Church wall paintings at Breage

When we lived in Northamptonshire we stumbled on the medieval wall paintings in the parish church at Slapton which was a short walk across the fields from where we lived.  Although I took a few photos I did not really know what I was looking at and I had no knowledge of the tradition of medieval wall paintings.  This all changed recently when I joined a group visit to the church at Breage.

Breage is a village between Penzance and Helston.  The church is Gothic and was built in the fifteenth century.  It is dedicated to St Breage or Breaca who was an Irish nun who came to Cornwall in the fifth century.  There are 144 Celtic patron saints in Cornwall with more churches being dedicated to them than to more commonly known saints.

Although Breage is only a few miles from here I had never been there.   There are four saints depicted in paintings on the North wall.  This is St Christopher and is situated next to the door.  I believe that is the traditional place for him.  Here he represents 'sudden death' rather than his usual association of travel.   There are three other saints on this wall: Ambrose, Corentine and Hilary.

There is also a 'Sunday Christ'.  This is a large figure of Christ designed to discourage Sabbath breaking and blasphemy, i.e. it is a warning to those people who work on Sundays.  The tools of the trades of Sunday workers are used as illustrations.

Local occupations are represented which means in Cornwall there are often fishermen.  I am afraid the quality of these photos is poor but here you can see the tools of the tailors whom I imagine just worked away at home and there are fishing tools including a fishing reel between the saint's legs.  It was common to put locally specific things at the bottom of the painting.

Fish and other things to do with the sea are popular in Cornwall and this painting has a mermaid with a mirror and a large plaice.

I was interested to see that my photos of Slapton also have a mermaid and that is miles from the sea so I am wondering if it is also telling another story.

The churches also had paintings of 'international saints' which in Breage includes St Thomas a Becket.  International saints generally appear on the South wall.  The subject matter of the paintings is always the lives of saints and not bible topics which only appeared at the reformation.  I expect that helps to date them.

We were told that there are also paintings in St Just which I must have seen years ago and need to revisit.  I would also like to revisit St Keverne at the tip of the Lizard peninsula which is where my great-great grandmother was born and brought up.  It apparently has some good paintings but the day we visited they were installing a new heating system and it was not really possible to study the church.  All I remember is the large numbers of graves from shipwrecks on the Manacles rocks below the village.

Apparently the Breage paintings are quite late as the church was very new at the Reformation.  The aisles were probably decorated when they were built.  After the Reformation plaster was introduced and all the paintings covered up.  We were told the Victorians had removed the plaster but this cannot always have been the case because I remember the Slapton paintings were only uncovered in the mid-twentieth century.

Reworking a quilt for the next generation

I have just had a telephone conversation with my sister about the cot quilt I made for one of her sons in 1977.  Now it is time for the quilt to be resurrected for his first child which is due in May.  I had almost forgotten it.  It was a very early effort and has one or two strange features.  Don't ask me why each block is satin stitched, for example.  I think a lot of us began with Laura Ashley squares because you could buy them ready cut.   Most of us taught ourselves in those days and it obviously shows as my sister says the binding is a bit peculiar!  However, the colours have lasted well so after a gentle wash it can be brought into the twenty-first century.

At the time, my sister and her family were living in Cairo where both this nephew and his younger brother were born.  Because of the climate I chose not to put any wadding in it.  There is absolutely no quilting on it but it does have a border and a backing.  The new baby will be living in Los Angeles so an unlined quilt seems a good idea for a Californian summer.  My sister is planning to add some quilting to the plain squares and to machine a quilting pattern on the border. Then she plans to sign the quilt with the initials and date of birth of father and son/daughter.  She has also suggested that I sign it (better late than never).  Since we live in different parts of the country I plan to do that on a small piece of fabric that I can post to her.  Now I am wondering the best way to do it.  These days I generally print the label on the computer using iron on transfer paper but I am not sure if this will wash.  I may be better to write on the label with a Pigma pen or even to stitch a label.

This baby is going to have lots of hand crafted presents as the family is full of people who do textiles of various sorts.  I have decided I am not making a quilt as I want my sister to take my present when they visit rather than having to deal with US customs.  I have just started on a foundation pieced wall hanging, using patterns from Margaret Wolfe's book: The Quilters Ark. http://www.amazon.co.uk/Quilters-Print-Demand-Margaret-Rolfe.  I am choosing patterns from countries where the family have lived although unfortunately there is not a pattern for a kiwi to represent the New Zealand root and I cannot find anything small enough on-line.  The baby's mother is half-French so I am thinking about an appropriate animal/bird for that side of the family, too.  I find foundation piecing slightly infuriating to do although once you are into the swing of it, it is reasonably quick.  All will be revealed in due course.   In the meantime here is a photo of a similar wall hanging I made last year.

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!