Current discussions in art quilting

There has been some interesting discussion on the SAQA Yahoo group over the last couple of weeks and I have used the 'conversations' to help me reflect on where I want to go with my quilting this year.

It began with people saying that they thought art quilts are becoming smaller.  Much of the comment was based on observation of what is being accepted and rewarded in quilt shows but the topic is of interest to those of us who choose to work small.  I would agree with the statement that bigger pieces have more impact.  However, here in the UK, most of us live in smallish houses, often with small rooms and this may influence our work more than we realise.  While we do not work with the idea of displaying our quilts in a domestic setting, it is nice to be able to have a few on the walls.  I have several framed journal quilts on the landing but only one larger quilt.

I made Gwithian Two about a year ago.  It is 72 cms wide by 58 cms tall and fits nicely on the landing wall even if you can't stand back from it.  There is Gwithian One but that has had to be put away as our walls are quite full of art work of various kinds.  The second problem with small houses is room to display 'work in progress'  I have two large pieces of foam insulation board as my design wall and generally prop these up against my workbench.  Most people I know do not have purpose built studios and have various arrangements for design walls such as pieces of fabric that can be propped against doors.

A second thread in the SAQA discussion has been the use of commercial fabric.  I have vast quantities of 'bought' fabric but I doubt whether I will use a lot of it as it seems to 'age' and you get fed up with looking at it.  Over the last year I have made several pieces that were patterned but I would not call these art quilts.  They include two new quilts for our beds, a small quilt for a charity and a wall hanging for the new baby next door.  I was prompted to follow a link from SAQA to Judy Dales' website to see how commercial fabrics can be used.  www.judydales.com I am too fond of batiks and really need to think of ways of using the vast stash I have of that.  I know I can overdye etc. all the other old stuff but at this time of the year wet work does not appeal.

The SAQA conversation also remarked on the lack of piecing in art quilts.  Good point.  I always wanted to 'paint in fabric' so just being able to collage everything was very appealing as I got into art quilts. I have to admit that I had to stop and think quite hard when I made the quilts last year as I had almost forgotten what was entailed in pieced work!  It is apparent that all these traditional approaches have been replaced by a wealth of techniques for manipulating fabric: dyeing, painting, stencilling, using thermofaxes etc.  Been there, done that so which ones do I wish to continue with?

And finally the conversation moved on to the use of digital images and one's own photographs.  Again I have done this a lot.  I am a keen photographer and I am happy with the idea of manipulating images and printing them out, sometimes with good results.  But I am not sure that this is where my real interest lies.  Having said that, this morning I was searching through my old sketchbooks and found the notes from an A4 quilt I did with photos of nets.  I see from my designs that I planned to make a larger quilt with this design and I am wondering if I should revisit it.  One thing about digital photography is that you have the database to hand.

So where did my musing over the SAQA conversation leave me?  My first task is to identify a subject for this year's journal quilts.  It has been a slow process but I think I have just about got there.  I looked at Lisa Call's work lisacall.com and was really inspired by her quilts of Thai temples.  The technique has similarities with Kathy Loomis's kathleenloomis.com, particularly in its use of narrow pieced strips.  I mastered this technique some time ago (it is much more difficult than it seems) and I can see that some of the photos I might use for my journal quilts this year would lend themselves to it well.  Not that I propose to use other people's work as more than mere inspiration. So the next step is to do some art work on the images.  Here's hoping I have a way forward.

Balkan textiles

I have just been checking the state of my blog which had a very bad year in 2013!  I discovered that I had a draft posting about some Hungarian textiles and that after an initial post about Budapest, I wrote nothing about the rest of the cruise I did with my sister and her husband in June.  So here, very belatedly, is the post I did on our visit to the Paprika Museum.

My initial contact with Balkan textiles was in 1972. We spent our honeymoon in what was then Yugoslavia.  When we just about ran out of money we took to travelling overnight by coach to save accommodation costs (I have been over the old Mostar bridge but cannot really remember it!) and ended up spending three or four days in Sarajevo.  It was incredible and I would never go back because of course most of it no longer exists.  But I do remember going to several museums including one with a wonderful collection of embroideries.  In fact I was inspired to make a cross stitch tablecloth to a design from a book I found in the Needlewoman shop in Regent St.  I still have the book and the tablecloth.

From what I had seen in 1972 I knew that embroidery was an important part of Balkan culture.  My sister is a weaver so she was interested in textiles too.  We had hoped to visit the Ethnographic Museum in Budapest but it is an old house with a lot of steps up to the entrance and I decided I could not risk falling up or down them.  A real nuisance.  On our first day on the boat we visited Kalosca in Hungary where there is the only paprika museum in the world.  It is just two rooms but as we were listening to the guide I realised that there were a few examples of Hungarian embroidery in a case just where I was standing.  Most were reasonably modern

and not that different from the clothes we saw in shop windows

but there were a couple of pieces that were obviously older. I did not think that anyone in the museum would be able to tell me about them but you can see that the motifs are based on flowers and that the stitching is predominantly satin stitch.

Later I came across my copy of 'Embroidery Studio' which was published by the Embroiderers' Guild in 1993.  The book is a series of projects in which people created new embroideries inspired by work in the Embroiderers' Guild collection.  One chapter, The Matyo Rose by Diana Keay was inspired by a piece from the Matyo area of Hungary, quite near Budapest.

And here is a photo of the tablecloth I made all those years ago.

I did a lot of cross stitch in those days and it was some years before I was bitten by the quilting bug.  I also have another counted thread tablecloth from the same book but it was never finished and I keep thinking I should cut it up and use some of it in other work.

A jigsaw puzzle for textile people

The dreadful weather continues.  The garden is a quagmire and the pond is overflowing.  Going for a walk is not possible most days unless you are prepared to get drenched ( I look at people walking their dogs and am glad we settled for cats!).  I am still making my mind up about journal quilts but I have had another distraction.  My sister gave me the ideal Christmas present: a jigsaw puzzle featuring lots of cats in a sewing room!

We only started it a few days ago as we decided to wait until the Christmas decorations were taken down.  In our youth we were fanatical doers of jigsaws but we more or less gave up because they do not combine with cats.  Instead I have some on my iPad but they only have 200 pieces so do not take very long to do. We have a table in the sitting room which turned out to be just large enough for this size puzzle.  So I have started although that part of the room is very dark so after about four o'clock it gets too dark to see the pieces.  Here is the left hand side:

The high contrast sections have been reasonably visible but the dark blue is the foreground is a bag of knitting wool and I had to wait for a sunny moment to do it.  We have not really got a plug where we could put an extra light.  The puzzle is fiendishly difficult but that just makes me more obsessive!

On the right hand side the armchair was fairly easy but that is about all.  The beige pieces are a dressmaker's dummy and a dressmaking pattern so you can see it is just the thing for me.

And keeping the cats off?  While I am working on it I have to rely on shouting at them and lifting them off the table if necessary.  If I go out of the room for a short time I shut the door, hoping that all three are locked out.  And overnight or when leaving it for longer, I have discovered that two cutting boards laid side by side on top of it are just right!  Now that I am back into the swing of this activity my husband is threatening to buy me jigsaws from the Oxfam shop where he works but I will have to make sure they do not take over my life.

Arty New Years resolutions

Happy New Year to everyone.  Down here we have been beset by storms and very high tides.  We have been cautious and not gone to see them as the photo in my last posting was taken on a day when I was engulfed by a wave on Penzance Prom.  Fortunately we have not been in danger of flooding although today we have had a booklet delivered on how to prepare for floods.  I would sooner not think about it.

Like most people I have started the New Year full of ideas for new activities.  As I can no longer go on holiday I told myself I could afford to buy two horrendously expensive art history books in The Folio Society's sale.  http://www.foliosociety.com/  I plan to really study these.

They came in a hard slip case.  They are so heavy I cannot pick them up easily, even one at a time and they will not fit in any of the bookcases.  They consist of detailed articles 

and wonderful photographs.

I have decided I should read them sitting at the dining room table and preferably take notes as I go.  A personal adult education course perhaps!

I am also having thoughts about doing the Journal Quilts project again.  Watch this space.

2013 and all that

I knew this blog had fallen down a hole but I did not realise how deep it was until I looked at the postings just now!  I see I have not even commented on the success of my second photobook and I remembered this morning that I also have one half made of Venice so I shall have to do a posting about those.

I have had a rather peculiar autumn because my muscular condition (Inclusion Body Myositis - potentially rather nasty) has played me up and prevented me from getting on with things.  Now I feel I must pick up life again and get back to some art textiles.  Getting out to take photos is more difficult, though, as I have to be so careful about walking on my own.  So here is an update on what I have made (or not).

The two new bed quilts that I sent off to be long-arm quilted are now finished and on our beds.  My husband's was made entirely from scraps as a winter project in winter 2011-2012.  It began as a square lap quilt and I had to extend it when he said he wanted it on his bed, hence the wide borders at top and bottom.

It is interesting how an activity like this shows you the colours you usually work in as I had no trouble putting together lots of leftovers.  It is just a simple nine patch.  As my husband is extremely fond of cats I chose a quilting pattern of cats which I think is very effective.

My quilt was made from pre-cut fabric as we are too far from places to choose fabric in shops.  I used Hoffman batiks and bought jelly rolls and large squares.  It is a big five foot wide bed so I had to buy two packets of each and have quite a few leftovers.  I suspect I could make another quilt if I combined the leftovers with cream of some kind.

It has taken me a while to get used to the colours in this one as I do not usually do pinks or purples but they have worked well.  The quilting pattern is floral to reflect the flowers of various kinds in the fabric and the binding is pieced from the leftover strips.

The main problem I have with this quilt is that it is too big to fit in a domestic washing machine.  Our older cat suffers from IBS and has 'accidents' which is one of the main reasons for replacing the old one.  Now I find I have to whip the new one off and put the old one on if I think he is going to have an 'episode'.  I am not terribly happy about sending the new quilt to the cleaner at the supermarket although I know I shall have to at some point.

And here is my December calendar photo so that you can see what Penzance is like at this time of the year.

This was actually a storm a couple of years ago when the waves were so high that I got completely drenched when I ended up in the middle of one as I was trying to take photos.  We have had plenty of days like this this year but I have not been down to the Prom to look at them.

I will try and post about the photobooks but in the meantime Happy Christmas and I hope to be a better blogger in 2014!

A Second Photobook

I received my Photobook of Lake Como last week.  I am so pleased with it that I have been doing one of the South Island of New Zealand which I finished at lunchtime and sent off.  It was thanks to a reader of this blog that I learnt about Jessops photobooks http://www.cewe-photobook.co.uk/.  You download the software, work on it at your own pace (which means you can save it and come back to it) and then upload the finished product.  Here are some of the pages:

I feel these books are particularly good for photos of art works.  I seemed to have a lot of them on this occasion and it certainly makes it easier to study them rather then just having them on the computer.  The fourth photo is of friezes on a monastery wall and I was able to take the photo of the whole wall and then put the details on the same page.  Brilliant.

I am very pleased with the quality of the photographs and the endless possibilities for different layouts.  I have to admit that I have had a couple of problems with the South Island, though.  I did the Trans-Alpine train journey and took lots of photos through the windows.  For some reason the template did not like most of them even one which another on-line company had accepted for a calendar.  So I have just not used them. I particularly enjoyed working on this second one because I stayed in Hokitika which is the setting for 'The Luminaries', the book by Eleanor Catton that has been short-listed for the Man Booker prize and tipped to win by a number of reviewers.  The setting feels much more real because I have been there.

I also have a 'work in progress' on Venice.  At some point I plan to do one of the North Island of New Zealand but I have many more photos than I had of the South Island so I may end up doing a separate book of Wellington.  As these books are not cheap, I am not doing them of every trip though.

Late summer at Ding Dong

Today I think autumn has arrived!  It suddenly feels much colder and time to put away the high summer clothes. But only a week ago it was still summer so we went up to Ding Dong mine, about a mile from here.

Ding Dong is an old tin mine that stands on one of the highest points on the Penwith moors and is visible from a great distance.  The surrounding area is covered in bracken and heather although the summer flowering heather is just about over.   There is also brilliant orange mombretia (crocosmia to gardeners) which grows wild everywhere here.  It used to be a constant battle to keep it under control in our holiday cottage garden so now I refuse to plant any of it in any colour.

At the far (northern) side of the moors is Carn Galver.  Well worth climbing up for the views it provides of the north coast and the narrow coastal plain.  You can just see the peak in this photo.

The field system here is reputed to be oldest in Britain and to date back to the Iron Age.  Very small fields were created by clearing the stones and piling them up to form walls.

In the middle distance in the photo above is the village of Zennor which is famous because D.H.Lawrence and Katherine Mansefield both rented cottages there during the First World War.  People thought that the lights they showed (no electricity of course) were signals to the Germans because D.H.Lawrence's wife was German!

The field system appears emore clearly in this shot of one of the farms.

Back at Ding Done the umbelliferae (parsley family) are now drying out, leaving interesting combinations of colours.  These photos said ' weaving' to me as I could imagine lines of colour blending and intersecting.

Many of the artists in this area are inspired by the lines of the vegetation.  As I did not have any drawing things with me, I took photos that I now need to manipulate in Elements or print out and draw from.

Ding Dong is also a great area for wildlife, especially birds.  At certain times of the year flights of migrating birds swoop overhead as they leave the UK for warmer climes.  On this occasion we saw a lot of different butterflies as it has been a good year for them: tortoiseshells in different forms, some blues and even a bright yellow one.  But photographing them is another matter!  And my husband saw a weasel which came out of the undergrrowth onto the path, took one look at him and disappeared again.