Another Patchwork Chair

Sent by my friend Jackie who suggested you could have a picnic in the basket, but I think you'd have a bit of hand sewing in there, or perhaps my unfinished socks that I've been knitting for some time!

Simple blocks not so easy!!

The other day I tried to make another three blocks to go with one I had made previously.
Simple block, strips sewn together, cut into squares and stitched back together in little pinwheels...
What could go wrong?
Well - spot the non-deliberate mistake?
The block at the top is the new one,
and it's Left-handed!! And I had made two more. Arrgh!
The pinwheels are rotating the opposite way. I really should pay attention.

Two more left-handed blocks

Now which look better?

Which look "wrong"?

Patchwork Chair

Found today in TKMax this wonderful patchwork chair, all covered in hand stitched parallel lines of running stitch in blue thread! About £250. If I had any spare room I would have bought it!

I've been working on some more strippy things today, but nothing sufficiently finished to put up yet.
I tried to go over the Reedham Ferry today to see a friend who lives 5 miles across the river and the tide was so low that the ferry couldn't run so I had to drive about 45 miles further round to find a bridge, which was very frustrating!

Journal Quilts 2014 - January

New Year, new challenge.. this time the one-a-month Journal quilt challenge by the Contemporary Group have to be 8" square. They also have to have a line travelling across from one side to another. I took a series of photographs in the Sainsbury Centre for the Visual Arts recently of ancient faces so this will be my theme.

January Journal 2014

The first is a clay face that was reduced to merely a nose, and a crack across the clay where eyes might have been. The very minimalistic pared down design attracted me. Some of the faces have lots of detail, hair and earrings even but this seemed a good place to start.
The background is a commercial batik, screen printed with a text-like pattern to represent human marks. the face is appliqued and stitch added.

Experimental Blocks

The blocks on the design wall are not very portable so I took some fabric to quilt group to experiment with some eccentric cross blocks. First I made some big ones to explore the technique, then played with a pack of pretty Oakshott pastels in eighths given to me by my good friend Julia Oakshott.
I like playing with colour and exploring design ideas so I had an interesting time. These are free cut with a rotary cutter and will be trimmed to size later. I have lots more cut out.

8" blocks

Small blocks, need trimming.

Journals

Just realised I had uploaded two identical journal pictures. Here is the image for October:
Fungi in the Forest, found and photographed at Felbrigg. Fly Agaric and bracket fungus on dead birch wood. Hand dyed fabric, thermofax printed, image transfer and paint.

Marmalade day

The farm shop has the most lovely fresh Seville oranges in now. I made 18 and a half jars today.
I also updated and printed all the worksheets for my new class starting soon.

I cut some more strips to try a greater variety of tones in the tesselation on my design wall. All similar fabrics seem too bland to me. What do you think?

Borders done!

I added borders and it now looks finished, just the quilting..

Fame at Last - on Facebook!

Today I went, with several others to the Sainsbury Centre for lunch and the exhibition "Masterpieces". Had a good time. I still love Anna Pacheco's Boat.

Yesterday my blog featured on the Guild's Facebook page!! Find it here

I was asked how many quilts I plan to make this year..

I don't plan quilts, I just play with colour... but I have been asked to teach my beginner course again starting next month and have been revisiting the first class - what to do with strips and the chevrons came from me playing with a set of Jelly roll batiks, I could only find half though (I had put the other half away to make a nice raffle prize) and then I cut more from stash, so, if you look carefully you will see that there are lots of places where the strips are similar, not the same, but that only adds interest I think. I have a couple more I am working on, and this one probably needs borders...

All developing from having a design wall!

Blogger still won't let me post pictures... I just get a Google page inviting me to sign in to retrieve from on-line storage, and if I do it tells me I have nothing to retrieve. I could have told them that!

The pop-up doesn't  have an exit button so I can't get rid of it. I have to email pics to someone else to put them up.

Chevrons

I've got my design wall back up!
Chevron quilt is developing.
And finished.. Does it need borders?

Journals Done!

I've complete my last four Journal quilts for 2013.
I had done almost all of them, completing the hand dyeing of the fabric, the thermofax screens were printed, the printing blocks were made from my photographs of fungi and printed, and image transfer applied. I stalled at this stage, realising that I should have used transfer papers for dark fabrics. Then the family all wanted to come for Christmas entailing everything being put away. I negotiated a week's grace and managed to complete them yesterday and upload to the Contemporary Quilt site this afternoon..Whew! In the end I decided that the rather transparent image transfer effect was appropriate for the ephemeral nature of fungi.

Playing with Strips

Today I quilted my third Journal quilt and then gave myself permission to play with strips:

Chevron strips

 I had some jelly roll strips but not enough so I cut some more from stash. I organised them into colours that blended and stitched them together in pairs. They were chopped into squares and laid out on point. Some strips were a bit short and I ended up remaking 5 blocks. I quite like the chevron effect but I'll have to look for a larger piece of fabric for setting triangles.

Winter sun

I'm not sure how big this will end up, but will probably make a single bed size Linus quilt unless one of the grandchildren likes it.
I've been revisiting what to do with strips and squares as I have been asked to teach my beginners course again.


The low Winter sun came out from behind the clouds and lit up the world! The iPad takes a reasonable photo when required..
The was an incredible rainbow after this with a very high arc and I found I was driving towards it - magical.

Doris's quilt

Here's a bright batik quilt made by my friend Doris, she brought it to group and was looking for a name for it. I saw crescents, but everyone else saw eyes!

Doris had one of her quilts chosen to head up a webpage for the Quilters Guild.