Sunday 23 November 2014

Quilt No 3 Change of scale: Mended Door



Quilt number 3 finally completed after several months marinating on the design wall.  The smaller scale area  is a photo of part of a patched, mended door with newer wood inserts among the old on Queen Charlottes Cottage in the grounds of Kew Gardens. The larger scale  shapes and colours are based on some of the sections of the photo, a mixture of African batik, hand dyed and monoprints with acrylic paint.  I  used different weight threads ( 40 and 12) in these areas to further emphasise the change of scale.
I'm not having much luck with  my measurements when cutting down for binding, This quilt is actually 40 x 79 cm as the quilting with 12wt thread drew up the fabric more than anticipated. Red Stapelia  is 39 x 80 cm as I made exactly the same mistake as I did  with grey fingerprint quilt despite writing down all the measurements!

Tuesday 4 November 2014

Quilt No 1 : Red Stapelia


  My quilt for our first challenge 'Red' has been almost finished for a long time.  A wholecloth piece of Japanese silk shibori  layered over an African damask ,  it's been a labour of love, hand stitched  using a variety  of loops and other stitches  trying out techniques from Helen Parrott's book. It's accompanied  me on several train journeys, the format of 40 x 80 cm being a good travel piece to work on. This weekend I finally got round to trimming it down and applying a facing.
It looks quite sinister and plant-like  reminding me of the carrion flower so I'm calling it 'Red Stapelia' .