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.