.5x3.5") - some of which will be sent out shortly to the ladies in my swap who have April birthdays.

Another Little Quilt Swap...again!

I'm sure many of you are aware that I sometimes run a little quilt swap called Another Little Quilt Swap (ALQS). I have decided, finally, to run a fourth round. The swap has its own blog, so do pop on over and check it out!

The style of swap is a little different from some, in that you aren't assigned a partner, and you have to prove you have made your quilt before you can pick out your choices of quilts to come live with you - full details of the rules and guidelines are on the swap blog.

Forgot to post this!

As I mentioned before, I am making some more of the wonky log cabin blocks, this time in warm colours. It's making a nice dent in my scrap basket, and so far I haven't even touched the strips in the shoe boxes of strips (which are a lot emptier after I did all the cool colour blocks). I'd really like to get rid of all my accumulated scraps - or at least, a lot of them - so I think this might be the way to go. I may also offer some stuff up to people who do charity quilts - I have a lot of pre-cut squares, for instance - which I don't think I'm really likely ever to use.

Anyway, there are a lot more of these warm colour blocks on the go and I plan to work on them some more today. Tomorrow I might make some blocks for the April block lotto, but I won't be able to show them yet, so perhaps I'll show more of these blocks.

And yes, I did redesign my blog, by playing around with the template designer on Blogger Draft - I know it looks kind of autumnal rather than spring-like, but it suits me. I'm sure I'll fiddle with it some more before too long, as it seems to get easier and easier to do - thank goodness!

More scrappy log cabins...

Today I finished the last of the purple, blue and green scrappy wonky log cabins - I have 36, 10" blocks, which will make a nice sized lap quilt. It made such a nice dent in my scrap basket, that I decided to go ahead and do some in warmer colours, so have pulled out orange, red, pink, brown and black (again) scraps and am working on some in that colourway, too - I can actually see the bottom of the basket now!

Goodies in!

A while back I signed up to Trash's Spring/Autumn Swap (depending on your hemisphere) - the brief was to send something homemade, some crafty bits and something yummy. I made a little spring quiltie for my partner down under; today I received, also from Down Under, from the lovely Calidore, my own selection of goodies.

Aren't they wrapped beautifullly? Even through the cellophane I can see that one item says "chocolate" all over it - this turned out to be a bag of - well, no surprise there - chocolate treats. I also got a nice pair of mitts (fingerless gloves) which fit perfectly and which I am totally delighted to say I won't be wearing until next autumn or winter (the back of spring finally having been broken here - and not before time!) but which will come in very handy when the time does come. Despite the purple, they have actually photographed fairly well - or rather, not so much "they" as it's hard to take a photo of both of ones own hands at the same time...



She also sent a small package of hand-dyed charms, some lovely flowery bits and - and these I really can't wait to do something with - a couple of pieces of silk paper and some silk paper leaves. These are really beautiful bits of craftwork, and although it seems almost a shame to use them for anything (rather than just sit around admiring them) I'm sure I'll get over that soon and incorporate them into something or other...

Anyway, a lovely bundle of goodies which was very welcome on my doormat after a long week! Thanks again Catherine.

Deja vu?

I know, this looks more or less like yesterday, albeit there are 12 blocks instead of 10 - but I promise this is a new set of blocks, and in fact, these are 10" blocks, not 9". I have some more to finish off, most of them only needing one or two more rounds before trimming - when finished I will have 30 blocks, which will make a nice size lap quilt. I might do another one later, using all my red, yellow and orange scraps!

Block lotto blocks

So, here are ten finished blocks for the March block lotto - five lean left and five lean right. I actually have started some more of these for myself (great way to use up scraps, and I had lots of stuff out, ready, anyway).

Just for your interest, I thought I'd show what the blocks look like before and after being trimmed...



They were approximately 12" squares before I trimmed them - but as you can see, the edges aren't necessarily straight or even - it doesn't matter, really. I trimmed them to 9" (finished) for the lotto. The ones I do for myself, I might trim a little less - perhaps to 10". It will mean I can only lean them over gently, but that's ok, they will still be lovely blocks and make a nice baby quilt or lap quilt (depending on how many blocks I do). Look for more tomorrow, as I am hoping that one of my Mother's Day presents will be some sewing time!

A little midweek work...

Amazingly enough, I had about a half hour free today during the day to do a little sewing - so I decided I'd get started on some blocks for the March block lotto - these are going to be funky log cabins, though they have a way to go. This is a great block to do - useful for using up scraps, certainly. I love the colourway as well. Who knows, I might even make some more for myself - perhaps in this colourway, perhaps just to use up some of the many scraps in my scrap basket...

Weekend Work

So, amidst all the various things on the family schedule this weekend, I did find some sewing time - on Saturday, I put together the homespun squares the rest of the way - I had to trim them first as some of them were kind of wonky - I confess it! I think it's the nature of the fabric. Anyway, I'm not that worried about it as it will be a tree skirt and spend a lot of time not being seen much...

I also worked on something today for the Bloggers Round Robin, but of course I can't show that as it has to be a secret - can't wait until those projects are done and we can see them all!