Manipulating Fabric

On Saturday I was fortunate enough to do a workshop with Cynthia McNair at Angela Daymond's studio near Spalding. As well as creating some wonderful textile art, Cynthia is the powerhouse behind the Ailsa Craig Quilt event in Ontario, Canada.

The workshop was on manipulating fabric to create trees and although I didn't get very far I did have a lot of fun.

Here is Cynthia helping me with the background to my piece, based loosely on Fjordland, NZ.

Others made more progress, here are pieces by Jackie and Dorothy so you can see where I'm heading.

I think it's going to be fun to work on this piece and I'll post an update or two. Now, as we approach the end of August, I must get my four "green" journal quilts finished, photographed and posted on the Contemporary Group's Yahoo site.  Did I tell you I visited the Group's stand at FoQ? It was lovely to meet other members and to see some of their JQs. It was interesting too to see different interpretations of the "rules" for this year's challenge!

A Little Finish

You might remember that I trialled a natural dyeing idea for Angela at Fenland Textiles.  I decided to use the dyed fabric to make a sketch book cover and fold it to create a pocket where finds and treasures could be slipped for safekeeping.  I collected a few seed heads in the garden this morning.  The cover is hand stitched in cotton perlé from www.houseofembroidery.com where you can choose from a wonderful selection of hand dyed variegated threads.

Getting Things in Perspective

It has been a very difficult period for my family recently but we are beginning to appreciate that the light at the end of the tunnel might not be an express train.

Getting things into perspective has been the order of the day over Easter and so that is the inspiration for my April quiltlet for the Contemporary Group Challenge.  The quotation is from Marcus Aurelius and I am continuing to adhere to all my rules.  This piece is based on groynes on the beach.

I stitched a prayer flag for my DD Sara over the Easter holiday.  She likes it but thinks it is a shame that the idea is that it disintegrates in the wind and weather.  I told her the prayers are already sent (and answered in some cases) and so I think she might hang the flag somewhere sheltered.

What else? Well how about these gorgeous Kantha stitched creatures on fabric dyed with woad?  Angela Daymond (Fenland Textile Studios) will be selling kits to create these yourself at Festival of Quilts this Summer.  She asked several people to trial the kit contents and instructions.  I've never measured the amount of thread I'm using before, quite interesting!  All the thread is beautiful Aurifil in various weights, including lana wool, all lovely to stitch with.  The Kantha stitching has been very therapeutic to work, just what the doctor ordered.

I love the movement and sense of freedom exhibited by Angela's hare.

The heron is so elegant and haughty.

This last hare is on plain fabric, not woad dyed and is only 4" round so it will be the perfect introduction to Kantha stitching.

Stitching Fish

Having survived a wild and windy night (although not as bad as in the north of the country and Scotland), much of it spent awake and thinking, I am working on my trout today.

My original thought was an appliqué fish, if I could ever get the design right, I even have some vaguely fishy fabric. Then, during one of those periods awake last night I thought of Angela Daymond, or, more specifically, of her Kantha Hare.  Let me explain...

Last time I did a workshop with Angela she was talking about two kantha stitch projects she had designed and made, the hare and a heron, and is considering offering as kits at FoQ.  She asked whether I and the other ladies at the workshop would be willing to trial the kits to help her get thread quantities right etc.  Of course we would!  So my thought process last night took me from appliqué trout to kantha trout.  

This morning I got out all my embroidery threads and made a cunning plan:

This afternoon, while the wind continues to blow and the rain is only a short time away, I am sitting in front of a lovely fire stitching my fish. Bliss, thanks Angela.

Flying the Flags

I am very excited as I have finished the prayer flags for the Global Piecers' swap.  The sun came out this afternoon and I was able to hang them in the garden before packaging them up and sending them flying off around the world.  I've used one of the photos as my new header!  I know I promised to share my progress with these pieces but I have been so inspired by them (and the weather has been so wet) that I have been sewing almost continuously since I started.

I'm obviously not going to say which flag is going to which lovely lady but they can have fun guessing.   Written on each flag are words summarising my prayers for each person.  Here's a close-up of one of the flags:

The prayer flags are all similar in style and make up.  In in my previous post  I explained that I wanted to use global fabrics for the Global Piecers.  In this flag you can see persimmon-dyed linen from my sensei in Japan, eco-dyed silk that I dyed in Japan (using materials collected at the foot of Fuji san), batik fabric from Africa and the zebra button was made in South Africa, there are small pieces of vintage kimono silk, some of the streamers are recycled sari silk from India and the lace is from Malta.  The flags are all hand stitched, except for one line of machine stitching to attach the streamers.

Slow stitching!  As I said above I have been stitching by hand,  hour after hour, day after day. These flags hold my prayers, in some cases my tears but I hope I avoided adding my blood.  My fingers are severely punctured.  I wish I could get on with a thimble but I can't and some of the fabrics, especially the batiks and the kimono silk felt as if I was sewing through concrete.  At one point the fat end of a sashiko needle, complete with perle thread, was embedded in my middle finger!  I got through seven needles.  I don't mind a bit.

I hope the ladies like their prayer flags, I have loved making them and I must add a big thank you to Angela Daymond.  It was during her slow stitch workshop a couple of weeks ago that I realised what we were doing with her was perfect for making the prayer flags, thanks Angela.  I'm now looking forward to receiving my prayer flags from around the world and hanging them in my garden, more photos will follow, and have just heard that one lady is planning to string her flags under her avocado tree!!  Wow, I'd love an avocado tree!  I do recall growing a stone, supported over water by cocktail sticks, many years ago.  It did shoot, grew about three inches and then died.  Maybe it's time to try again.

Two Trips to Unique

On Saturday Al and I travelled to Spalding to visit the Open Studios at Unique Cottage Studios.  These are a series of farm outbuildings that have been converted to artists' studios and an exhibition space and there is now the addition of a lovely café.
All the artists were in their studios, demonstrating their skills and showing their work.  It was a very inspiring time.  Al studied ceramics a long, long time ago ('when dinosaurs were alive' according to eldest grandson) and has also done some stained glass work so he was particularly interested to talk to potter, Tony Orvis, and to glassworker, Gillian Wing.  I think he might sign up for some workshops with Tony in the near future and Gillian shared a technique of layering glass on glass, like a mosaic, that I think Al will be trying.  I was happy discussing the textiles group that meet at Unique regularly and seeing some of their work on display.  Something totally unexpected captivated us both, Katie Smith's 'Moveable Museum of Found Objects' and we had a lovely chat with Katie about her work.  I do encourage you to have a look at her website.

On Monday I was back at Unique, this time to do a workshop with lovely Angela Daymond and joined by my friend, Ros, all the way from deepest, darkest Norfolk.  The workshop was called 'Slow, Slow, Stitch, Stitch, Slow' and we worked on naturally dyed fabrics.

Angela had provided us with a lovely selection, dyed with woad, daffodil, logwood and weld, among others, and we arranged our pieces to create a new cloth in the boro/kantha tradition. Up cycling is not new!

We then started to stitch, with lots is support from Angela and using mainly a straight running stitch. So therapeutic, a quiet and relaxing day, even for Ros who doesn't "do random". 

WIP - Wall In Progress

A short post from me today in wild, wet and windy Lincolnshire.

Firstly, I had a great workshop with Angela Daymond on Saturday, learning how to use the iPad for design. Lots of wonderful techniques and ideas. 

I'll be doing more of that so "watch this space"!

Secondly, today is definitely a stay in and sew today. I've been sitting in front of a lovely log fire and cutting up bits of fabric so that I can stitch them all together again. This is what I've done so far...

Lots to be done on this piece!!

Spurn Point Weekend

Sadly I didn't get to Alice Fox' exhibition at the weekend.  Fortunately Angela was able to make the journey to the end of the world so please pop over to her blog for some great images of both Alice's work and the landscape and lighthouse and enjoy Alice's own blog too.

Angela Daymond visits Spurn Point.

Alice Fox - Spurn Point Artist in Residence

Hibernating here in Lincolnshire, it's grey and wet and windy.

Blue Sky, Blue Dye

What a wonderful day I had yesterday, in the Lincolnshire countryside, in the sunshine, in the indigo vat.  Wow, as soon as I caught the aroma of the vat I was transported right back to Japan, to dipping in the vat with my Indigo Sisters.
I was fortunate to get a last minute place on Angela Daymond's Indigo Blues workshop at her Fenland Textile Studio near Spalding.  Situated in old farm buildings at Unique Cottage Studios it was an inspiring place to be.  Coincidentally, there was an exhibition of student work on during the afternoon and so we were joined by many people, some of whom sneaked a dip in the vat and were inspired to sign up for workshops.

The main focus of Angela's workshop was to enable us to have the confidence to make our own indigo vats, using a very straightforward recipe.  Once the vats were ready we got quite carried away with dyeing cloth, lace, wool and with trying various folding and tying, "shibori" resist techniques (Angela teaches a specific workshop on that).  Our dyeing dried quickly in the September sunshine (it was 27C at lunchtime) and don't they look wonderful against that old brick wall?

We also experimented with dyeing non-fabric items, I was pleased with the success I had with buttons and shells:

At the end of the day we had time to look at the exhibition, a lovely collection of textiles, ceramics and glass.

And can you see that little bowl on the left of the picture above?  I couldn't resist it, it looked quite Japanese to me and being blue and white it was a lovely item to bring home from the day.

I also brought home my very own mini indigo vat -and yes, Angela, it survived the journey home :-)  This was a great idea of Angela's, to send us home with a way to continue indigo dyeing easily and to give us all the information we needed to rejuvenate our vat as required.  It may not be an enormous Japanese indigo vat, in a stunning ceramic jar, or set into the ground, but it does have the same evocative aroma, the same effect and it is rather more manageable in my little cottage in Lincolnshire.

Today I shall sort out and press all the pieces I dyed yesterday and then photograph them and share them with you in a separate post.  In the meantime, have a look at Angela's website and her blog post about yesterday's workshop and make a note that her next Indigo workshop will be on 20th April 2013 - I'd book now if I were you. 

Spring has Sprung

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It has been an amazingly beautiful day today and I couldn't resist sharing some of the highlights of my garden at the moment.
While I was out I took these pictures of my Stitching for Texture project, as promised.

Country Roads Quilters had a wonderfully inspiring workshop with Angela Daymond last week.  We looked at using machine and hand stitching to quilt projects and worked towards creating a fabric book of sample designs using a variety of techniques.  Angela managed to make FMQ easy and so my squiggles appear as my cover, I was even brave enough to add a few daisies.  Angela discussed scale for effect, using combinations of the same pattern in different sizes, such as on my cover, and also scaling up the designs for a full size quilt.  Not all of my pages are finished, as you can see, but I feel I have done enough on these designs and been inspired to make further books.  My next one will be a selection of "water" designs I think (but not until A.J., after Japan!)  Several members of Country Roads Quilters agreed that the quilting of a project is the part that provokes the most terror.  I think we now feel a lot more confident and willing to have more fun with our quilting too, so a big thank you to Angela.
A thank you to Tina too.  She gave me this book:

Some wonderful examples of a range of Japanese textile styles to enjoy, thank you Tina.  (Do pop over to Tina's blog for some wonderful textile creations).
If you were at the Quilters' Guild AGM and Conference in Dundee this past weekend I'm sure you had a wonderful time, and, if you listened carefully, you might have heard my name mentioned.  I have some very good news to share with you another day but now I'm going back into the sunshine.

Added 29 March:  I've just read the post Angela wrote about her workshop.  She has a photograph of me.  I was concentrating on my FMQ so hard that I didn't know she'd taken a picture!

The Good News after the Bad News

I have been delighted to share "Mothering Monday" with DH, DD Saz and DGS Sam today.  In my last post I was complaining about my health, since then we have had the Ides of March, a day traditionally of bad luck and this year that seemed to be the case.  My sister twisted her back and had to take her first day off work in three years.  My friend was crashed into by a snowboarder and had her leg broken.  My big grandson fell into our pond and was very surprised and very cold.  Most worrying though was my little Sam being admitted to hospital with suspected meningitis, a traumatic period for us all.  Thankfully he is okay as you can see in the photo above.  Saz blogged about the events here.  She still hasn't got Sam's blood test results but we are sure he hasn't got the dreaded illness.
Tomorrow I am off to Country Roads Quilters and we are having a workshop with Angela Daymond, "Stitching for Texture:  Spend a day extending your stitiching and quilting repertoire by exploring both traditional and contemporary quilting stitches to create texture and line in your work. Learn how to mix hand and machine stitching for unique effect. You will go home with all your samples made into a stitched book. Hand and machine stitching workshop"  Sounds good doesn't it?  I'm looking forward to it enormously.