Green:Lost in the reeds

With moving house and then Ian having surgery it's been a long,long time since I’ve done any sewing. But with Ian back at work,and inspired by FoQ (lovely to catch up with Uta and Gillian),I’ve made the first in the backlog and have ideas for others.I'm on a roll! This one is one of a series about losing my wedding and engagement rings while collecting rare fen orchids on Catfield Fen.The reeds are taller than I am! You can read more about this green series here.

6 Done, 1 left to complete

 'Red'  and 'Repetition and Pattern'

 ' Black to Grey with dash of colour' and 'change of Scale'

 ' Proof of sketching' and 'Blue'

'Lines'

I'm currently packing up  stitching and painting projects for my retreat next week at Rydal Hall in the Lake District and have hanging sleeves and labels to attach to 6 out of 7 of my quilts and hand stitching to complete on the 7th.

Filling in the details of the insurance form was an interesting exercise as several of my pieces have changed what challenge they're for  e.g. the 'Lines' quilt was originally going to be for 'repetition'; the 'blue' was originally going to be 'lines' ) and as Uta pointed out , my 'Change of Scale' could equally have worked for 'Black to Grey'.  They're fixed now however and all have titles.

I've really enjoyed working to this size and  have tried to work towards the edge of my comfort zone, in some cases anyway.  I've also found unexpected links between pieces e.g. 2 doors and   using photo of my fingerprint and using finger painting. I think I would sum up my collection as 'ripples and marks'  

From what I've seen of others work I think this will be a really interesting exhibition.



Sketch progress

 I've been having a productive time over the festive season, working on my 'sketch' challenge piece ( you can read more about it on my blog here)
It's based on a watercolour sketch I did in Greece in 1998.

 I have a question about whether to include the scaffolding pole to the left. It wasn't  in my original  drawing but when I visited again in 2006, the poles  in position added something to the composition. Then it's deciding how to quilt it .

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!

What I'm not making...

 

With the challenge of a change in scale, my first thought was to continue my explorations  based very loosely on paintings by Prunella Clough , with a picture  of a whole  door  embedded in a detail  showing textures of that door ( as in Anavriti II  below )   

 So I used a section of the photo below, printed out on cotton and then had a fine time searching through my stash to find orangey  fabrics with interesting wood-like marks.

But it wasn't doing anything for me so I'm starting again with the photos that inspired this 2009 journal quilt below based on door of Queen Charlottes Cottage in the grounds of Kew Gardens.  Simpler , more interesting shapes, contrast in tones and lots of interesting details in the wood grain should do nicely. I've gathered together my fabrics, just working out the construction so apologies that it will be a little late.  I do hope to be able to pass my quilts over to Uta at FoQ   so that's a deadline to work to . 

 

 

Ps Found an old blog post in my searches where I recognise my procrastination and need of deadlines in 'Student Syndrome'. I do generally achieve what I want but the stress levels are high!  



Grey Challenge - Inky Index

This is my response to the challenge of  greys - my touch of colour is  the greys themselves. The black and white photo of my stained finger came out of the printer with a purpleish cast!

When I was on the Human Marks workshop with Dorothy Caldwell in Puglia, I took a photo of my index finger stained and ingrained with Indian ink after a morning of making fingerprint marks.
I  manipulated the photo in Photoshop, dividing it into 6 overlapping sections, and printed it out on a commercial batik (with marks that reminded me of my fingerprints) treated with bubblejet set.
Machine quilted .

I'm enjoying working to the 40 x 80 cm size although this is actually  38 x 80 cm as I didn't 'measure twice, cut once' when trimming to size as I usually do.  An extra 2cm on the RH side would have  made all the difference.  Ah well, lesson learnt.