I can't believe it but I have finished three journal quilts this week! I got my machine back at the end of last week and decided that I must do these before I worked on anything else. So here they are:
This is September. It is called Coastal Currents because it reminds me of the patterns that I see in Mounts Bay as I drive down the by-pass to Tesco. Depending on the state of the tide, the winds and the clouds different colours appear. This is the piece I made by hand because I wanted to test out some cheesecloth that I space dyed a long time ago. It hand stitches beautifully but I do not think the machine, even after a service, would like such a loose weave and light weight.
October: called Nets after my husband remarked that it looked like the patterns in fishing nets. This is the one based on Kathleen Loomis's workshop on narrow piecing. It has a few wobbles in the lines but journal quilts are supposed to be for trying out techniques so I did not consign it to the UFO pile.
Finally November: Autumn Flight. We are under the flight paths for migrating birds here and on Sunday I saw a flight of about fifty geese honking their way across the house. It was quite moving and reminded me of when we lived in Oxfordshire near Berinsfield where there were old gravel pits well patronised by birds. The migrating birds here often stop at Marazion Marshes about two miles away.
http://www.rspb.org.uk/reserves/guide/m/marazionmarsh/about.aspx The marshes are a nature reserve built on the site of a former brickworks. At this time of year there are lots of twitchers about, both there and at various other bird friendly sites in the area.
The background to this piece is a hand-dyed piece of cotton sateen which did not work, i.e. the dyes came out too pale. It has been waiting for some more treatment for a very long time but it was ideal for this. I used a Thermofax of tufts of grass which I applied in three colours: brown and two shades of olive green. It worked really well so now I need to find the other pieces of this fabric and treat them as well. I have an idea for a larger piece about the coast round here and this represents the dunes very well. The journal quilt is machine quilted and I then stitched black felt birds on to it by hand.
If you are reading this you will have seen that I now have a link button on this blog. This will take you to the new website for Contemporary Quilt. Do have a look as there are loads of wonderful quilts to see. Contemporary Quilt is a specialist group of the Quilters Guild of the British Isles. Our only presence on the web until now has been via the Quilters Guild site and we have our own Yahoo group but that is only open to members. I am really pleased that the new website means people who do not belong to the group can see what we do and I hope some people will decide to join us.
No comments:
Post a Comment