More Kanta style bags

I have been spending quite a bit of time sitting in the conservatory overseeing the cats' 'garden time' over the last three or four weeks.  They only go out with one of us keeping an eye on them because we have had some terrible experiences of lost cats in the past.  Even so there are times when one escapes and when I arrived home from my Tate volunteering yesterday afternoon Nui had completely disappeared.  Running round the block calling for him is a good way to get to know the neighbours!  It appears that the conservatory door had opened itself so they were able to get out.  The girls, being girls, were sitting on the lawn when my husband realised what had happened but Nui stayed out for four to five hours until it began to rain and was beginning to get dark.  We have no cat flap so it is a bit of a problem when you have more than one cat and you don't want the other cats to get out but do want the absent one to get in.  All this activity meant that I did not have a chance to read the book about Margaret Mellis which I bought from the Tate bookshop but I still plan to do a post about this.  Instead I spent the time updating the cats' PetLog registrations.  I am very glad they are microchipped.  This wasn't possible in the olden days but would have been a great help on a couple of occasions.


You will see that I now have three finished yellow bags made from the scraps of the yellow churn dashes.  There is plenty of fabric for more but I fancied a change this week so I have made a blue one from the small offcuts of blue cotton that I keep in a large old-fashioned sweetie jar.

There is only one square left to do and then I shall line it with bright red/pink batik.  The yellow ones have worked well especially with fancy buttons:

I think the buttons are designed for use on cardigans for small children.  I just have to remember that the ones with flowers on them cost 50p each so it rather puts the price up.  I originally intended to give these bags to the Put Em Ins fund-raiser at the Festival of Quilts but the St Ives Arts Club of which I am a member is going to have a craft fair at the end of September.  I missed the first one last year because it was the weekend of my nephew's wedding.  I showed these bags to a friend who had been to the fair and she said they would do sell  so I am now working flat out to see how many I can make.  It is a pretty slow technique but I think of it as the equivalent of Victorian needlepoint.  I may swop to making them by machine but the hand-sewing is very portable and I will be able to take it on holiday with me.  Also it is a wonderful excuse to use lots of Stef Francis http://www.stef-francis.co.uk/ variegated thread.  I find their extra fine mercerised cotton is best because I am working on three thicknesses: wadding, the cotton patches and finally a layer of fine net to keep it all in place.


I do have some other bags that I can let the Put Em Ins people have so I don't feel too guilty about keeping these to sell.  My main aim at the St Ives event is to try and sell some of my journal quilts and in theory I would like to make a few more, possibly similar to the ones I know people like because they are supposed to represent various features of the Penwith landscape.  I fear it will all depend on how much time I have to sew over the next few weeks.

Flowers as inspiration

This morning I received my copy of the new book by Twelve by Twelve www.twelveby12.org Twelve by Twelve: The International Art Quilt Challenge which one of my fellow Contemporary Quilt group members recommended last week.  It is every bit as good as she said and very well designed.  Twelve by Twelve is a  blog based group who do group challenges of quilts that are 12 inches square.  I already knew quite a bit about them but it is always good to have a book to study rather than just using the Internet to see images.  As I have been taking my camera on a few short walks round here this week I was particularly struck by a comment in the first chapter where the topic was 'Dandelion'.  Diane Perin Hock says that Jane Sassaman, teaching a workshop, would ask her 'What do you want to say about that flower?'  This has made me think about some of my photos in a different way.
First, foxgloves.  I have been photographing these off and on for years but it is often difficult because it is almost always windy down here.

This morning I walked up the valley that starts a few hundred yards from here.  The foxgloves were magnificent and  there was lots of red campion plus plenty of white cow parsley.

The comment made me consider what it is that is so attractive about foxgloves apart from the general effect of drifts of them.  I decided it is the detailed mottling inside the petals and the bell like shape of the ends of the petals.

I need to get out the drawing tools!
A couple of days ago I walked up to a nearby small reservoir.  It has wild rhododendrons i.e. they are all purple as opposed to the different colours of cultivated varieties.

 In fact they are a big problem here as they 'get away' and often cause wildfires so there have been a lot of clearance programmes over the last ten years or so.  This one was growing in a an uncontrolled hedgerow beside the reservoir.  When I uploaded it I realised that although it is not very sharp it is probably the sort of photo I can play with in Photoshop.  Also the centre of the flower is sharp and detailed and the petals quite wispy.  I am sure there is some artistic message there!
The reservoir also has a good display of wild waterlilies at this time of the year.

They remind me of the ones I saw in Monet's garden last year.
I have also had the camera out in the garden now that the plants are beginning to bloom.  I am not a good designer of gardens - I just know what I like - but this year I decided to go for hot colours in our small herbaceous patch.  The patch is getting smaller as the shrubs grow but I know it will be easier to maintain in future so I am not panicking.  Apart from the self-sown nasturtiums which I am having to pull out so that they do not strangle the plants they hide, we have some rather nice gazanias this year.  I am sure they are the sort of flower of which I should be asking: What do you want to be saying about that flower?'

So now I just need to think about how I might use some of these images.

Wedding present quilt finished

The wedding present quilt is finished!  We collected it from the longarm quilter http://www.thequiltingcompany.co.uk/ last week and this week I have put the binding on.  Now I just need to sign it.

I am very pleased with longarm quilting which is quite simple but right for something with such a busy pattern.

I was also impressed with the cost which was much less than a lot of more commercial places.  In fact I am wondering if I should spend next winter making a new quilt for my bed.  The current one is ten years old and beginning to look a bit sad, not least because it gets washed rather a lot.  After I finished it, I swore I would never make another bed quilt and the ones I have done since have been smaller - topper size rather than huge King-size quilts that cover up the whole duvet.

I have rolled the quilt up and put it on the top shelf of my wardrobe as I plan to give it to my nephew and his wife when we are all at his younger brother's wedding in August.  And I am still appreciating not having to make this last one a quilt because his prospective mother-in-law is a quilter.  I have realised that making traditional bed quilts is very time consuming and that over last winter that was all I did: the wedding present and the single bed quilt for Zelah.

Those indigo fabrics

This week I have finally got round to doing something with the fabrics I made at Janice Gunner's indigo dyeing workshop.  It is inspired by walks between Hayle and Godrevy lighthouse, an area with very interesting geology.  The quilting is going to be an important part of the whole design but here is the top.  It is approximately 28 inches square.  I am not making it for anything in particular which is why I can show it at this   stage of its development.

The centre consists of a piece of fine cotton that was folded and clamped with bulldog clips.  It is collaged onto a piece of linen that was simply scrunched.  The left hand panel is a piece of rust dyeing and the strip below it is commercial batik with a piece of sateen that I had dyed and then pole wrapped and painted, collaged in the centre.  I plan to quilt that section to represent the ridges you find in the sand when the tide is out.

The right side is space dyed cotton sateen that I made some time ago.  Is is supposed to represent the rock faces you find in this area but I do not seem to have a photograph of them.  The top and bottom panels are the piece that was anchored with clothes pegs.  Fortunately there was enough to cut and piece this.

I still have several pieces left from the workshop.  Here is the stitched grid.

It is also linen which I can see is going to be a bit tricky to stitch because it is quite a loose weave.

Tomorrow we are off to Launceston to collect the wedding present quilt from the longarm quilter.  I rather fancy visiting Launceston Castle if the weather is OK as I have never been there although I have driven round Launceston numerous times.  I am reading a fascinating book: The Making of the British Landscape by Francis Pryor http://www.amazon.co.uk/Making-British-Landscape-Transformed-Prehistory/dp/1846142059 and today I got to the section on Norman castles.  Launceston is a particularly good example of one.  As I have always had a great interest in 'reading the landscape' as I think it is called, I used to say I would take Hoskin's Making of the English Landscape to a desert island. This book is really its successor and illustrates how much archaeology has developed in the last half century due to all the high tech. equipment and techniques that have been developed.  Highly recommended and it has recently come out in paperback.

Wingham Wool at Praa Sands

My sister, who lives in Devon, has recently taken up felt-making.  A few weeks ago she asked if I would be the taxi driver for her and a couple of friends so that they could go to the Wingham Wool sale at Praa Sands which was held yesterday.  Wingham Wool http://www.winghamwoolwork.co.uk/ are a mill based in Rotherham who specialise in fibres for weavers, spinners and dyers.   These are made from all sorts of things; even milk powder and soya bean pulp, but a lot of the products are merino and other wools.  They do both dyed and natural fibres and you buy them by weight.

It was very interesting for me to go to this event.  I realised that there is another textile community out there who work in fibre/wool.  The community hall was full of bags of glorious coloured fibres which you buy by tearing off chunks.   There was a group of women spinning in the corner and in addition to the fibres, there were Australian natural dye powders and parts for Ashford spinning wheels.  It was good for me as I was not really tempted to buy anything.  However, there was a small bin containing thread made from recycled saris.  I know I can buy this in Penzance but there was a sample of a bag made from silk heavily couched with sari thread so I succumbed to a skein.  In the same bin there were strips of knitting and 'skeins' made from torn strips of 'glossy' fabrics.  There was a display of wooden needles beside it.  I immediately realised that I could try this technique with the bridal fabrics I have still not used ten years after acquiring a huge box of offcuts from a specialist dressmaker.  So I bought a pair of needles and will have a go.  I couldn't really photograph the samples but here is what I bought.

I did not think to ask my sister if I could photograph her purchases so I shall have to take some photos when I next see her.  If you are interested in Wingham Wool's products they are currently doing a roadshow in the South West.  Details on their website.

Indigo dyeing workshop

Last week I actually did some textile work!  I went on a two-day indigo dyeing workshop with Janice Gunner www.janicegunner.co.uk at Cowslip Workshops www.cowslipworkshops.co.uk.  I had always thought that indigo was a very dirty and borderline dangerous process so I did not want to do it at home.  Now I realise it isn't anything of the sort and I shall almost certainly have a go at home.

I have done workshops with Janice before so I knew I would learn a lot on this one.

Here she is demonstrating tying on the first day.  We did stitch resist, tying, clamping and scrunching fabric so there was plenty of variety in the fabrics we made.  I always forget what a long time it takes to do stitch resist so I need to sit in the sun and do a lot more!

My main aim was to make some cloth that I can use in quilts depicting Hayle. www.hayle.co.uk  In my head these are going to include pieces of rust dyeing to represent the industrial heritage of the town and pieces of indigo to represent the sea that surrounds it.  Here is one attempt to represent waves.  (All my photos were taken when the cloth had dried but not been washed so it looks a bit lumpy.)  I marked the lines with a flexible curve.  I know I also need to make some Arashi shibori, i.e. pole wrapped but as there were fewer poles than participants and as I know how to do it I let others have them..  It is top of the list for follow up work though.

I also did some Karamatsu (the larch) using templates Janice had made.

And at home that evening I made a doughnut with cord placed through a rolled up piece of fabric.

I also have a checked grid but it took hours and hours to pull the threads out and it missed the photo session.  It was linen and very tight.  A lovely effect although one row of thread was too close to the fold and did not really 'take'.  I came to the conclusion that the linen thread I used for stitching everything was really too thick so I must see what else I have.

On Day 2 we began with clamping.  I had not realised that there is a use for all the millions of Klippits I have acquired over the years.  Here is what these gave me.

This was made by folding the fabric samosa style and then anchoring it across the middle with the Klippit.  You can see on the right of the photo how you get interesting patterns from the ridges in the Klippit.  I then tied thick threads across the corners of the triangle I had created.  This means I got some dyed thread out of the exercise as well.

Then I did a small piece with bulldog clips placed on each of the four sides of a folded square.

A wonderful Rorschach inkblot type piece which I think should just be turned into a stitched piece as it is.  Now where are all the bulldog clips we have somewhere in the house?  And the clothes pegs?

These little round ones gave me spotty fabric.

Mixing the indigo vats turned out to be quite straight forward provided you remembered the health and safety aspects.

Ten minutes immersion in the vat and then outside for the pieces to oxidate before immersing them again.

We only had time to immerse pieces a couple of times but that seems to have been enough.  The very pale pieces at the left of the photo were dyed in woad in a communal vat.  What a fantastic colour it makes!

I tried out a lot of different weights of fabric ranging from silk organza to delphina cotton.  I have decided that the shibori techniques work better with lighter weights such as cotton lawn although you do need to take account of how tight the weave is if you are going to hand stitch it.  I seem to have come home with an awful lot of scrunched up pieces of different weights.

There are a few more pieces that I will photograph at the next stage of their development.  I have pressed everything carefully but in this household there are other influences.  Hinemoa took one look at the basket in which I had put the pieces and decided it would be a nice new day bed.

I hope she isn't High on the smell of indigo.  That was yesterday.  I have had to find another container for the fabric and turn this one into a new bed for her with an old pullover inside.  Meanwhile her sister, Pania, had decided to have a bath on the pieces I had got out and was musing about how to use.

Never share your creations with cats - unless you are prepared to get all the hairs off with sellotape or similar!

If you feel inspired by this, Janice has written a very good book: Shibori for Textile Artists which you can probably find on Amazon although I am not sure where it is in terms of editions.

Quilt Backs

At the beginning of this week I determined to assemble the back of the wedding present quilt ready for it to go to the longarm quilting person later in the month.   I am afraid progress has been painfully slow.  Last Saturday I bought a second piece of fabric to combine with one I probably bought about eight years ago.  That was a remaindered bin end and I knew it would come in  handy one day.

The blue fabric is the new piece and the William Morris the old one.  I washed the new fabric (mainly because the old one had been washed) but that is as far as I got for several days.  On Monday I received a the results of a biopsy I had some weeks ago for what I call my 'wobbly legs syndrome'.  It said I have a rare degenerative muscular condition called Inclusion Body Myositis.(IBM).   The consultant had mentioned something 'old people get' when I saw him months ago.   I don't consider myself old by today's standards but maybe that isn't the case.  The condition has no known cause (I guess it's age) and there is nothing they can do for it except physio.  If you look it up on the Web you find that the long-term prognosis isn't good but I have decided that something else could finish me off first and as at the moment my arms are fine, I just hope it progresses slowly and I don't have to give up sewing for years yet.  However, spurred on by twisting my ankle badly about ten days ago when one leg went as I descended some stairs in a shop,  I have started doing an exercise for my thighs (three times a day) that I found on the Web, begun practising Tai Chi again (I should really go back to the class) and made sure I have been swimming twice this week and for a two mile walk on the other days except for one when it rained.  All this seems to take up a lot of time that should be going on sewing.  Oh, and my GP told me I should not travel until I had seen the consultant which isn't till the end of May so I have had to cancel my spring holiday and find something else I can do in the UK in May.  Living down here you need to get away occasionally but John doesn't travel because of his fibromyalgia and I am used to doing a lot of things on my own.  Not such a good idea when I might fall and break something.

So here it is Saturday and all I have done on the quilt back is cut the pieces to length.  That's when I found the second problem: the blue piece was the end of the bolt and it has stretched.  In my youth when I made all my own clothes we used to hold the opposite corners and pull the fabric back into shape but at 88 inches long I thought this would be very difficult.  So this afternoon I have sat with a pin and pulled out a thread across each end and then cut along the line with scissors.  It seems a bit better.  Now for the third stage.

I had planned to make a 'frame' of the William Morris fabric but once I had cut off the uneven ends and cut it to length I realised I did not have enough for a piece at each end.  I was going to make it like this one.

I hope you enjoy the moving cats.  That is fairly typical in this house.  I made this quilt in 2000/1 according to the label and it is called Pacific Rim.  I machine pieced it but it was all hand quilted - hence the time taken.

I like unusual backs.  Here is another one where I took all the leftover pieces from the front.  Getting them to fit together was a bit of a nightmare with hours and hours of rearranging them on my bed as there was nowhere big enough to lay it all out in our old house.

And here is the front.  I made templates of the patterns on the Makower fabric and hand-quilted them.  This quilt always reminds me of sore hands as I developed slight carpel tunnel syndrome from all the cutting.  It was the first quilt I made from Cut Loose Quilts, the book by Jan Mullen that I have used for both nephews' wedding present quilts.

So tomorrow in between all the exercise I have to cut the William Morris fabric lengthwise and sew everything together.  I am currently thinking of putting a 'stripe' of the William Morris somewhere across the middle.  I think I may need to do this because in cutting the blue fabric straight I lost several inches and there may not be enough to use from top to bottom.