Two small quilts

I'm making the most of the free time I have before the Christmas rush arrives!

I've recently signed up for DMTV and have been inspired by some of the videos I have watched.   If you have never seen or heard of these excellent videos, have a look at Design Matters website which is run by the very talented Linda and Laura Kemshall.

I have long been an admirer of their work and inspired by their use of quilting which is often much more dense that I would ever do!   I also love the printed fabrics that Laura sells under Fingerprint Fabrics.  I have purchased some in the past at FOQ and have recently bought a couple of pieces of map fabrics for using in my "Seen From Above" series.

One of the videos I was inspired by was about using your own printing blocks to create first papers and then fabrics to use in collage.

So using the map fabric - an old map of London - and some simple stamp made with foam blocks, I created two collages in my sketchbook which I then translated into small quilts using my own dyed fabrics which I had printed.   The use of a rectangle for the stamps was to reflect the buildings which would be seen on a map of a different scale.  

On the first one I quilted around the rectangles and then bit the bullet and did some much more dense free quilting on the map area.  I left a couple of areas unquilted for variety.   As with my earlier quilt in this series, I quilted the title of the quilt on the right side which I intend to do with all my creations in this series.



Seen From Above - Suburbs I

     

For the second one, I again quilted around the rectangles first and then machine quilted vertical lines over the map areas.



Seen From Above - Suburbs II

     

Each quilt measures about 12" x 16".

My take on a "Modern Quilt"

I have become intrigued by the "Modern Quilts" that have become popular over the past few years, in particular the debate that has taken place between those for and those against.   I stand on the fence as I have never liked to think of myself in any particular box; I'd rather do what I want to do whether it's a complicated quilt (not many of those these days!), a simple quilt, a piece of embroidery, a piece of felt, or a combination of any of these - and more besides!

I do love the simplicity of these newer quilts and with that in mind, as well as my "Seen From Above" theme, I designed a quilt which uses the plan of our house.   It was definitely useful having an in-house draughtsman who could come up with an accurate drawing, although I did made a few changes to simplify the design.

The background for this quilted hanging was created slowly over the summer and was based on the ideas of Valerie S Goodwin from her excellent "Art Quilt Maps".   She first creates an opaque layer by sewing irregular shapes of fabric to a background using the stitch and flip method and then hand stitching any raw edges which gives the background some texture.   She then goes on to add paint and a translucent layer but I didn't feel brave enough on this piece to go any further so I just left it with the random shapes background.

To this I bonded the shapes from the plan of our house which were cut from some red fabric I had dyed myself.   The quilt was then machine quilted in vertical straight lines using a variegate cream for cream areas and a variegated red over the red shapes.   I also added red quilt lines horizontally over the red shapes.

I used the faux piping method to bind the quilt, using the same red fabric for the contrasting piping.
I finished by machining the title on the side using the red thread.

    

Having had this quilt in my head for so long I am pleased that it has turned out just how I imagined it!

Wonderful workshop with Maggie Grey

Last Saturday Maggie Grey came to visit Context to give her talk entitled Stitches, Straps and Layers.   She also did a mini workshop for us in the afternoon.

The talk was very inspirational and I seemed to be making notes all the way through as I got ideas from what she had shown us.   As well as seeing all the work on the screen, Maggie had brought loads of samples and sketchbooks with her so we were able to see "in the flesh" much of the work included in the talk and in many of her books.   She was very generous with her knowledge and told us how she had put together her creations and where we could get the supplies for ourselves.

In the afternoon Maggie (and her 'willing' grand-daughter!) had put together for us some strips of silk rods which had been machined together on felt and were the basis for us to put together with insertion stitches.  We first buttonholed around each of the four strips, added any additional stitching we wanted and then, after stitching the pieces to soluble fabric, we joined the pieces together with stitching of our choice.  Mine were joined with a combination of faggoting stitch and herringbone stitch.

Maggie's husband Clive also came with her and he showed us how to make "twirlies" with wire which we used to decorate our strips.

Mine is all finished now but I want to mount it on a gold foiled background and as gold is the only colour I haven't got in my foil box, it will have to wait.   This is what it looks like for now and I will post a photo when it is finished and mounted.

 

 

As I said, I got lots of ideas so watch out in the coming months to see what I create!

Quilt for Indiana

A friend of mine recently gave birth to a beautiful baby girl and as I made a quilt for her first baby I wanted to do the same for this one.  Luckily we knew it was going to be a girl so I could get it ready for when she arrived.

Now that I have given it to her, I can share it with everyone else.

 

 

I was really stuck about how to quilt it as I didn't want to cross the rectangular blocks.  Following some great advice from a group of friends, I used a combination of their ideas.   I appliqued the kites so that their tails went across the blocks and then the smaller blocks were tied on each corner where there was no quilting.

 

 

     



My friend loved the quilt but baby was too busy sleeping to make any comment!