Ferret Fabricates

Travel

2012-03-13T06:59:00.000Z

I'm sitting at the airport heading for Spain. I was hoping to have time to catch up on my blogging but I will be bording any second. So sorry folks but you will have to wait another week for the updates on my recent exploits. Sitges here I come

Tweedale Quilter

2012-03-07T20:55:00.000Z

Given I am sat on a train with very little to do I thought I might as well update my blog. I've got a few things I will need to post from home but I can share some pictures from todays workshop. Today we were working on caveman tulips, Ricky Tims style. I think a lot of the group were a long way out of their comfort zones but as you can see they got over it and produced some good work. I did take a lot of pictures but as they are being uploaded from my phone I thought I would try to be moderate. I am sure there is a lot more I should say we had fun and luch was great, but I am really tired and thinking seems beyond me.

Tweed view b&b

2012-03-07T08:24:00.000Z

I feel guilty calling this a b&b but it's how they describe it. This is a very nice very posh place to stay and the people running it are fab. The room is lovely, I'm sure I am too scruffy for it. The breakfast menu is huge, and so far the food is really good. I have a very good pot of coffee and a bowl of porridge with whisky. I am sure you will excuse me if I get back to it.

Art quilts by numbers - Farncombe estate

2012-03-03T00:03:00.000Z

Wow! This is an amazing venue for residential courses. It is a collection of buildings in the Cotswolds spread up a section of hill. It was foggy when I arrived but I bet the views are good. I got here shortly after lunch so I would have time to find my way around and get the room set up. As you can see it was looking good, then we started work ;) The weekend starts in the bar with a free drink and a chat. Then a quick welcome from the manager. After that a three course dinner and then to work. We started with the computer side of art quilts, which is so much easier with a projector there was a risk everyone would fall asleep in a dim room after a good dinner, but actually everyone made it through that section. That took us to the end of the official day. So nearly everyone got started on their quilts. As you can see they have done pretty well. I can see this being a very productive weekend. While I am not officially teaching I am also working on a couple of small quilts of my own. Maybe I will be able to share them tomorrow.

Just a quicky

2012-02-28T22:50:00.000Z

I'm still busy so here is a quick update on some of the exciting things that have been happening. One of the most exciting has been my first magazine cover. machine Quilting Unlimited has Prometheus on the cover of the latest issue, and a large article inside. It really is a huge thrill seeing your quilt on a cover.

The other magazine in the picture is Popular Patchwork, which has a fantastic writeup of Quiltfest complete with lots of pictures.

Quarterjack workshop

2012-02-27T15:12:00.000Z

I've done it again. I got so engrossed in the class I forgot to take pictures, I suppose that's a good thing as a tutor, but it's very frustrating when I want to write a blog. This is a group I spoke to last year at their Christmas party at an amazing venue. The workshop was a bit of a shock to the system, as it involved a 6am start but it was a beautiful day and a good venue. The venue, Holt Village hall, is lovely. Very light and a good number of power points. The group also limit their numbers to 16, so everyone has lots of space to work.

The other thing that worried me was the range of students. Some were worried the class would be too hard and others that it would be too easy. I was concerned that one or other of the groups would be upset. As it turned out they were a lovely group, and at the end of the day all said they had learned something. The class was machine quilting 1, which is designed for beginners, but it seems I start from a different place to most people. I'm just very relieved that the students felt it went OK.

I haven't forgotten I need to finish the gallery tour, I've just not had a chance yet. As well as the teaching I've had a couple of articles to prepare for magazines, and as those had deadlines I figured I would have to do them first. Hopefully I will get the gallery finished tonight or tomorrow though, then I can share some other exciting news.

Quiltfest Gallery - Part 4

2012-02-21T22:31:00.000Z

This is part 4 of the gallery tour, the other parts can be found here, one, two, three.

OK, you're back, lets carry on our trip around the show. Our first quilt today is another that I hadn't intended to show, but it filled a tricky space and I like it so, here it is. I think more than anything this one shows my age, it's K.I.T.T. from Knight Rider. I was never much bothered by the people in the series but I fell for the car in a big way. In fact the ring tone on my phone has been the theme tune from the show since it has been possible to set them. Ah if only you could fit the whole of my talk into a 1981 Transam.

It seems this is the most eagerly expected quilt by my blog readers. Dragon 1 (yes the first dragon is technically Dragon 0). If you are a regular reader of my blog you will have seen me working on this one just before the show. I think it came off the frame 3 or 4 days before the show. If you missed those posts they start on the 8th of January, so start at the bottom of this page.

I was hoping that this quilt would look like it was drawn in water colour pencils. It is actually a wholecloth quilt with the design made entirely in thread. The starting image for this quilt was the preliminary sketch by Glenn Wallbridge, for my first dragon tattoo. Bonus points to the readers who spotted that while I was working on it. It is stitched onto another piece of cotton sateen
hand dyed by Heide Stoll-Weber. The image was scaled up to be the biggest I could fit on the cloth I had. I managed to use the whole piece with just enough to bind the quilt. I am very stingy when it comes to Heide's fabrics. Being hand dyed it does have variations in colour, but in this case they are all shades of the same grey. All the colour on the quilt comes from the threads used.

On the top of the quilt the threads are King Tut, Signature and Aurifil, and in the bobbin I use Masterpiece. I only use cotton threads in my work. Maybe it is old fashioned and snobby, but it's what I do and I can't see me changing any time soon. It does somewhat limit my colour options.

Rather than mark directly onto the quilt I prefer to do my marking on wash away stabiliser. Over the time I have been quilting ever marking tool I have used has let me down at least once despite my testing them all before I use them. The stabiliser keeps the markings that little bit further from the quilt. If I can avoid marking altogether I do. In this case though I needed some help. This project was a huge challenge for me. I don't draw and my grasp of drawing and shading techniques is very basic. I had to learn and fast.

This is also a style of quilt I had mostly written off. I always match my bobbin thread colour to my top thread colour. This means all of my art quilts have a wholecloth art quilt on the reverse. It seemed to be a poor deal to make an art quilt as a wholecloth. I'd only get one quilt for my work not two. Who doesn't like something for free.

I learned a lot here, and having done this quilt I will do more in a similar style. I've got ideas for stretching the number of colours I can get in thread, and I can see other ways of laying down thread. I want to play with stabilisers and different waddings. This quilt has Warm and Natural in it, as that was the densest wadding I had to hand. I think more solid ones would be even better. I just need the time to play now.

Here is another older of my older quilts. I made it to try and get a quilt into an American show. The show had the theme 'Celebrate Spring', and I had been spending a lot of time at the National Gallery. Cherry blossom in an impressionist style seemed the obvious choice. This was another quilt that took me out side of my comfort zone and had me trying new things. I loaded the frame with a calico backing a layer of 80/20 wadding and another layer of calico. On the calico I marked where the bridge path and river needed to go, then I started colouring in.

All the colour comes from 1" squares of fabric. I laid a few pieces down then stitched them into place with a pattern appropriate to what they were representing. So the bushes are quilted with leaves and the path with pebbles. The wood on the bridge has a grain to it and every blossom has a flower quilted on it. Most of the picture was made from the top down, the tree though I had to add from the bottom up. I just couldn't get my head around working it the other way.

In Full Bloom did it's job. It was accepted into the Celebrate Spring show and was the first quilt I exhibited in the USA.

That's the end of the wall. Let take a look at the items hung elsewhere in the gallery. We've walked around a large plinth in the middle of the room, holding a dress on a display form.

In 2009 I was asked to take part in a new feature at the Festival of Quilts, a fashion show. There were teams from the UK and Russia and each member of each team was to make four items. Day wear, evening wear, accessory and fantasy. I wasn't that interested until I heard that last one. I'd been thinking for a while about making a suit of armour and this seemed like the perfect excuse. Unfortunately, because it is quite fragile and it was too bulky to store when we had to take the show down, I couldn't display it at Quiltfest. If you would like to see it, it is on this video.

So, by deduction, the dress isn't my fantasy category. It was actually my evening wear. I've enjoyed making Victorian style clothes for years so it seemed like an obvious starting point. I also thought it was something I could add quilting to without ending up with a shapeless garment. I had issues with big shapeless coats and tops, well to be honest they have an issue with me. They make me look way bigger than I am and that is quite big enough to start with. I suppose the alternative would be to not put much quilting on the garment, but that really isn't my way of doing things. If you ask me for quilted fashions, you had better believe they will be quilted.

The patterns for this outfit are all from Truly Victorian. The skirt and bodice are patterns I have used before but the train had just been in my wish list. Again the show gave me a good excuse to do something I'd been thinking about for years.

As I've said if I am going to make a quilted garment it has to be quilted. This gave me a problem, how could I make a proper three layer quilt that would be soft and light enough to craft the train from. I came up with using organza. The train is three layers of organza. Silver top and bottom with black as the 'wadding'. It is two widths of organza wide, about 80" and approximately 120" long. I had to guess the length as the pattern for the train went missing just as I was ready to load the organza on the train. I thought I had loaded up more than I could possible need but actually another 20"-30" would have been good.

The quilting for the train was started at the hem and as with all my work is just freehand. The body of the train is quilted with feathers in various styles and colours. Starting with black at the hem and working up to lighter grey at the bustle. The bustled section is quilted with my curls, which really only add texture, you don't see the design at all.
The train is hemmed with heavy black lace. This I bought a roll of as I knew I would need several meters. I am flattered by those who ask if I made it, but I really can't face that much lace making.

The back of the bodice is decorated with two lace panels. These were also purchased from Vena Cava Designs. This is a fantastic UK company that sells all sorts of corset supplies and fancy pieces like these laces. I had actually gone to the site to buy more spiral bones for the bodice but when I saw these motifs I had to have them.

The next problem I came up with was how do I get into this outfit in a hurry. At the time I was planning it we were expecting a change time of about 5 minutes. That doesn't give me long enough to get into a corset so the bodice had to do the job of the corset. However I wasn't prepared to have laces on show. I settled on making the bodice very tight and using lare hooks and eyes to close it. It does mean I need a dresser (although that was going to be essential for the fast change anyway) to haul the bodice shut. It works surprisingly well and is pretty comfortable too.

The larger panels of the skirt were quilted on oversize sections of fabric that had been roughly cut to shape. The lining is black cotton and the outer is a cotton sateen. The wadding is a Dream Orient. It is a fantastic clothing wading. It is a blend of cotton, silk and bamboo, it drapes really nicely. I did use some marking on wash away stabiliser to make sure the panels on each side are mirror images of each other.

The top of the skirt and the black areas of the bodice were yardage I quilted before cutting the panels. They are quilted with and all over leaf and vine pattern. The front panel of both the bodice and the skirt and bodice are the same three layers as the rest of the garment but with an added layer of silver organza over the top.

The bodice is then trimmed with the same lace as the train and has lace sleeves. Although the quilting was all done on my longarm the assembly was done on an hand cranked sewing machine in my motorhome. It was the biggest space I had to work in and it was easy to keep completely cat free. Cats and organza don't mix.

The outfit was named Victorian Steampunk by Susan Briscoe.

The last quilt for today is hanging right next to the dress. Being a double sided quilt it couldn't be hung against the wall. It's also very three dimensional so it doesn't hang well that way. Fortunately Susan had these hooks and chains in her car. She claims she thought they would come in handy for hanging quilts! Well I suppose she was right and the metal bars on the gallery ceiling turned out to be well placed as well.

The quilt, well technically two joined quilts, does have a hanging gap at the top to insert a rod. The base of each side of the quilt is three layers stitched together. Both have a stiff interfacing as their backing. It can't be seen and it gives a stable base, both for the textile components and the electronics embedded within it.

The quilt reacts to sounds, so when you talk to it the lights flash. I made it to give quilts a way to interact with the audience when they cannot be touched. Being so tactile I do think quilts miss out when they aren't handled, but having seen how much damage people do to quilts I have to support the no touching rule.

The resistors are not only the correct values, they are also the same way round as they are on the board. Yes, very sad and pedantic. The back of the quilt shows the tracks of the board and the solder spots. It is the hardest 'soldering' I have ever done. Hand stitching this silver fabric was a bear.

Quiltfest Gallery - Part 3

2012-02-20T23:14:00.001Z

If you haven't read parts 1 and 2 of the tour you might want to before starting on this section. They can be found by clicking on the links in the above sentence. We have just started working our way along the wall opposite the entrance.

The next quilt we come to is Leather Feathers. Yes it really is leather, and yes it really is a quilt. This quilt contains two layers of wadding. It was the first time I tried quilting leather and I was worried that one layer would be crushed flat by leather. Actually it isn't a problem with the really soft leathers I use. That being said, two waddings always make the quilting pop so perhaps it wasn't such a bad starting point. Quilting leather is on of the most nerve wracking things I've done. Knowing you can't unpick is really scary. It's a bit silly really given I don't actually have to unpick that much normally but that's just how it is for me.

This quilt was one of the stars of the show. It will probably never stop surprising me the reaction this quilt gets. I guess it will always be stuck in my mind as a sample piece. I needed to try a few new ideas and this was where I did that. The quilt has a red batik backing, two layers of wool wadding and a cotton sateen top. The top fabric was a piece of Heide Stoll-Webber fabric that was waiting in my stash. I chose it because I wanted to explore the changing the shade of a fabric with thread. The mid grey seemed like a perfect starting point. Given how special the fabric is I made a design that would use every scrap of it. The fabric has no design on it. It is a hand dyed fabric with gentle variations of shade across it. A lot of people have thought the feathers were printed onto the fabric, but no, they are just the quilting.

I started at the top of the quilt by marking the depth of the top border and the diagonal lines through the corner. With the machine I have I couldn't sew the whole depth of the feather at once and rather than constantly roll the quilt back and forth each feather each was done in two parts.

Once I had the top of a few feathers done I could start strengthening the lines around them. From there I could start on the background filler. The filler to the outside edge of the feathers was stitched in black thread. This darkens the fabric and helps the feathers to stand out. The pattern is the curls I use instead of a stipple but on this quilt they are tiny, the large curls are sometimes as bit as half an inch across.

The inner edge of the feathers was over sewn with cream thread instead of black. There are three or four lines of stitches all the way around the feathers. The cream thread was then used for the background stitching inside the feathers. The cream background stitching is micro pebbles. Yes it took a very long time. In the quilt there are four whole comes of thread, that will be around 12,000m of thread.

The next design idea I wanted to test was changing a quilts colour at a quilting pattern. I was specifically interested in the idea of a border transitioning at a smaller curled border. I was pleased with this sample and this is used this technique in the full sized wholecloth that this was a sample for, Prometheus. Prometeus was too big to fit in this gallery but hopefully will be out and about on the show circuit this year. It will be at the National Quilt Championships at Sandown and I have entered it for Paduch this year. I won't hear for another couple of weeks whether it has managed to get in.

Greek Fossils has only just arrived home. It has been on tour with the World Quilt Show. This is one of my favourite competitions to enter. I love that it goes to several different venues, but the best part is how they handle shipping the quilts. It is one of the cheapest shows to enter as the quilts are gathered at a hub within your country then shipped at the shows expense to America. Unfortunately they have size restrictions that mean a lot of my quilts aren't eligible to go. However any I have that fit the requirements will be entered.

I hope that the close up pictures here will let you get a feel for the quilting on this piece. As with all my pictures you can click on them to see them larger.

While I was demonstrating the longarm in the gallery the most requested pattern was a design similar to the centre of this quilt. On an A4 piece that is quite tricky, but after a few failed attempts I managed something close enough to keep people happy. Obviously with the micro pebbling the took a lot longer than other samples, but that turned out to be a very good demonstration. People could not only see how long it takes but could also look over my shoulder and see how tricky it is to focus on a design this small. I didn't believe it the first time I heard a long arm quilter say she had to look through her hopping foot to see where she needed to stitch. For this pattern, that is exactly what you have to do, and after a while your eyes really don't like it.

The last piece in this section of the gallery is another leather wholecloth. This is the second piece I made, and is called Leather Star. After I finished Leather Feathers I was so excited about quilting on leather I had to immediately make another. The second was a little less scary and I decided I was prepared to try a pattern where it would be clear if I made a mistake. I also wanted to know if I could use colour on leather. The problem is I can't stitch as densely on leather as I can on fabric. If the stitches get too close together the leather would fall apart. Not really what we are looking for.

However it turns out the colour of the thread shows up quite well even with less dense designs. To further reduce the stress on the leather this quilt only contains one layer of wadding. Combined with the more intricate design the quilting is still very well defined.

If you own a copy of my book Ferreting Around you might want to take a good look at the cover. Not the cover picture as such, the background image. The blue area. Do you recognise it? It's this quilt. We needed some sort of texture for that part of the cover and Tet wanted me to just quilt up a bit of something. I was already up to my eyeballs in quilts I needed to do for a show so I didn't take this suggestion very well. At the time most of my wholecloths were too flat to give a good texture and I was starting to think I was going to have to make another quilt, when we had a moment of inspiration. This quilt filled the space perfectly.

The next section of wall is quite a change of pace. These quilts got some of the most interesting reactions, and taught me a lot about setting up an exhibition.

Bad Rain was very popular with children. They all seemed to like this style of art work. I find that quite unsurprising. However only a few thought it was scary, and if only from it's strangeness and size I would have expected a reasonable amount of scary.

Adults on the other hand tended not to like it on first look, but nearly all changed their mind after I explained it to them. Generally I like not having long explanations displayed with my work. I am quite happy for people to come up with their own story of the piece but for this one I think I will have to produce it a sign.

I suppose it's quite fitting really. This images comes from a book called Cancertown. It was written by a friend Cy Dethan and the artwork was originally produced by Stephen Downey. You can see all of us with the quilt here. The image is designed to be encountered within a story. It helps to tell the story but also expects you to come to it knowing certain things about the the world it is showing you. If you want to know more about Cancertown, follow the link and Cy will tell you all about it.

Let me tell you something about trying to capture another artist work in a quilt. Given I don't draw myself working from other peoples art seems the simplest option. To a degree it is, but it turns out that in quilting I do put my own spin on the art work. That's fine until I really want to render exactly what the original artist had created.

I decided one of the things I needed to do was to only quilt the lines Stephen had drawn. If I added more quilting that would change it's character. That at least was easy technically if a little frustrating at times. I was very lucky his lines are fairly well spaced throughout the piece. The harder part came when I saw the finished book, with the colour image. The colouring had been done by computer which gives almost glowing shading of the colours. How on earth was I going to get fabric to do that without adding a lot of extra stitching? Ombre fabrics. I bought a huge box of yardage from Equilter.com and set to work. It was tricky at times as my fabric only shaded at set rates which I couldn't change but by picking and choosing I think the result is pretty close to the original.

Working so closely with someone else's art really makes you look at it and I think there are a lot of details that people reading the book will never see, let alone appreciate. The Bad Mouths (the characters that are all mouth filling the sky) all have slightly different features and characters. I love the ones with their arms folded, especially the largest one diagonally up from the huge blue one.

The blue Bad Mouth was mostly hidden in the book because it falls directly in the spine of the book. It's a real shame, it had great texture. I think it came out particularly well as a quilt. The lumpy muscle is perfect and becomes really 3D when quilted.

Bad Rain is another quilt that hasn't done many quilt shows. It's too big to ship easily (it HAS to be rolled) so the US shows are out and even UK shows are difficult if I can't hand deliver it. On the other hand it has made it out to a few comics events and it has been very well received. I wasn't sure how people would react to it when we came up with the idea but it seemed daft not to try displaying it, if nothing else it is a huge advertising banner. I didn't need to worry. As it turns out comics events might be a very good place to introduce younger people to quilting. I supposed it's just another form of art and the people at these events are already interested in graphic novels so why not. Now I just need to fit another dozen hours in the day to follow that idea up...

The last quilt for this instalment is 'A Brief Moment of Clarity'. This is a portrait of Cy, the author of Cancertown. I hadn't meant to make this quilt at all, I was planning something completely different. However at the end of the photoshoot I thought this was the perfect image. It was actually one we had taken for him to use for publicity but what the heck, he gave his permission for me to turn it into a quilt.

I got most of the fabric in place and then realised I had a problem, his earrings. Never mind, they are only small I can leave them off right? Wrong. I've known him too long they had to be there. In the enlargement you can probably see that not only are they pieces of fabric, each one is made of two pieces. Yes that is really far too small to sew through but it can be done if you are mad enough. It did require a piece of washaway stabiliser to keep it steady and I may have even bonded it in place. I can't remember for sure but it is one of the tricks I try on difficult pieces. I don't use Bondaweb though, way too stiff. I generally use Misty Fuse if I have to bond anything.

I think I am calling that it for now. That's a lot of images and I am ready for bed. I will try and do another section tomorrow.

Part four is here.

Quiltfest Gallery - Part 2

2012-02-19T23:03:00.002Z

If you haven't already read part one it can be found here. I've just realised I forgot to tell you the title of the exhibition yesterday. The show was called "Here be Dragons". I chose it because I wanted to show my Dragon quilt and hopefully make some more. I did manage to make one new Dragon for the show. However it seems the title was more appropriate to describe how people see getting to Wales. Yes they have a dragon on their flag, but really Llangollen is very easy to get to by road or rail. Mid Wales is harder to get to with smaller and more windy roads, North Wales is easy. To be fair until I went there I thought it was rather in the back of beyond but I know better now and I am hoping I might be able to have another show there at some point. I've just got to spread the word that it is really easy to access.

Carrying on our tour around the gallery we come to this set of three figure quilts. The middle one is the newest of my nudes, but more on her in a moment. The first of the three quilt is called Mother. It's not been to that many shows but has probably been seen by more people than most of my other quilts. This one got a write up in Quilters Home magazine because it depicts a very well known quilter. When Bonnie McCaffery first said how much she liked my quilts I was thrilled and when she said she would have been proud to have posed for one of them I saw an opportunity. It was a few years later when, desperate for another quilt for my gallery at the Festival of Quilts, that I finally persuaded her to model for me. When I got the photos by email (yes I have to check all that spam claiming to be nude photos for me) this one stood out. It was taken by her daughter and I think the expression is perfect, and her hair is looking great in it too. I love quilting hair and that had been part of the attraction of using her as a model.

I was aiming for this quilt (Mother) to look something like a statue. I wanted to use fabrics that gave an impression of stone.
That narrowed my options quite a lot. Some colours it is very easy to get a nice run of shades, others, not. Guess what, grey/tan/brown would be one of the trickier ones when you need this many shades. This is why if I see a run of 6-9 shades I tend to buy it on the spot. They are rare and I use them for many of my quilts. I found the only way I could get the look I was after was to use batiks and fortunately between my stash and the local quilt shop I got the run I needed.

I made the quilt and then needed to rinse and block it, I had used washaway stabiliser to keep her hair under control. The batiks ran, a lot. It looked like coffee rinsing out of the quilt. Fortunately I keep run remover on hand and soon had the dye back out of the light areas. This is a hazard of working with unwashed fabrics which I do a lot but I can live with it. There are two reason I don't prewash, firstly time. I struggle to find the time to keep on top of washing my clothes. If I had to wash and iron all my fabric as well it would never get done. Secondly I find the fabric much easier to work with when it still has the dressing on it. As my art quilts aren't intended to be washed it seems like a fair solution. My bed quilts I wash in the machine with colour catchers. If they run I fix it. It's pretty rare though to have any problems with modern fabrics. The exception would be the very dark batiks. Do click on the pictures to see the enlargement. You will be able to see most of the stitches, almost as good as being there.

Quiet Moment is the latest of my nudes the story of making this quilt is shown on the blog starting on the 6th August 2011. The easiest way to read it is to select the archive from the right hand side of the page and them the year and the month. There are a lot of posts showing many details of the process.

This is another quilt that was named by readers of the blog. Though this time instead of putting the top suggestions to the vote three of us chose the name. The model, Tet and I spent quite a while arguing to come up with the winning name. It was harder because we needed the name in a hurry to get the quilt into the 2012 calendar.

This is another quilt where I had a lot of fun quilting the hair. I guess it is a texture thing, but then the curves in hair are great too. Whatever it is I do like quilting hair, human or animal. One of the problems I had when making this quilt was finding the right shades of purple threads. Purple seems to be a really problematic colour. There are just so many different purples. The amount of blue or red in it can change massively. It seems that threads are mostly to the red side and guess what my fabrics are to the blue end. The other problem with purples is they are really hard to photograph. Most of the pictures I took at the show made the purple of her body look the same colour as her blue shoes. That is really frustrating as it makes fixing the colour on the computer very tricky. Fortunately I also got a few pictures where the colours came out pretty much right. One afternoon I got chatting to some of the visitors, and we compared all their pictures. The range of colours that this quilt looked was amazing. This is why I often tell people photographing my quilts that I have postcards of them. It really isn't just a money making scam. I know some really are tricky to photograph, but many have been professionally photographed with the correct colours and a good level of detail.

Daughter is the partner quilt to Mother. In fact Daughter came first. The photograph I worked from was one that Bonnie was going to use to make a quilt. I just fell in love with it when I saw it on her blog. Bonnie and her daughter very kindly gave me permission to use the photograph for this quilt. When I heard I was going to have a gallery at the Festival of Quilts a couple of years ago I thoguht it would be a great time to launch this quilt. That was a great plan until I found out how big the gallery space was. It meant that I had no walls small enough to hang this piece on it's own. That is the point at which I knew I had to make Mother.

Stepping back we can see the whole of the wall between the gallery and the man hall. The main hall is only used by Quiltsfest on trading day, and for access by staff on the other days. One day the display of nudes nearly caused and accident. A workman had come in to help us out and on the way in saw fairly traditional quilts. On his way back out of the door he got somewhat distracted by the display on this wall. I would have felt guilty if he had actually failed to find the door, but I do like to surprise people. Quilting is so much more than most people think. We were also lucky enough to have a painter visit the gallery. To be fair he was literally visiting the gallery, not my show. He is having a show there soon and wanted to plan where he would hang his work. He was so positive about my work, it really made my day. When I thought about what he had said I was even more thrilled. The most important thing he said, which I didn't realise until after he left was when I said I can't paint, his reply was I can't cut and sew fabric. I'd never looked at it like that. The biggest boost to my confidence in a long time. I hope his show is a huge success.

Nude with Rope, is another well known quilt. She has caused controversy and has a huge number of fans. It is the quilt of mine that seems to most divide opinion, and I like that. I like that people come up with their own stories for this quilt.

The quilt comes from another photograph by Alex Treacher. I choose it because I liked the shapes within it and the way the light catches different parts of it. As it required nine shades to render this image I really had to make it in blues where I find I get the best long runs of colour. In this case the whole quilt is made using Moda marbles, as is Quiet Moment. I love this range for it's subtle variations in shade. It is especially well suited to my style of pictorial quilts. As well has having gone to quilt shows around the world, and having been held in customs in almost as many places this quilt has been displayed on the Moda trade stand. Apparently the quilt was a bit of a shock to the sales staff, they weren't expecting it to be so big (just over 7 feet long). They were also very protective of it. This quilt got to stay in a hotel room overnight rather than a cold exhibition hall.

As you can see we have made it almost to the far side of the gallery. Looking back you can just see the door we came in by to the right of Fractal Stars. In the middle of the room are two large tables. These were provided to the stewards had somewhere to sit and sew, although they were also useful for several of the visitors. You may have also noticed the chairs around the room, we thought it was a good idea for people to have a chance to sit and look at the quilts but it also provides a place to park your less quilt obsessed friends.

Carrying on down the wall that separates the gallery from the main hall, the last quit we come to is Herd Mentality. This quilt seems to be my most requested quilt and I couldn't possibly have an exhibition without displaying it.

It seems to have been the quilt that alerted most people to my existence, which always surprises me. I would have though either Nude with Rope or the Nude Triptych would have been the more prominent quilts. Certainly they have all been displayed, photographed and published about the same amount. I wonder if it was winning at the Festival of Quilts that really made a difference as that got them hung in a far more prominent position that any of the other quilts managed. Whatever it is they are clearly much loved.

Like most of my large art quilts they we assembled entirely on the longarm. I don't have any spaces at home big enough to layout something like this. Unfortunately I didn't blog the process of this one. I was making it for a large curved wall in the Dissenters Gallery and I only showed one head on my blog before the show. The picture on that post does clearly show the pattern on one of the batiks which is very cool. While I was making this quilt I was running very low on cow coloured fabrics. I had a great idea, I would phone a trader I know fairly well and ask them to send more fabric that I needed in the right sort of colours. Some would be perfect some would be no good but it would solve my current and quite urgent problem. What I didn't forsee was getting someone who didn't know me on the other end of the phone. Apparently you don't often get customers calling and asking for 10-15m of cow colour fabric. The lady rose to the challenge and after several calls to double check posted me a large pack of fabrics. Many of which I did use, including one with a pattern that reminded us of sea anemones. We had discussed patterns that might or might not work. I had said no to anything with grids or lines on. I wasn't convinced by roses but the anemones sounded like they might work. They did. They look just like the fur on a cows forehead where it goes round and around.

Due to their popularity I now offer a class where you can make your own cow head (does that sound wrong to anyone else or is it just me?). Your first chance to take this class will be in Sitges in Spain, March this year.

Our last quilt in this section it Perttu. Perttu Kivilaakso is a Finnish cellist who used to play with the Helsinki Philharmonic orchestra but who is now part of a heavy metal cello (actually they are now 3 cellos and a drummer) quartet called Apocalyptica. I haven't done male nudes so far because they are hard to photograph so they don't look untidy. Sorry but women are just far neater. However if I could persuade the band to pose nude with their instruments, then I am sure I could make some very tasteful quilts.

Unlike most of the art quilts in this post Perttu himself is made from fabrics with small designs on them. He has flowers, butterflies and paw prints. I think you can just see the flowers on the lightest grey in the close up. I tend to buy grey fabric whenever I see it, and usually it will have a small print of some sort. I enjoy the challenge of using commercial fabrics for my quilt and to be honest I really don't have the time to custom dye everything I would need. I also like to think that if I can do it from found fabrics then so can other people. I would like people to leave my shows and talks inspired. The comment that most upsets me at events is people saying they might as well give up. It seems I have really failed if they can't see potential to try and make something themselves. Quilting is something anyone can do. Some will do it better than others. Not everyone will be able to do everything, but I really hope that people would feel there is something they could achieve.

Part 3 of the tour can be found here.

Quiltfest Gallery - part 1

2012-02-19T11:23:00.001Z

Due to the number of pictures I want to share with you I will need to break up the tour of the gallery into sections. I hope that you will get the feel of walking around the gallery by following through these posts. So grab some refreshments and let me take you on a tour. The gallery is warm and as you walked down the corridor to the gallery you could hear a sewing machine. It's gone quiet now but maybe we can run it again later. Don't forget you can click on the images to get a bigger picture.

As you can see this is quite a large space which plays very well with my large art quilts. Over on the far wall you can see Bad Rain, the poster quilt for this years Quiltfest. It's a shame See Sound isn't lit, I guess it's too quiet at the moment.

On the greeters table you can see a stack of Quilters Desk Diarys. I think Susan still has a few for sale if you want one. It's her table cloth too. Oddly I rather like it. Not my colours but somehow it works, and I do like her quilting on it.

Next to the table is Guide Me. This quilt is really too large for the gallery so it had to go on a quilt stand rather than be mounted on the wall. That's fine as I have stands but it then leave you with the problem of people tripping over the legs of the stand. So we have a donation jar to one side (for the local hospice) and the table to the other. It worked, no one fell over and no one knocked the quilt down.

Guide Me may look like a pieced quilt but it isn't. It is one piece of black cotton sateen with the design being made in coloured threads. The straight lines of this quilt were marked and then sewn with silver thread, but all the rest of the quilting is freehand. This is a design I had planned to piece, well actually I still do intend to make it as a pieced quilt but it seemed a lot quicker and easier to make it as a wholecloth. I was almost right. I learned an awful lot from this quilt. I had to make 2 complete quilts and even on the second one I got to do 12 hours unquilting. I got one of the sets of green leaves in to the space for blue waves. it had only taken 12 minutes to quilt it in. I've got better at unpicking since then. I could probably undo it in 8 hours now!

To the other side of the entrance there are two pieced quilts. Despite being better known for my art quilts I love traditional patchwork. Some people seem to find this odd, but I can't see them changing my mind. A few weeks ago I was giving a talk about my quilts when it suddenly hit me that I needed to do some proper patchwork. I've got a Turning Twenty quilt on the go now which if keeping me happy. Yup, not only do I enjoy patchwork I enjoy other peoples patterns and kits. So sue me :)

The first of the pieced quilts is Ferret's Fractal Stars. This is my latest pattern, and I had hoped to be able to launch it at Quiltfest, even though I hadn't intended to hang this quilt. On hanging day we had more space to fill than I had expected to had to rummage through my bags of quilts to choose a couple of extras. This one fitted the space perfectly so got to come and play.
The coloured fabrics in this quilt are Ricky Tims hand dyes. I'd been hoarding them for a while before this idea came to me. I was really busy when the design firmed up in my head so I got one of my students to make it up for me. She was very glad I hadn't told her they were my prized fabric before she started. I can see why Ricky uses them. The patterns they make when you cut them are fantastic. I especially like the red purple one.

The coloured triangles are all quilted with freehand feathers. That seemed like a really easy option when I started, but of course in the biggest triangles I can't see the whole area in one go on the machine. One of those moments where it might have been easier to do on a domestic machine. Oh well it worked out in the end.

Next we have a another quilt I hadn't intended to hang. Susan had to talk me into it, as it really is too big for the wall. I'm glad she did. A lot of people liked it and asked many sensible questions about it.

It is the sample I made for my book Ferreting Around. Well technically it's the sample I made for the classes that became the book. I never intended to get into writing but it happened anyway. The quilt was made to keep my students happy. They asked for a group quilt that everyone could take home at the end. They wanted a lap quilt that would cover a king size bed, and that didn't need them to buy fabric in the first month (it was just after Christmas). When they asked for flying geese, celtic knots and half square triangles I got the idea for a sampler quilt. I really like sampler quilts and having done far too much research, there aren't that many sampler quilt projects out there. Also I wanted one that was designed to be quilt as you go. This one is, and the backs of some of them are stunning. Mine is a bit boring, but then it was the first so I didn't have the others for inspiration did I.

Heat is another quilt filling a tricky space. That is exactly what she was designed for though, so I guess it is appropriate. It was originally made for the gallery exhibition I had in the Dissenters Gallery in Kensal Green cemetary. That gallery was full of odd spaces as it is an old building. I needed a few long skinny pieces and as at the time most of my quilts were cool and subdued colours I thought something a bit more lively was called for. The photograph I worked from was taken by Alex Treacher, and for me fitted the bill perfectly. This dancer is full of life. The fabrics used to produce her are all commercial quilting cottons.

All my art quilts are made with applique and thread. They are not printed or painted. If you look at the larger image you should be able to see the raw edges and stitching. I don't bond most of my quilts so although they are designed as art to hang on the wall they are still soft like bed quilts. This quilts special claim to fame is being the most 3D nipple I've made so far. Someone recently suggested producing a quilt where the nipples follow you around the room. Which, being me, seems like a great idea.

When I'm not quilting, and indeed sometimes when I am, I can be found lurking at drag strips. many of my quilts have been finished in the pits at various tracks. Some even got finished driving between race tracks, what can I say, I tend to be a bit short on time.

For a while I had been thinking of doing some quilts of the cars at the track, but I couldn't decide how. I knew I didn't want to do photo realistic quilts but that doesn't really narrow things down much. Then I saw the Queens of the Stone age video for Go With the Flow. I loved the way the colours are used in it and that settled how my burnout quilts were going to look. I think I might have to do some red landscapes too at some point.

The first car I chose to do could have been a mistake. There are a lot of rails (long skinny traditional dragsters) in racing and without their livery they all look quite similar. Fortunately (and quite by accident) I managed to pick one with just enough distinctive features that other racers could identify it as Dave Wilson.

My second car was a much safer choice. It's the very distinctive Studebaker of Andy Robinson. No chance of this being mistaken for anyone else. However those flames and the V8 badge on the nose were a pain to cut out. It was worth it, I love this quilt. I do have plans for a few more burnout quilts, including our race car Trogdor. The hard part is getting just the right angle on the photographs and getting enough details to conclusively identify the car. I will also be starting a new set of wheelie cars. Several of the cars lift their front wheels when they launch at the start of the race, and I think that will give me lots of normally hidden detail to work with. As soon as I have some spare time (does that even exist?) I'll make a start on those. Well, that's it for now. I'll start work on the next section of the tour. Part 2

Ferret Bites

2012-02-18T22:40:00.000Z

Given the success of the little quilts I made at Quiltfest we decided they needs a name. We decided on Ferret Bites. The few that were left at the end of the show are now available to buy in my web shop, here. Each piece is unique and once it's gone, it's gone.

I have decided to offer free shipping on any of the Ferret Bites, for everyone. It seemed a bit unfair to penalise those who live further away when they had the least chance of coming to the show in the first place. So just for these there is no need to ask about the shipping, it's free.

I am working on the photos of the gallery. I hope to have the first part of the walk through up tomorrow.

Quiltfest Trading day

2012-02-17T22:00:00.001Z

Yes, I am doing the easiest posts first. I am not feeling too well, Susan Briscoe did try hard not to give me her cold but seems to have failed at the last minute so my brain is working worse then usual. We are lucky to have to pictures in the post as both Susan and I forgot to take any pictures on trading day. Tet nabbed my camera and saved the day.

Terri who works at the venue and has been looking after us during our stay offered us use of the screen in the lobby for the day if we could put some pictures onto a USB stick. That wasn't an offer we were going to pass on so Tet got to work and just after opening a slide show was up of the quilts in my gallery. I didn't actually manage to get to the lobby and see it, but I've heard from people who did and they seemed to like it, so ti was worth the effort. Unfortunately because I was busy on the gallery I also didn't get to meet the students from Yale Collage, the two guys in the photo. I'd have liked to have found out what sort of things they had been working on but it wasn't to be. They didn't get a chance to see the gallery during the day though I am told the did spend a lot of time watching the slide show. Maybe I should have sent some one to tell them the real thing was just in the next room :)

This next picture is of the trading hall. There were a selection of quite varied traders there. I found a few interesting things. I will be particularly interested in how the spray on glitter/sheen works. If it sprays well and stays put it could be really useful on some of my more textured quilts. However I am not holding my breath. Glitter usually comes off on everything except what you might want it on. I would love to find out I bought the one product that doesn't but I am still a realist. Still it should be fun to play with.

Lastly, for the trading day, some pictures from the gallery. As we have discovered before turning on a longarm and starting to quilt is a very good way to summon quilters. They appear out of thin air as soon as you start quilting. I don't mind at all, this really is the point of taking my machine on the road. I want as many people as possible to understand how the longarm quilting process works, and especially what I mean when I say all my work is free hand. Even people who are standing watching me will ask if I am following a line, have I drawn on a line, and is the machine programmed to do the pattern. I'm afraid by the end of a show the answer will usually be a question. Can you see a line? Can you see a computer and does the machine move when I am not moving it.

I really like getting requests for patterns as that is a clear way to demonstrate there is nothing set up in the machine or drawn on the cloth. This time I didn't get many requests, and a lot I did get would have taken more artistic ability than I have. One lady would have liked the Phoenix Rising quilt as an A4 sample in just quilting. To be fair, so would I, it sounds lovely. It's not something I could just draw though. Maybe I will put some outlines onto washaway before I next bring the machine out and about.

The most popular pattern for this show was feathers in the style of the centre of Greek Fossils. I guess that makes sense, but it caught me by surprise. I tried some feathered hearts (Welsh and Valentines day) and the usual sampler pieces but they weren't what people were looking for this time. I will be scanning the left over samples and putting the up fro sale on my website over the weekend.

Links for the shops

2012-02-17T13:00:00.001Z

I know none of you are interested in shopping, least of all craft related shopping but for interest I've looked up the websites of the two shops I have mentioned :) Castle court quilters can be found here and Colinette yarns here. Collinette offer mail order services, which I may need even if I can't tempt you. Castle Court quilters do have a picture of the castle on their site which I forgot to photograph.

Another link I should share is the Quilt Association News. They have a report on my talk with some pictures here.

One for the knitters

2012-02-17T12:16:00.000Z

After Castle Court Quilters I headed south towards Collinet (no idea if that is how you should spell it) yarns. It was quite by chance that I found out about this place. A friend of a friend of a friend mentioned it over dinner, and actually was there when I arrived. The building doesn't look at all promising from the outside and the car park was quite revoling. However as soon as you step inside it is worth the trip. The displays are stunning and spread through 3 rooms of yarns. The yarns are produced and dyed in Wales and they are magnificent. The question isn't if you will buy something just how much you will buy. I really liked the number of samples around the shop. Samples that they allowed a customer to try on to check the size before making her own. It's little thing but very helpful. The staff are very knowledgeable about their products and somehow I bought quite a lot of yarn. I did get very lucky. There wasn't much in the sale room but I found a 1kg bag of odds and ends all in black/white/grey 30 pounds, very good value. I have already started knitting up my purchases.

Castle court quilters - Oswestry

2012-02-16T16:15:00.000Z

The first stop on my tourist trip was to Oswestry. I had planned on going to the morot museum in Llangollen but the weather was foul and I really just wanted to drive for a bit. It's probably just as well as I needed the time for the quilt shop. The location is lovely, they are right opposite a castle and have plenty of parking, even for a customer with a motorhome. As you can see the workshop is impressive with huge tables for people to layer up their quilts on. I wonder if the customers know what a great resource this is.

Obviously I had to buy some fabric. Mostly I bought stone effect. It's not a range I've seen before and I love it. It's also from a supplier that shops around here don't often use so I just had to buy it then right? My only chance and all that ;) The ownwer was lovely, offering not only hot drinks but food too. I wish I could have stayed longer but I had another stop to make on my way to Llanidloes.

Llanidloes - art quilts by numbers

2012-02-15T11:58:00.000Z

These are a few pictures from yesterdays workshop.

Llanidloes

2012-02-15T11:45:00.000Z

This will be out of sequence as there are things I still need to post, but it ois real time. All set up for this afternoons talk.

Wholecloth class

2012-02-12T23:06:00.000Z

This is a bit late, things got very busy here for a while. We had a lively class in Gresford yesterday. I've just had a hard time choosing some pictures for this post. It seems hanging around the gallery gave people ideas, lots of ideas. Watching the students play with those ideas then gave me some too. I never knew people could enjoy drafing so much. I hope you like the picture, bear in mind these are in progress.

After class we went out for a meal, and discovered there are three hotels with the same name and a chinese across the road. You know that makes tracking down your friends a lot harder. Despite that it was a good night followed by an early morning and a busy day. Trading day was good, but I'll tell you about that tom,orrow. Now I want towatch a film and sleep.

Busy day at the gallery

2012-02-10T21:52:00.000Z

As promised the visitor numbers have been increasing as the end of the show draws closer. I only got a chance to get a picture as we were leaving this evening. I've been very pleased with the response to the show. It seems that most visitors have found something to inspire them. I've also got a surprising amount of little quilts made and again, the different patterns and styles all seem to have found their fans.

If you would like to see the show your last chance is Sunday, which is also trading day. The show will be open 10-4, admission 2.50 and free parking. Well when I say free parking that's not entirely true. The organisers will be paying the parking for you, because a lot of visitors have been upset by the pay and display system. It does however mean less money will be donated to charity so I have mixed feelings about it.

Tonight Susan and I finally got a chance to sit, eat and chat. I made us dinner in the van, and I think she is now sold on my van. 3 course meal, very little effort and even less washing up. I love the posh bags of dinner that are so easy to heat. She had venison and juniper stew while I went for the beef stew, we both had chocolate mouse. The mouse is meant for camping but it's really yummy. I only allow myself to eat it when I am living in the van and I do look forward to it. While I was moving things around I found the toffee chocolates Ricky Tims gave me. Oh boy! I might have to go to La Veta just to get more, they are amazing. He did say they were good, but even so. Yup slumming it in the van is great.

Tiny quilts

2012-02-09T10:09:00.000Z

Those of you who have seen me out and about with me machine will know I doodle as much as I can on it to show people what I do and how the machine works. In the past I just worked on a single big piece, which to be honest I would have stuffed in a cupboard until I threw it away. Fortunately my visitors showed me the error of my ways and the play pieces became art in their own right. So, this time I am making all my demo pieces about A4 (they are actually a little bigger) and cutting them out as I go. This works much better. As I thought it allows visitors to request specific designs and it means they can take it away immediately.

Quiltfest - Llangollen

2012-02-08T21:59:00.000Z

Well guys time is running out. My exhibition at the International Pavilion Llangollen is drawing to a close. It will be open Thursday, Friday and Sunday. Today, talking to some of the visitors I realised it's going to be a very long time before my work is this well displayed again. It is so rare to have the very long sightlines that this venue provides. We have deliberately kept the center of the space clear so you can really step back and see the quilts from a distance. For my more traditional quilts this isn't important but for the art quilts it's wonderful. Oddly today has also been the first day when most of the visitors had seen pictures of my work before coming to the gallery. They found the quilts to be quite different in real life, that really makes the effort worthwhile. Putting on a show like this isn't easy, either as the organisers or the artist. It means a lot when the visitors appreciate the end result.

Fur, feather and scale workshop

2012-02-07T17:11:00.000Z

I'd forgotten to share some pictures of Irish ladies hard at work in their class on Sunday. This workshop is a pure technique class, where students are loking to create the effect of different textures using just fabric and thread. It's a class where it is very hard to describe fabrics that are especially good. Fortunately most fabrics will work for at least one of the textures so I just need to encourage students not to worry too much. After all, whatever you take to a class you will decide someone else has better fabrics and that the 'perfect' fabric is the one you left at home. Given that will happen no matter how much you fret and stress you might as well skip that phase and just relax.

I think that will do for now. My main course should be here any moment and if the starter was anything to judge by, it will deserve my full attention.

Carrickfergus

2012-02-05T16:39:00.000Z

This is the castle we went and visited yesterday. We didn't have time to go inside, but it's pretty impressive from outside. I really like the way it fit's into the rock. The castle was built by the Normans and overlooks Belfast Lock. It's a shame the weather was so muky, the views here would be great on a clear day.

Snow - in London

2012-02-05T08:56:00.000Z

This is a picture of my car. I am currently still in Ireland which is definately not cold enough to have snow, but tonight I need to get back to the gallery in Llangollen. I really hope it will hold off the snow there until I get back.

Ulster folk museum

2012-02-05T00:35:00.000Z

Todays talk was in the parochial hall at the Ulster Folk museum. The museum is a collection of period buildings preserved as they would have been 100 years ago. It's the sort of place I cn spend hours in, although I would rather have had better weather. I am sure it looks lovely when it isn't raining. Two of the houses were open and had their stoves lit. One of the homes had patchwork quilts on the beds. Apparently the offcuts from makeing pajamas and shirts were often used to produce bed quilts. The other quilt was from suiting, I wonder if those were also left overs from the factories. The second house was bigger and more up market. The back room downstairs was set up as a dressmakers workroom. She had the most amazing dummy to work with, it looked corsetted and bustled. I would love one.
As well as the houses there are businesses. We had lunch in the tearoom, visited the picture house and the sweet shop. Sadly most of the others were shut, but I guess that just means I need to come back in the summer. Just as well as we also visited Craftwomen fabrics. Oh my! Just as well I have limited luggage allowance or that would have been a serious shopping trip.

Liverpool

2012-02-03T17:59:00.001Z

It's been a good day. We had a lot more visitors to the gallery today and many of them have been really fun and interesting. We also had two people who visited by accident. They were there to look at the room but loved my work. These are the visitors we really need as they are the ones who don't know what is going on in the quilt world and they can help spread the word that quilts are more than bedcovers. They were so positive and were a great bonus. The demo panels are selling too, and are fun to make. I guess these ones will be rolled on on Monday so I may cut them off at that point. I'll see how I feel when it happens.

I'm now at Liverpool Airport, and it's nice. Everyone is so friendly. I do normally get quite a good response when I wear the coat, but this is above and beyond. If flying was always like this I would do more of it. Maybe the other airports in England should send their staff here for training. Next stop Belfast.

Slumming it in the van

2012-02-02T22:12:00.000Z

A lot of people are cocerned that I stay in my van whenever I am away from my main home. I don't do it because I have to, I do it because I love it. It really is my home now. I have a full kitchen and a wet room. A fixed bed and a permanant table where I can sew. When I can plug the van in I even have space to iron. Tonight I've had a very nice dinner and got a lot more sewing done on my new turning twenty quilt. Right now I am lying in bed watching movie trailers while I blog, oh I lie the menu has just come up, time for a film. Yep, I can take any amount of this sort of slumming ;)

Longarm in a gallery

2012-02-02T13:33:00.000Z

I'm all set up and playing. As usual people are enjoying seeing how a longarm works and find watching the patterns appear. I spotted the comment asking where I am, I'm at Quiltfest which is in the International Pavilion Gallery, Llangollen, LL20 8SW. It really is very easy to get here, at least from England and strangely the weather is lovely too. Today is pretty busy so I will cut this short and go back to my machine.

I've done my part

2012-02-01T01:40:00.000Z

The picture is the van before we unloaded. I took the picture from the cab as it was the only space left. All the stuff is now in the gallery looking dangerously like an exhibition. Tomorrow morning I will make my long (10 steps maybe) commute to the gallery and start demonstrating on the longarm. Now it is over to you. For this to work I need an audience. It's really not that far and the roads are quite major until the last 5 miles, so please do come and say hello and see the new quilts.

Background fill

2012-01-21T17:35:00.001Z

I'm now heading my way back up the dragon filling in the background. I am having to add quite a lot of filler to keep the quilt as flat as possible. I don't think I said before but the fabric is another hand dyed sateen. I love Heide's fabrics and this piece was just the right size. I think I even have enough to bind the quilt.

Head

2012-01-17T22:41:00.000Z

The head is really hard work. I've mostly finished the neck now, and the bits I haven't filled in I know what I need to do. There is a little more to do on one front leg but really the head is slowing me down a lot. This is really where I wish I could draw and colour things. Well this counts as a crash course. I think an observer would think I hadn't done much today as I have spent a lot of time with the machine stopped just staring into space or at the quilt. I have however been very busy thinking.

My tattooist spent some time trying to teach me about art and how to draw. I didn't think much sank in but hopefully he got enough through to make all the difference. I think the main lesson that I've been using is essence of thing. He said all you needed to do was understand the essence of the thing and put that down on paper or n this case fabric. So when I get stuck I think about what is actually going on and what I need to show. I've spent a lot of time today thinking about nostrils and lips. How they work, how they fit together and what details you need to show to make them read as what they are supposed to be. I still haven't quite got the inside of the nostril but I know what it looks and feels like so hopefully the colours will come good soon.

I've also been asking why a lot. I know this dragon is part cat, part horse and part dinosaur, so how do the back spines and in between bits work? If there is skin between the spines it must be attached to something, several somethings. It must grow from the back of the dragon and it is supported on the spines so they much also be covered in skin/scales. These sort of questions go on and on and on, but they do tell me exactly how the thing works and what it's essence is. It may well look like staring onto space to others :)

I am going to try really hard to get an early night now. My back aches, a combination of concentrating too hard and helping to pick up a very heavy man I think, but apart from that I have an early start tomorrow to get to Warwickshire Quilters New Year lunch. I suspect by the time I've done the talk I will have some ideas about nostrils and be desperate to get home and back to work.

Front feet

2012-01-16T22:21:00.000Z

Feet

2012-01-15T23:09:00.001Z

Well the hind feet are in. Just front feet, neck and head left.

Shading

2012-01-14T21:26:00.002Z

This quilt has been one heck of a learning curve. I don't draw and really this quilt is heading in that direction. Fortunately I have a starting sketch drawn by my tattoo artist to work from. That helps except it is the first sketch he made and he did edit it when he worked form it and now I am looking at it up close I am finding I need to change things. That's really scary. The next problem is the shading. The first problem there is I have a limited number of shades of thread and blending them doesn't entirely work, so I need to reduce all the shading on green areas down to 4 shades. To be fair I still haven't quite managed that I hope I will come up with a cunning plan for the rear leg in shadow.

The absolute hardest thing though is working out which direction my lines need to go. Most of the time it is the same way I would quilt the shape but not always. The belly scales took me two attempts to get a result I liked. Fortunately I was fairly light with my first attempt so I didn't need to unpick just over sew. They aren't done but they are coming along now. They are pretty intensive my shoulders and neck have just informed me, and having just broken a needle as well I figured it was time for a break. Maybe I can get the rear scales done after dinner. That would be pretty exciting.

Threads so far

2012-01-13T17:17:00.000Z

There will be more I need for the face but these are what I am using so far on the dragon. I just wish I had more shades of all of them.

Starting to come together

2012-01-11T22:03:00.001Z

Tail

2012-01-10T22:35:00.001Z

I've mostly been working on butt and tail today.

Why I change needles so often

2012-01-10T15:53:00.000Z

The needle on the right has just come out of my machine, the one to the left is a new needle. Hopefully you can see the used needle now has a completely blunt tip. The needle had only been in the machine since this morning and at the moment I am running the machine fairly slowly. Repeatedly punching through a quilt is really hard on needles.

This is going to be hectic.

2012-01-10T13:08:00.000Z

I've just been checking my travel arrangements, and it's dawned on me quite how busy this year is going to be. On the other hand there should be lots of options for people to see my work, which is really cool. The manic session starts with Quiltfest. This is a two week exhibition in Llangollen, it is open every week day from the 1st of February till the 12th. On Sunday the 12th is trader day, when there is a hall full of quilt traders as well as the exhibition. I should have a couple of new pieces on display there.

In the middle of this I will be in Northern Ireland for the weekend of the 4th-5th. Well it beats sitting around doing nothing right :) It sounds like that will be quite an interesting area, but with 2 classes and a talk I suspect I won't get to see much of Ireland. Hope the airports are exciting :)

After the show I will be teaching at a couple of venues on the way home. Quick trip home and my regular classes then back to Quarterjack quilters in Dorset. Then things get really busy, yup, this was the warm up.

At the beginning of March I will be teaching at a weekend retreat at Farncombe Estate. It will be my first class there but I am really looking forward to it. Some of my students have been there and highly recommend it, certainly the staff sound good and are really helpful. I will be teaching my art quilts by numbers class. As it is a whole weekend there will be time for students to make patterns from their own photos. In a day class I can't cover that much ground so it's a great chance to teach more about my art quilt techniques. There are still a few more places on the course if you would like to join me.

From there I head north, Peebles in the Scottish Borders. Yeah that's a bit of a trek, but it looks like I can get home on the way and I think I've even found a reasonable train ticket. I seem to have got a bit ambitious, I'm teaching in Peebles one day and Hemel Hempstead the next! Just as well there is a sleeper service and it's the cheapest way to do it as well. I might even manage dinner in Scotland before I head home. Fortunately I then have a couple of days to repack before heading out to Spain. I am thrilled to have been invited to have a gallery at the Spanish Patchwork Group show in Sitges. I will also be teaching a couple of classes there. Oh, it will also be my first visit to Spain. I guess that must be pretty rare for a Brit, but not being a sun lover I've not got around to it.

Well I'm tired just thinking about this, so I guess it must be time to quilt and not think about it until it happens.

Progress

2012-01-09T18:17:00.001Z

This is a wholecloth, just fabric and thread. No, no paint, that's just not how I work.

Hmmm, dunno why the picture looks pink, there is no pink in it. Grey background blue and green threads.

Yesterdays work

2012-01-08T12:12:00.001Z

It doesn't look like much but this is several hours work. I'll explain mer later. Right now I want to sew

Quarter Jack quilters, Upton House

2011-12-18T13:29:00.000Z

I have been trying to find time at home to post these pictures of last Sundays talk at Upton House, but I admit defeat so you will just have to see them in whatever order my phone decides on. Sorry. I think this has to be poshest venue I've spoken in. It is a magnificent house, if a very odd layout with strange shape rooms. Decorated it is very festive and has a lovely atmosphere. I haven't had a chance to reseach it's history but maybe google would help out if you are interested.

My talk was in the Drawing room in front of the magnificent fireplace. It meant I needed to come up with a new strategey for laying things out but we got there. Fortunately the group offered helpers to look after the quilts as my tables were very spread out, and they made me up a plate of afternoon tea before the food all disapeared. It was a very good party. The weather played with us at paking up time, pouring with rain until we got the vehicles loaded then stopping. Still a bit of rain doesn't really hurt does it.

Worthing Patchworkers and van pictures

2011-12-11T10:31:00.001Z

I hoped to get to blogging last night but a good dinner, gin and tomic then a warm bed won out. Worthing Patchworkers were a dream to work with. We arriced and we offered tables refreshements and help. They didn't take offence when we turned down all but the tables. As we set up they started bringing out food, and we started worrying. There was a lot of food for not many tables. Quilt groups really know how to[ cater, and they won Tet over by having lots of fruit juice.

It was another day when I got everything set up in time and could go and socialise, which really works well. We even got lunch. The whole day was low stress and easy, thank you so much for the patience while we packed. I do take a while toset up and pack, but I hope it's worth it. Having teased the chairman I have to mention her speach, it was fine if indeed short. Love the flamenco attention grabbing.

Folks have been asking for pictues of the new van so while we were unloading and loadin I took some. Excuse the mess I am still not totally moved in. At the back of the van there is a corner sofa. I use this as a storage area when I am doing talks. Every thing fits neatly in there and still leaves me access to the bathroom which is to the other side of the rear of the van. Then there is the wardrobe and central heating, I love the heating. In the middle of the van is the saloon with the table and chairs, my prefered spot to relax, I can sew or rad or anything else I fancy there. Next to that is the kitchen with the cooker, grill, oven, sink and fridge. It's nice beimng able to make tea without moving :) Finally over the cab is my bedroom. Yes it's high up and you have a ladder to get into bed, but it's warm and it's always ready to use. I know I am lazy and after a talk I wouldn't make up a bed, with this I don't have to I just get in, simple.

So there you are my new home, which currnetly is sat in a diveway in Dorset. Today is another Christmas party and another talk. At least I got a lie in, love the van.

Getting better

2011-12-09T22:13:00.000Z

Well several groups will be pleased to know I am feeling a lot better than I was. I'm not 100% yet, but I'm functional (mostly). Thursday was hectic, and rather stupidly I forgot to take any pictures. On the other hand I would have been tempted to a picture of their loo (it was stunning) so maybe it is just as well. It was an early start as I was the before lunch speaker for a local group. Travelling at rush hour in London isn't much fun. The venue though is a very rural looking church hall. It's amazing how close the country is to the edge of town. I managed to get the new van there OK, it's not a lot bigger than the old van but it has a huge turning circle, so it is taking a bit of thought in small hall car parks. I am sure I will get it sorted soon.

I was lucky to be able to get into the hall in good time so by the time the members turned up I was unloaded, set up and ready to chat to the members. I don't often get enough time to do this and I really enjoyed it. I hope the group did too. The talk ran to time and I found a few great helpers who made sure I was packed and out on time. Perhaps the promise of lunch helped encourage them, it certainly smelled good. Sadly I couldn't stay as I had a class at 1.30 in Hemel Hempstead.

My regular classes are largely free form with students choosing their own projects to work on. This means I tend to get a mixture of very quiet lessons and manic ones. It just seems to work out that everyone needs help at the same time. typically the week I would have really liked a quiet class, I got a busy class. It was quiet fun though especially as one of the needy students was trimming up a top from one of my patterns to put on borders. The quilt she is making is "Where is the North Star?" a quilt I made some time ago for a theme category in the Quilts UK show.

Usually when you make a quilt the most work is in producing the blocks. The assembly is usually quite quick and easy by comparison. Like much of my work this quilt does things differently. You start by making the borders, they need the largest pieces of fabric for the border so it is safer to do them first. Then making the blocks is pretty simple and once you get into the swing of it quite quick. The work actually starts when you get to putting the blocks together. there are no rows and columns in the quilt all the blocks are put together using partial seams. It's not really hard but it is awkward and time consuming. Then comes the trimming. The blocks are all at an angle so you need to trim quite a lot off your top to get the right size for the borders, and you don't want to make any mistakes at that stage. Measure twice cut once? Not likely. I think we measured 4 or 5 times to be certain we had it right. It is looking stunning and I may have to get a picture of it soon.

While I have been ill I've spent more time on the computer than usual and I've been looking at quilt patterns. I've had a few inspirations for new patterns and I like to know they aren't already out an about. It is amazing how often two (or more) people think of the same thing at the same time. In my lessons I've come across some really terrible patterns but there are some good ones out there and even some free good patterns. I'd like to share a couple I think would be good for people to try. These are patterns that I think would be forgiving and at the same time help improve your piecing skills.

A lot of ladies struggle both with accurate cutting and 1/4" seams, so I am always on the look out for ways to cope with this but give you the chance to spot your issues. The first one that I spotted is Dueling Personalities, by Rebecca Silbaugh. The pattern talks about making two quilts but you don't need to make 2, just work with 20 fat quarters and off you go. It gives you a fair amount of cutting to do but don't let it put you off, the patterns talks you through it very nicely. I also like the way she makes her half square triangles, slightly over size then trimmed to perfection. All in all a lovely quilt and a great learning experience.

Another pattern I really like is Apple Crate by Angela. I like the fact that this quilt will give you a lot of scope for checking both your seam width and your pressing, but again will be quite forgiving. My only reservation is in using a jelly roll to make it. I think that you won't get a block A with matching rings from all jelly rolls. I think you need two strips of the same colour. Please check my logic as I am still not quite with it but as a quilt from yardage or fat quarters as suggested in the pattern it should be fantastic and quite quick.

The last quilt that caught my eye was this one. Birchbark Lodge by Stacey Carey. This is really a quilt for someone who either has their 1/4" seam down perfectly or who is confident changing some methods used in a pattern. For me I would also make it bigger, but I like big quilts. I love the pattern. It's got a traditional feel and it's scrappy. What is there not to like? It has some interesting ideas in it and I can't wait to have a go at this one.

Hopefully some of these will inspire you and you will forgive me for giving you somewhere to waste a lot of time. I think I need to head to bed. I've got an early start tomorrow for another Christmas Lunch. Worthing Patchworkers here I come.

Can anyone help me

2011-12-05T10:24:00.002Z

When I taught in Middlesbrough recently I met a lady with a Brother sewing machine. I wanted to send her some bobbins so she gave me her address. You've guess my problem haven't you, I've lost it. I've now had a good enough look that I am confident I'm not going to find it. So please if anyone can put me in touch with her, or point her at me I would really appreciate it. A comment here or the contact button to the right will get a message to me. Have bobbins and a jiffy bag, I just need to know where they should be going.

That was a very long week

2011-12-03T21:56:00.000Z

When I know I have a lot of bookings in a row I really don't need to get ill. The universe generally seems to think it's the perfect time. Somewhere I picked up a cold, but I thought I was going to keep on top of it and I managed to pick up the new van and head over to Cambridgeshire. It was a bit daunting heading straight out to stay in an untested van but everything went well and the group were great. I hope at some point they will send me some pictures over. We worked on faux trapunto flowers for the workshop which went great guns until lunchtime :) After lunch things were a bit more laid back. What can I say, rural area with good food. Not only was my pack lunch fab (thank you so much for the piece of pie) the diner the night before was good too. I got very lucky and was staying with a motorhome owner. It might sound odd but if you haven't tried it you have no idea how much we love our homes on wheels and yes they really are homes. When I say I will stay in my van it isn't any hardship at all. In fact it is closer to being a treat. This particular household could even offer me electric hookup. Unfortunately not being familiar with the van I had to pass this time.

The next event was Art Quilts by Numbers at Patchwork Corner. That was a lot of fun. It had gone from undersubscribed to nearly full in the last week before the class and as I thought it would be a quiet class I had a couple of students doing the class for a second time. This means people trying other techniques and ideas which I hope makes for a more exciting class for everyone. It makes for more work too, but that wouldn't normally be a problem, when ill, it's not ideal.

Since then I've mostly been ill. I've managed to get a few customer quilts done, the rest needed for Christmas will be done ASAP. I actually had to cancel a regular teaching day, which is rare but if I can't breathe or think I'm not much use as a teacher (or driver). Today is the first day when I have felt able to string words together that might make sense. I have managed to do some design work, I can colour in squares when ill, although the maths is a bit interesting and I am now largely redesigning the quilt. I'll probably be a bit quiet again till Thursday as I have a lot of paperwork and quilting to catch up with but then I will be taking the van for a better trial. I have 3 Christmas event s over 4 days. I can't wait. The van is now clean tidy and loaded up ready to go. We just need to get the gas cylinders changed from butane to propane and I am ready to hit the road. Of course that is proving to be one of those simple jobs that is a lot harder to actually do. Although the new van uses much bigger cylinders than the old one did, they are still too small for our local suppliers. I know we will find some it's just a matter of time.

Mead quilters, start of a long week

2011-11-18T15:14:00.001Z

The picture today is from my talk on Tuesday night at Mead Quilters. This is one of the groups local to Patchwork Corner so full of ladies I know and work with. Having been to them before I was desperate to show them something new and I had a particular somthing in mind, the new wholecloth. Of course that meant I needed to finish it. I thought I would get it done over the weekend but other things had to be done and by Monday I was worried. Monday night I admitted defeat. Then I realised the van was pretty much loaded, and the talk was fairly close to home. Back to quilting. I had about 10 minutes to spare but the quilt came with me. One of my friends even held it for me during the talk so I got to see it as well.

As I said this was the start of a long week. Wednesday and Thursday were regular classes which pretty much fill the day. Today I'm heading north to collect a new to me motorhome. When I get back tonight. I will probably be preparing it for the weekend when I am giving a talk in Cambridgeshire followed by a workshop on Sunday. Monday is seeing a supplier then Tuesday-Thursday I am at Patchwork Corner teaching again. I'm hoping to fit some customer quilting in around that lot somehow. Tuesday is good news, I will be teaching Art Quilts by Numbers, and last week I ws sure it wouldn't go ahead, then suddenly it's almost full! Cool, it's a fun class and one of the repeat students is doing something a little different and very exciting. I hope I will be able to share a picture or two.

I've also really enjoyed the cathadral windows classes. The idea was to teach an in depth technique class, but we've all learned so much more. Last night I was really pleased to hear people planning ways to use the techniques, which iswhat I was aiming for, but there were also people adjusting their cutting and 1/4" seams. They were spotting their own problems and fixing them. I think that is great, becuase it tells me they have the problem solving skills they need when they are at home. I hope some of them do play with their ideas, and that they share the results.

The ugly duckling

2011-11-14T00:04:00.002Z

I thought I should share a picture of the ugly quilt I mentioned. I couldn't get all of it in but this probably gives you the idea. No it's not a great looking quilt. I do think it will be a handy teaching tool as it would have looked far better if it had at least been random rather than ordered. It will also be warm once it is finished and on the bed. I took the picture with it laid out on the bed tonight. On top of a quilt made from 30 least loved (OK actively disliked in most cases) batiks. Which I made to test a pattern I though looked horrible. That quilt is on the bed because I love it. It's one of my all time favourites. Under that is another test quilt. That one wasn't such a success. I was playing with patterns for jelly rolls and found the result was too random to really work. So I then used the quilt top to test out a new wadding (bamboo, I love it). It works fine on the bed and keeps me warm at night thus making it a good and successful quilt. I love my show quilts but I have no problem with those who don't really make the grade. I get something out of all of them. You never know once the ugly duckling has borders and quilting (maybe applique?) we may all feel differently about it.

Productive day

2011-11-12T22:47:00.000Z

Today has almost gone to plan and we have achieved a huge amount. I didn't get to go and see any potential new vans because most of the sellers were out of contact. We did however go and pick up our van which is much happier now. In fact the work seems to have solved several problems we hadn't been able to track down, which is a great bonus. I think the garage were glad to see the back of it. They did an awful lot of work for the money they charged us.

I also managed to pick up a second thermal t-shirt. Every year I look for them and for women you mostly get cap sleeves or vests. I really wanted a proper t-shirt. I found one that works well at Go Outdoors. It's not a store I really like but they do have a few very useful items. These thermal shirts are now on the list. They were a bit more expensive than I would have liked but they save on fuel bills so in the long run I think they will prove to be a good investment.

I've also made good progress with my wholecloth. I am really getting desperate to get it off the frame but it is so close to done I want to finish it first. I think there is a real chance I will have it as as finished as it is going to be by the end of tomorrow. It may well get one more visit to the frame as there are a couple of areas I may add more stitching to but I want to get a good look at it before I decide. In fact I will be heading down to get a bit more done before bed tonight. I am getting quite excited about seeing it now.

There has been progress on the fractal quilt patterns, which I am hoping to launch at Quiltfest in February. We have been looking at what extras we can add to the patterns to cram in as much value for the quilters as we can. We have also changed format in which should make them easier to use. Of course that change means a lot more typesetting work for Tet to do, but hopefully it will pan out in the end.

Anyway, I've finished dinner now (yup I I have to multi task if I am going to get this wholecloth done) so I aught to leave this computer alone and get back to the longarm. Keep getting in touch with cheap ways to have fun while we wait out the economy. I'll try and share some more ideas soon.

Shock headline

2011-11-11T19:18:00.000Z

You may not have noticed but times are hard. People are short of cash and businesses are struggling. The real shock is complaining about it isn't going to change it. Unfair I know but life isn't often fair so I guess we shouldn't be surprised. Feeling more positive may actually help though, so what plans have you got for getting through tough times with a bit of fun and creativity?

I'm planning quilts, I know, you're surprised, but think about this. One of the problems with less cash is paying the bills. Fuel of all kinds has gone up so using less is a good plan. More quilts helps that. I am trying to keep the heating down while wrapping up warm. However spending money on lots of fabric probably isn't on the cards either so time to use up scraps and recycle old textiles into new warmth. I'm not thinking these will be show winning quilts, but they will be fun, quick and serve a purpose. In fact I already have one ugly duckling nearly ready to quilt. I was testing and idea, and I've learned a lot from the test. Some of my students who have seen it are surprised I intend to finish it and sling it on the bed, but when I'm asleep I can't see what it looks like so who cares? If it really bothers me I will put a prettier one on top of it. Warm is warm whatever it looks like.

My scrap boxes are pretty big and very full, so I think they may need to turn into a quilt too. I think they would like to be a smaller quilt suitable for the motor home. I don't have many small quilts and I don't really want to make a huge one with tiny pieces. I may be crazy but there are limits right? The other source of fabric that is looking really tempting is old clothes. I never manage to wear out all the fabric so I may as well put the good bits to use. It's been an idea on the back burner for a while but two things recently have got me thinking about projects for old clothes. Firstly a friend was considering what to do with old but much loved t-shirts. She doesn't sew much and wouldn't be looking to invest much money in it so a traditional t-shirt quilt isn't going to work for her. Then I got a magazine in the post, called Cloth, which has lots of simple projects in it and got me thinking about non sewing approaches to making things. Now I have a head full of new designs I want to try. I'll be sharing how they go as I try them out. OK if they are a disaster I may not share so much :)

Now it's your turn. What have you got planed to keep busy and hopefully happy while money is tight?

Frayed, I'll show you frayed!

2011-11-10T18:23:00.000Z

Well cathadral windows have been interesting. I was expecting the idea of hand sewing to get mixed reviews and it did. I hadn't expected the fraying competition though. The most interesting part however has been the cutting. A lot of my students have been surprised how long cutting out takes them (why do you think I try to hide it in most of my projects?) They have also noticed for themselves that it isn't easy to be really accurate. Even though we have been starching the fabric before cutting, material moves, and where exactly you line up your ruler matters. Interestingly two of the beginners have had great results, so I guess when we start out we think more about what we are doing. From my point of view it is great to see so many of the students can spot when a square is off now. That too is a skill and for quilters it's just as useful as knowing how to cut well in the first place. The quicker you can spot an error the sooner you can fix it. We have also fouid some fabrics that shrink a lot. Most quilt fabrics I've worked with recently have been pretty good but one lady forgot to starch beforew cutting so did it after. That should have been OK she is a good presser but none of her blocks were square. The 6" squares were consistantly 5 3/4" x 6". So she assumed she had miss cut them all. It can happen. Then we realised it couldn't, well not in this case. She used the shape cut plus ruler to cut her squares. It's a fantastic ruler with slots in that makes cutting a lot quicker and easier, but it only cuts in 1/2" increments unless you reposition your fabric for each cut. You can't accidently be 1/4" out. It turns out that her fabric shrinks 1/4" over 6". That's 4% shrinkage, over something like a quilt back that could really cause a problem. I think I will be starching more of my fabrics just to encourage out the shrinkage. I suppose it's a good reason to buy batiks and multicolour prints too as they will have been processed enough to shrink them as much as they can.

Now I am just waiting for my second class of the day who are onto the machine sen sample tonight. Hopefully last weeks practice will have got them really precise and not having to use the four letter word (hand) will make them much happier. I'm looking forward to it, I wonder if they are?

Fuax Trapunto workshop

2011-11-07T21:45:00.000Z

It seems this photo didn't make it through email so I am putting it up here for my students. There are three pieces to this class which I made up as a wall hanging. It has proved quite tricky to photograph and this is the best I've managed so far. Hopefully it will be good enough to give an idea of what we will be doing.

Somewhat Frustrated

2011-11-07T14:08:00.000Z

I feel I've been neglecting you guys but I can't think of anything to blog. I've mostly been working on my big wholecloth which I am trying desperately to get finished. I know the unveiling at Quiltfest will be the best option, I know that photos won't come close to capturing this quilt but given it's what I am working on what can I share.

You could take a look at motorhomes on ebay :) I've done a lot of that recently but it isn't very exciting, well not when you have a budget and need a petrol one. Our van is still awaiting parts and it's surprising how much I miss it even when I am not travelling. The number of time recently the answer to where is, has been in the van. Still it should be a much happier van when it comes home. It's the lack of heating and the 2 weeks in Wales in February that really have me looking for another one.

I've also been working on a new series of classes for textured blocks. My Thursday classes are currently working on cathedral windows blocks and each term we will do another set of three technique blocks. Some of them will just make samples, some will make cushions and the rest of us are aiming for a quilt. I think my one will take me a while as the hand sewing really doesn't agree with my shoulders at all. I haven't quite decided what these classes will become. They make be patterns or workshops or I suppose another book. I guess I will have to wait and see.

As well as a stack of customer quilts awaiting my attention I am also planning new quilts for Quiltfest. I can't go to Wales with only one Dragon can I? I'd like to have another 3 made by February but even by my estimates that is going to be tight. I will just have to see how far I can get I suppose. At least I know I can fill the space whatever. In fact the bigger problem we are having is how to fit my quilts in :) I will learn to work smaller one day honest, just not today.

I also have new toys I want to sit and play with. There are cutting needles for my sewing machine and two new ranges of fabric just begging for my attention. You can see why the blog is having a hard time can't you? Oh well back to the current pressing problem, finishing Promtheus.

Village quilters - I hadn't forgotten you

2011-11-01T17:05:00.001Z

I have been slow getting this post written and I hope you will forgive me. I made great time getting home thanks to being sent off a little early to miss rush hour. I also got some extra traffic news from a professional driver in the area which kept me out of the worst jam. Having a box of munchies for the trip home didn't hurt either. I wish I had got a picture of the lunch table before we attacked it. It was impressive and this group has several very good cooks. The mince pies were really special and I look forward to trying Ruth's carrot cake on a future visit.

Despite the warnings about the area I was struck by the obvoius effort being made in the community. I'd head about the boarded up estates and imagined the desolate council estates I've seen elsewhere. That's not the case here, the estate I drove past has clearly been a good place to live but no jobs means no money and ultimately no people. It's very sad. The hall I was teaching in was the first community center I've really seen working for the community. People were popping into other rooms for coffee and a chat, the place felt alive, I wish more did. As you can see it's a great venue. Large, light and with heating that is possibly too efficient.

The workshop was my tulips class again (what are the odds of two groups so close together doing the same class?) and the ladies did really well with it. They quickly settled into the rhythm of the technique and were keen to try editing their designs as they went along. Something I like to see in my classes is students helping eacxh other, it usually means at least some of them are confident with the technique. It's quite funny to hear your words repeated word for word and often with pretty much the same intonation but the best thing is when another student can convince someone their work is good and help them out when I've not been able to. That sometimes needs a friend to manage it and I really appreciate when it happens. Quilter seem to be very hard on themselves. They expect to master new techniques instantly. Fortunately they don't have such high standards for their friends and that can make all the difference. I'm hoping that some of the ladies will sent in some pictures of their finished pieces, the quilts were coming along well on the day so who knows, maybe some are finished by now.

Thanks for the great day and I hope I will be back up there sometime soon. Next trip I will have fish and chips too. I can't believe I was so close to the sea and didn't get fish and chips. Hopeless. I will do better.

Stockton on Tees

2011-10-29T16:09:00.001+01:00

Sorry for the delay, I've not had much down time. i made it back home OK last night but I was too tired to blog. This picture is from the workshop in Stockton on Tees where we were mostly making tulips on Dubai time, except when we were discussing knickers or making passion flowers.

The Royal - Bridlington

2011-10-27T08:34:00.001+01:00

Just a couple of pictures from yesterdays class, and to be honest, it's amazing I managed that. Fortunately Fiona remebered and that reminded me to take pictures. We both forgot in the afternoon though. We were making Autumn leaves yesterday in the style of my quilt Golden Storm. Students are always surprised that we start the day by quilting the quilt, but it is easier to do when you're fresh. From there we bind, using an all machine sewn technique. Thanks to an intrepid experimenter we can confirm the binding can be made on soft slipery silk and it looks great. It's a pig to do ;)

There was a really interesting selection of leaf fabrics yesterday. Which led to some more interesting discoveries of what could be fused. I think we even managed to keep all the glue under control. I think most of the students had come for lunch as much if not more than my teaching and I don't blame them. The food was good and there was plenty of it. Just when you thought you couldn't eat another thing desert turned up. Of course I had to have some. I didn't need to eat again yesterday after that. Really I should have paced myself better because come afternoon tea I couldn't sample the cakes and scones. My hosts were kind enough to send me on my way with a goody box.

Some of the quilters arrived early enough to take a stroll on the beach before class. It certainly looked inviting in the morning but as I had work to do I didn't join them. Apparently Bridlington had the best sandcastle sand in the North and second best in the country! Pretty impressive to me having grown up with shingle beaches. I guess I need to try and go back with time to play on the beach.

Today I am in Stockton on Tees, where I will be teaching Tulips. As ever I will try and get pictures but I do get very engrossed in teaching so I often forget.

Bridlington

2011-10-25T18:11:00.001+01:00

Well there are some advantages to bringing the car out for this trip, the journey was so much faster than I expected. I guess an extra 20 miles per hour really does help. It also meant that I got to go and see the sea when I arrived as it was still light. As you can see the sea here is good. The waves are wonderful and the pictures don't really do it justice. I am very pleased with the picture of the harbour arm doing it's job. You can clearly see the size of the waves on the sea side but within the harbour there is hardly a ripple.

On the way to Bridlington the sat nav took me through Beverly. It's not somewhere I had heard of and I'm glad I've now seen it. It is lovely and if you like churches and minsters it is well worth visiting. I also loved the long tree lined road between there and Bridlington.

Tonight I am staying at The Royal. It's rather posh, not at all my usual stop. It's a lovely building very nicely decorated and you can really see a quilter lives here. There are quilts on many walls in the public areas. There are also some stained glass windows just begging to become quilts too. It sounds like tomorrow is going to be great. It's amazing what having extra facilities will let you do. I'll let you know how it goes but this is looking like a great quilting holiday option especially if you like the sea.

Speed quilt 4 - Bath

2011-10-24T12:10:00.000+01:00

Sorry for the delay in getting this post up. I thought I would quilt during the day yesterday then blog when I got tired. Great plan except my internet connection evidently got tired too. So when I came to do it I couldn't connect. After a night off it seems fine this morning :)

I spent Friday afternoon driving to Bath. It is only a 2-3 hour journey but if you hit Bath around rush hour it can become a lot longer. I do love Bath, but I would strongly suggest taking the train, not driving. The up side of leaving so early was the views. I really got to appreciate the A46 on the way in which has the most amazing views. However all the parking places are at points where you can't see anything. Yup I did try most of them to get a picture for you guys. I think the best way to see the view is to be driven up and down the A46 by someone else. Maybe one day I can take Tet with me and video it.

Saturday a select group settled down to make my Speed 4 quilt. One of the ladies had been to a class with me before and knew what to expect. She had also taken full advantage of the shop being open a little early for people to come and cut out. She was in and ready so sew before the official start time, and being a slave driver I set her to work straight away. This seemed to lay down a challenge to some of the other ladies, which wasn't what I had in mind (I don't think that far ahead that early in the day) but it worked out pretty well. I think several of the class hadn't appreciated that we were really going to be making a speed quilt not a speed top but by lunch time they were all well on the way to having a quilt.

For various reason a few of the ladies had to leave early but as you can see a lot was achieved. These are the hardy ones who stayed to the bitter end. I suspect the pastel flowery one will be finished by now as she only had 2 more pieces to sew on and they were prepared ready to go. I actually thought she might have completely finished it in the class, it was a very close thing.

As ever, no two quilts were the same, the fabric choices make a huge difference. Also the quilts are reversible although this group all seem to have gone of subtle variations between the front and the back.

Tomorrow I will be driving north again, lots of north all the way to Bridlington. It sounds like it's going to be a lot of fun and even the local paper has picked up on it. We will be making autumn leaves there and I will try really hard to remember to take pictures during the class. Maybe if any of my students are reading this they can remind me.

Waverley - Engine

2011-10-18T13:32:00.001+01:00

I've finally persuaded blogger to put up one of my videos. This one is of the Waverley's engine. Sorry it has taken so long to do. Hopefully now I've got it to work once I will be able to do it again.

Heroes at Highclere

2011-10-17T23:49:00.000+01:00

After dinner on Saturday, Tet asked if I had plans for Sunday, yes the usual, quilting. Would I like to go out....Hmm.....He had just found out the Vulcan was due to fly over Highclere castle on Sunday. Well I've been trying to catch the Vulcan flying since she got back in the air so it was something of a no brainer. We were going.

Highclere Castle is near Newbury, surprisingly close to where I broke down on Thursday, maybe the van was just trying to get to the front of the queue. Not that there was a queue to get in. It was a very busy event but the marshals got people in and parked very smoothly. Sadly when we arrived there were no tickets left to actually go around the castle, but there was plenty going on to keep us busy.

The event was instigated by Lady Carnarvon, who's home it is. In 1915, the 5th Countess Carnarvon converted the castle into 'Highclere Home Hospital' so Heroes at Highclere aimed to raise money for military medical causes. It looked like it was pretty successful given the number of visitors.

While we had gone to see the famous vehicles there were apparently a lot of famous people there. Downton Abbey was filmed at the castle and the cast and crew were there to help with the fund raising. I have to admit I only found that out from the internet after we got home. I kept seeing things about Downton Abbey but I had no idea why the building might have two names. Oh well I guess I wasn't the target audience for that part of the day.

I did like the helicopters. We didn't queue to go in them (just on the ground, no flights) but we did get to wander around them and peer in. By then end of the day only the Chinook still had a queue, so I did get to hear what the crew were saying about their aircraft. We also left late enough that we saw the Apache leaving. I don't think it's the most attractive beast on the ground, but it does a good line in purposeful once it is airborne.

As you can see in the background of the lynx there was a fairground there. In fact there was everything you would expect from a summer fete. With the weather playing along it really did feel like an old fashioned summer. It makes sense too, as a lot of the silly attractions you find at fetes are very good at raising money. The fairground rides were all donating their profits to Horses Help Heroes, which surprised me as I would have expected those at least to be running for profit.

Around the grounds there were a lot of historic displays. Tents and equipment from many different eras of warfare. Being a sad textile geek I did have to spend a lot of time looking at the clothes and tents, but then what else would you expect?

For me the stars of the show were the air displays. The Spitfire arrived later than the commentator expected. He had been listening to the radio so had a good idea where it was, until it was within about 5 minutes of the show ground, then it went quiet. They paused and asked people to listen for the engines. Nothing. A bit more chatting then they offered a free meal to the first person to spot her. A young lady got the prize a couple of minutes later. It was well worth the wait. The Spitfire stayed and played a lot longer than was planned. It was a lovely day, why wouldn't hang about as long as you could when you have a toy like that to play with?

I had to wait until 3.15 for the Vulcan to come over. I was getting a shade excited by then. Again she was a bit later than expected and the commentator again said to listen for her. The club members felt you would see the clouds of smoke first. Actually they were both wrong, she came in very quietly and from the direction where she was hidden by trees for the longest. Suddenly there she was. You wouldn't think something that loud (and relatively large) could sneak up on you but she can. In fact she was very quiet through most of her display, only getting loud in the turns furthest away from the castle. I did wonder if health and safety had anything to do with it, but then I am quite cynical.

After a couple of passes she headed off, returning about 30 minutes later. Again confusing the commentators who were sure she would approach from a different direction this time. She didn't. It was the same sneak approach as the first time. Well why not it worked so well. On her second visit she stayed longer and gave people plenty of time to get photos.

As ever the Vulcan is in need of funds to keep flying. If you would like to help you can donate on her website.

The show was officially closed by the Blades display team. We saw them at Santa Pod earlier this year and I really enjoyed them. Though they aren't ideal for Santa Pod as they actually take the rules about flying over crowds seriously. Highclere Castle was a much better venue for them and the acres of lawn to lie on and watch didn't hurt either.

It was a fairly early end to a day out so I even made it home in time to get some quilting done. Not bad for the spur of the moment really.

Thanks all round

2011-10-17T11:06:00.000+01:00

I've had two lovely letters recently from groups I've given talks to. Thank you so both Region 7 and Region 15W. Despite my journey back being rather longer than I had anticipated I would love to come back to Cumbria, so any suggestions for sharing the booking around several groups in that general area would be much appreciated.

I would also like to thank the RAC. The guys they sent out did a great job (the phone staff were rather more of a challenge). The first chap correctly diagnosed the problem, the van had blown its main rear oil seal. It was more than I had done. Though I had looked at how fast I had lost oil, where I had oil and concluded it was a recovery situation :) The van engine bay is soaked in oil. Really, everywhere. However the technician managed to clean it up enough at the side of the road to spot a leak. The driver of the transporter was really good too. I am a bad passenger. OK, lets be honest more like a VERY VERY BAD passenger. He was a careful securing the van and drove well enough I didn't even think about the van the whole way home. It was safe I was safe and all was good. Those who know me well will understand how rare that is, and why I am impressed.

Now I will get some more quilting done before looking through yesterdays photos for you.

Look what I found

2011-10-16T16:09:00.000+01:00

What's wrong with this picture?

2011-10-15T09:08:00.001+01:00

This was what I was doing Thursday. I was supposed to be at Emerson Green Quilters, instead I was getting a piggy back home. At least the driver stopped at the first services we came to so I could use the facilities and get a picture of the van on the back of an RAC lorry. It took about 6 hours to get me recovered. I had wondered if it could be done quickly enough to get me into another vehicle and still make the talk but it turned out I was right to cancel early as accidents held up the recovery vehicle. It looks like the van has lost one or more oil seals so it is in need of some TLC.

Today I am at Threads and Patches in Bletchley. A much less eventful journey this morning so I am early. Still gave me time to blog, right?

Day off?

2011-10-10T16:42:00.000+01:00

I guess that technically, I've had a day off today. I say technically as I have been lying in bed most of the day at motorway services. As it goes, I would rather have been at home working, but I can't get there. The wind is throwing the van around too much to get through the roadworks. It's rocking enough when parked that typing is tricky and sewing or rug making right out. So I will read and play games until it's safe to go home and have dinner. I just need to convince myself this is exactly the holiday I was looking for. Then again, at least I'm not out there playing with the emergency vehicles which have been very busy today.

Penrith workshop

2011-10-10T09:56:00.000+01:00

This is where I was teaching yesterday. We were in thw workshop above the shop Just Sew. It's a big sewing shop (so big I couldn't get it all in) and a real treat for me as they sell dress fabrics and supplies as well as patchwork fabrics. I was restrained yesterday, but I am certain I will need to go back and shop at some point.

I did forget to take pictures of the class which is a great shame. They ladies did really well with the quilting despite not feeling they were up to the task when thwy arrived. Hopefully they will send me some pictures when they finish their quilts. I suppose I should try to finish driving home. I got just south of Birmingham last night, an decided to wait for rush hour to clear before I moved on.

Just a quick one

2011-10-09T21:43:00.000+01:00

I think the M6 was named for the average speed on it. I've lost more than 3 hours on my projected arrival time and I am not half way yet. Not looking like I will make it home tonight.

What a place to wake up.

2011-10-08T18:41:00.000+01:00

As it was dark when I arrived at the services so I could only guess how good the views were. This morning I got to see some of it, it was quite misty still but clear enough to see the fantastic scenary. The first pictures aren't a mistake they were taken a couple of spaces down from my van. She was just getting some fresh air. Tebay really isn't your normal services. Even the breakfast was good. I don't often have breakfast but it was just too tempting. I really liked being able to choose the n items to make my own breakfast, and I can't see why other outlets couldn't do the same. I'll be stopping in on my way home too.

Today was fun, although by the end yesterdays drive was catching up with me. I don't think I have ever had so many people offer to get me a drink, and don't mention knicker elastic. This is a small region with a very low population density so it's hard for quilters to meet up. They certainly made the effort today and we had more peopl than expected. I got so engrossed with talking to the members I completely forgot tohave lunch and I missed the demonstration I was going to look at. I did manage to buy som fabric though. I was also given a lavendar bag, as I love lavendar that works for me.

I got a great helper for the talk and several ladies stayed behind to help fold pack and carry. That was really appreciated and let me save some energy for the drive back tomorrow evening.

During the day tomorrow I am teaching Autumn Leaves. I'll try and remember to take photographs. Right now it's wet and windy and time to charge the phone.

Ferreting Around -Tebay

2011-10-07T22:39:00.000+01:00

This quilt will probably look somewhat familiar even though you've probably never seen it. It is a quilt made by one of my students from my book, Ferreting Around. My student was surprised I wanted a picture of it, as over the course of making it she has learned and improved so now sees what she could do better. I see a quilt that has done it's job of teaching and that will be much loved by the recipient. This is also another colourway and design variation which is great. It is also another problem my student has with the quilt, they aren't her colours, they are what her aunt wanted. It's very hard to make a quilt in colours you don't like and it's rare to really love what you make. It doesn't mean the quilt isn't good though. If you've made a quilt from this book please do send me a photo. I love seeing what people have done with the design.

In the comments on my last post it was suggested I should visit Tebay services. That was actually my goal for today as it should put me about an hour from tomorrows venue and save me from an early morning. I made it there. Well I think I did. Itis amazing, too good to be true to be honest, so maybe I am dreaming. The farm shop is something else, so good I will be getting up early enough to have another look around. I was too overwhelmed to take it all in tonight. The food smelled fantastic too. In fact better than many restaurants I've been to and the loos are fab. I will be stopping here on the way home.

Motorways and rainbows

2011-10-07T17:16:00.000+01:00

Today I am mostly driving with a few visits to motorway service stations. It's where all the most fashionable quilters spend most of their time. Ok maybe just the busiest quilt tutors and traders, but it's a large part of my job. I would have to say I am not a fan of the M6. The congestion is horrible. Possibly even as bad as the M25 which is saying something. The rainbows have been great. It's been sunshine and rain all the way so far. Of course I can't photograph most of them as I am driving, but this one was at Stafford services. The sculptures are here too. I don't know if you can see but the stones all have faces on. These services aren't bad, the loos are actually very good but the coffee making skills at Costa here leave a lot to be desired so I will move on in search of coffee. Well that and I've still got a long way to go. I left hone 11.30 ish and I am just over halfway to tomorrows booking. With Manchester and rush hour ahead I think dinner will be fairly late tonight.

Waverley up the Thames

2011-10-03T01:31:00.000+01:00

As promised here are some of the photos from the cruise down the Thames on the Waverley. From Southend we headed up the Thames. I was surprised by how many different areas of water there are on the way. I'm sorry I didn't take notes so I can't tell you all the names, but if you can be bothered it worth looking them up as they often tell you a lot about the history of that area.

As you approach the Thames it becomes obvious how a large trading area grew. It is a very clear broad inlet and you can easily imagine sailors seeing it as a suitable entry point to the country. All the way along the Thames there are docks. Some old, some new, some in use and some abandoned. It was great to see one being built, which will be a large container port. It is on reclaimed land built from dredging the Thames itself to make a channel deep enough of the container ships to get to it. I like industrial areas and we have a lot of pictures of the various docks and their loading equipment.

There are a few landmarks along the river I especially wanted to see and get pictures of. The first of them was the QE2 bridge, also known as the Dartford crossing. The road going over it is the M25 and I much prefer this angle for seeing the traffic jams. It is a very modern bridge, but I think it's rather lovely.

The river winds back and forth a lot and it makes it quite difficult to work out where the buildings are in relation to each other. However, Heathrow airport is the other side of London, so this plane is landing at City Airport which is on the site of the old King George V dock. I found it quite amusing that people would point out things and name them wrongly usually a second before the announcement told you what it was you could see. The comments about the plane landing were perhaps the most obviously incorrect and most popular.

The next landmark I was really looking forward to was the Thames Barrier. When I was studying civil engineering this was the latest and greatest project. I read so many articles about various aspects of its construction I couldn't fail to become fascinated by it. A few years ago we managed to persuade one of the tour boats to take me to see it on my birthday but we weren't allowed to go very close and certainly not to go through it. This time we could and for me that was very exciting. Sad, absolutely :)

It was a bit of a shock to see it looking well used and frankly quite old now. I guess it is because I remember it being built and how significant it was. I doubt anyone really thinks about it now, even the Londoners it protects from flooding on a fairly regular basis. In the photograph you can see one of the sections raised to the defence position.

I hadn't seen these buildings before, they are next to the Dome which isn't somewhere I visit, but these buildings are cool. They look like patchwork and each has a different pattern. I think I feel a quilt coming on at some point. That may mean I need to go back and take more pictures, maybe I need to do this cruise again next year.

I suppose I should include a picture of the Dome. It never really grabbed me as a building. I find it rather dull. I can't even say it's ugly, I think it's too dull for that. It just is, and I suspect it's going to stay so I guess I will just keep ignoring it.

The sculpture in front of the Dome I do like. I think it's clever. From listening to the other passengers on the Waverley I'm in the minority. I think part of the problem is you do need to be at the right angle to really appreciate it. A lot of the time it looks like a cloud of metal, but then you are suddenly in the right place and you can see the man standing in the cloud. The sculpture is called Quantum Cloud and is the work of Antony Gormley.

This group of buildings has changed a lot in the time I have been living in London. They are at Canary Wharf in the West India docks. When I first moved to London only one of the four tall buildings existed. One Canada Square is the tallest of the group (the pointy one) and was the first. For several years the working light on it's roof was my beacon to get me home.
Canary Wharf itself takes its name from the sea trade with the Canary Islands, whose name comes from the dogs (Latin canis) which the Spaniards found there, producing the linguistic coincidence of trade between the Dog Islands and the Isle of Dogs.

As well as the new towers there are a lot of older building still on the Thames. Very few are still being used for their original purpose, but personally I would rather see the buildings survive than not. Conversions that keep the look of the building while keep them in use and thus in good repair are fine by me. I wasn't so convinced by the building that has been all but removed with just it's facade left. Really it was just a set of arches now everything else has been removed.

Another highlight of the trip was coming through Tower Bridge. I like the bridge anyway but this was a special trip because it had to be opened for us. That means stopping the traffic for several minutes each time. Sorry folks, the chaos at rush hour on Monday was partly our fault, and it was great.

The large tower to the left of the bridge is the new Shard of Glass. It left me somewhat underwhelmed. It does look better in this picture than it did in real life but as with the Dome I found it rather bland. Maybe it will be better when it's finished but I am sceptical. I think it is going to rely on being tall rather than any other architectural feature. Maybe big is all you need now, but when you are surrounded by really great buildings I'm not sure.

As the Waverley is hard to manoeuvre at low speeds we were towed through the open bridge and turned just the other side of it. We got to spend 30 minutes the other side of Tower Bridge before it would open again to let us out. It was funny to become a tourist attraction while being a tourist. A lot of people passing by asked for the Waverley to sound her horn and mostly she obliged. It was a lot of fun.

While we sat waiting for the bridge we had the chance to admire our surroundings. Tower Bridge is right next to the Tower of London. The main tower is called The White Tower and was built by William the Conqueror in 1078. It was used as a prison for many years which is probably what is is best known for.

To the other side of the Thames is a more recent piece of military hardware. HMS Belfast. She is now a museum ship, but saw active duty in WWII. Initially she was part of Britain's naval blockade against Germany, but after being damaged by a mine and undergoing extensive repair and improvement went on the escort convoys through the Arctic Circle to Russia. She retired in the 1960's and had many rocky years while her scrapping was debated. A trust was formed to save her and the government transferred her to them. Since 1971 she has been moored in the Pool of London and open to the public.

Region 7

2011-10-01T18:32:00.000+01:00

Today was one of those days that started way too soon. My talk today was near Northampton, which is a fair distance up the M1 and for the van quite a long time. I had managed to load the van yesterday despite the heat so at least we just had to get in and go.

The M1 wasn't too bad until the last junction before the one we needed and even the it just a short queue for people to look at an accident so we made good time. Just as well when we overshot the turning and picked a very narrow residential street to turn the van in. It's why I like to leave plenty of time. The hall was already quite busy but not too much, so unloading was fairly quick and easy. Having Tet with me does make things a lot easier.

I was the afternoon speaker so I got to listen to the morning one, which is always interesting. I've not heard Philippa Naylor speak before and I was quite impresssed. I don't like talks with slides, but she dealt with them well. She uses them to illustrate her words rather than "..and this slide shows..." repeated over and over. She had also brought some real live quilts for people to get a good look at, touching allowed.

After a very good lunch I got set up and then we had show and tell. The quilt I am helping to hold up is one I quilted. Hilda made it while she was stuck at home. She had to use only what she had at home as she couldn't get out. It came out well though and despite my concern at her choice of green thread for quilting the white fabrics I think that worked too.

The talk seemed to go well, not too many fell asleep, which on a warm afternoon after lunch is always a risk. I bought one piece of fabric from Crafty Quilter which was rather restrained for me, but I did help others to shop so I still feel I supported the traders. Now we are almost home so it must be time to send this post on it's way. I will post more on the Waverley I haven't forgotten, I've just been busy.

Racing and quilting

2011-09-28T23:39:00.001+01:00

I've had requests for me to blog the results of our weekend racing, so I will return to the Waverley tomorrow. This weekend was the last race of the season and despite racing my road car we have actually done quite well. So much so we had a chance at the championship this year. In the first round of qualifying Tet made it to number one qualifier. After the second round we had slipped to number two, which was still pretty good. Unfortunately in the third and final round we slipped further to fourth place. That did make things much harder, but there was still a chance Tet could win the championship. After the first round of eliminations the three teams ahead of Tet in the championship were all out. That was hopeful, but it meant we had to race one of our friends. Poop, we would rather have met him later in the day, and the winner of that race would be straight through to the finals. The race was very close with both drivers getting off the line well, but at the finish line Kevin was just ahead. It did come down to inches and 2.9 milliseconds. You don't get much closer than that. It would have been good to have got further but at least it meant we had a friend in the final. However we didn't manage to win the championship so we will still have to pay entry fees next year. I guess we have to try harder.

On the other hand we did have one success at the track. Tet finished and delivered another quilt. The Welsh flag in the picture is a quilt. It is standard quilting cotton fabric on the front and a velvety fleece on the back. The soon to be parents are Sean and Suzie Armstrong who are Taffy Bear racing. That is their race car trying to hide behind them, I insisted the whole race family needed to be in the photo :) and I'm afraid I chose the picture where the car looked it's best. I think they will understand, and the bump is getting in on the photo too. There was some concern that that little one would try and put in an appearance at the racing this weekend but it managed to hold on so it hasn't seen it's quilt yet. The quilt is waiting in her hospital bag so the little one will be able to go home in the welsh flag.

Paddle Steamer Waverley

2011-09-28T00:27:00.000+01:00

For my birthday last year Tet gave me a voucher for a trip on the Waverley, and since then we have been trying to find a trip fairly local to us and on a day we were both free. That was tricky and last year I couldn't manage it. Monday was the only date that worked this year so we went for it, despite it being directly after a race weekend.

Leaving Margate

The early start wasn't exactly fun but given it was this trip or nothing we were determined to be there on time. Things went well until we got to Victoria where we discovered our train had been cancelled. Not ideal, but not a problem. We had planned for that and the next train would still get us to the boat in plenty of time. Well had it been running on time it would. It arrived late to Victoria, but made up some time immediately by loading quickly and heading off again. Unfortunately it lost that time and some more on it's way back to Margate. The Waverley was due to leave Margate at 10.30, and our train finally arrived at Margate station at 10.29. We had called ahead and asked the crew to wait for us and we had booked a taxi. The taxi was waiting for us and did his best to get us to the 'pier' on time. He would have managed it too, if someone hadn't stopped in front of us blocking him. Our only remaining option was to run for it. As we were running towards the Waverley they took in the gangways, but at the last second they did see us running towards them waving and put one back out for us. You know, waving and running at the same time is quite hard work.

Just as well there are seats all around the deck so we could stop and catch our breath. It did mean we mostly missed pulling away from the 'pier' but hey we made it, just! I'll have much more understanding when I read "Around the World in 80 Days" next.

Once we had our breath back the first stop had to be the engine. I had forgotten how good it smells (well to me at least) but the sound and the heat had stayed with me from my previous visits. There is a very special sort of heat around engines and I love it. It is also just mesmerising to watch moving. I will try and upload some video of it soon. I hadn't really thought about it before, but I guess it's quite rare to be able to get this close to a moving engine. I'm glad it's still allowed.

When you are next to the engine you can look out of the portholes and see the paddles moving. It makes it clear why she isn't the most manoeuvrable vessel in the world. When her paddles are going they are both moving together. Great for propulsion but it would help her turn if they could be slowed independently. They do give her great acceleration though and when she leaves a dock she does it very very quickly.

The next stop on our exploration of the boat was the lower bar. When they say lower they mean it. this is the view from the portholes in the bar. They are above my head height when sitting down and as you can see they are pretty much at sea level. I would guess that later in the journey when we had taken on many more passengers they were even lower. I really enjoyed watching them as it gave a great feeling of movement.

From Margate we headed out around the Kent coast towards Herne Bay. This took us past a wind farm and Reculver. When we were at university we often visitied Reculver, and had often read about how important it had been. You really appreciate how imposing it is when you see it from the sea. It was still clearly visible when were ready to turn into Whitstable. The towers of St Mary's church, Reculver are the blocky towers in the middle of this picture. The lower structure to the left of them are the ruined back wall of the building.

The next stop on our trip was Whitstable. This is somewhere we were both very familiar with from university and we had lived in the area for a few years after graduation. However we had never approached it from the sea. I hadn't expected the harbour to look so enclosed, it doesn't from the land side. It also seemed a lot smaller than it had. I have seen several ships being loaded with gravel, and they looked quite large. The Waverley on the other hand looks quite small and seemed to take up a lot of room in the harbour. Given how small the Waverley looks the queue on the dock was quite a surprise. She can actually carry 860 passengers and on Monday was just 6 short of a full load. It does make it quite hard to move around so I was very pleased we had taken the time to look at the engines while there were less people on board. As soon as we left Whistable we headed down to the dining room, thinking that the new passengers would look around as we had done. Sadly we weren't that lucky and had quite a queue for lunch (which is actually a very good thing for the Waverley she is run as a charity and all the profits keep her sailing). The food was good too, although it was the strangest haddock I've had it was tasty.

After Whitstable we headed on to Southend, which was one of the places I blogged from yesterday. All the way we were given information about where we were and what we were seeing over the PA. It was great to hear about the other vessels we passed. Some of them had almost as much history as the Waverley. I really enjoyed learning more about the history of the coast too. I think that had better be all for tonight, given I am teaching tomorrow. I'll try and finish off tomorrow.

Web site issues - Updated

2011-09-27T10:26:00.001+01:00

If you are trying to get onto my main website ferfab.co.uk and having problems it isn't you. My server seems to have gone to sleep. We are working on it and I should be back online shortly. If you need to contact me a comment here will get through to me.

It turns out that server had a faulty power supply so for the moment is dead. However, we have other servers so the web site is now back up and running. Sorry for that folks. On the other hand I have a lot less downtime now we have our own machines so I really can't complain. Anyway, normal service has been resumed.

These should make it easy

2011-09-26T16:28:00.000+01:00

A few more clues

2011-09-26T13:31:00.000+01:00

Any guesses?

2011-09-26T11:20:00.000+01:00

So where am I today?

Van project progress

2011-09-25T11:04:00.000+01:00

I've got the first batch of the other colour of rings done for the double wedding ring quilt I am making. I am hoping to get a few blocks made so I can see how the colours are working.

The racing is going OK. We would have liked to stay number 1 qualifier, but number 4 isn't too bad. Due to some mishaps this morning our class hasn't raced yet today hence the sewing. I guess we will be called if I get set up for the next piece i wnt to make.

Where do ideas come from?

2011-09-22T23:53:00.000+01:00

This is another question I get asked a lot. I generally answer, everywhere. I find inspiration lurking in all sorts of places. Buildings and cars are particularly likely to catch my eye, but really anything can trigger a quilt design. My students are especially likely to send me off on a design. I guess thinking about quilting makes me more likely to pick up a stray comment (or in some cases just a word) and turn it into a quilt design. It started with one student needing a quick, simple and striking quilt (with the option of quilt as you go). On her lap was one of my other quilt designs. After kicking the ideas about for a few minutes we have a design that will do the job, be quite fun to make and I suspect will one day appear as a pattern.

Then the students moved on to what they would like to be taught. This is how my book 'Ferreting Around' happened. They gave me a list of requirements and I built a quilt from it. This time though they want to learn techniques and make maybe cushions or bags with the samples. OK, I can do that but it leaves me cold. So I start kicking the ideas about. They came up with several good techniques, and then I spotted a theme in them. It wasn't quite there and it wasn't fully formed, but there was a pattern to the subjects (mostly) and I could work from there. By the time I got home I had most of a quilt planned. It will use all the samples to make a lap (ish) quilt. Cool. It will meet their needs and not make me feel like I've been producing samples. Unfortunately this is the sort of design where I need to get some diagrams onto paper to be able to see the sizes, but I'm really busy. I am planning on being at the race track this weekend but both vehicles are playing up. Also having lost a day this week to being ill I've got a lot of catch up work to do. Well what do you know, my internet access was down when I got home, so while I waited for dinner I was forced to make some design notes. I guess the world felt the new quilt idea was more important than all the other stuff waiting for me.

Prometheus back on the frame

2011-09-20T00:38:00.000+01:00

I've got a little break between customers so I've gone back to my monster wholecloth. Those of you with 2012 calendars will know it has a name. Prometheus. I've finally decided how to tackle an area I had left which in turn had made the quilt much harder to tension on the frame so I am going to do that for a while. The area that is now being filled has taken me about an hour, which gives you an idea how much time this beast has eaten. On the bright side I am apparently much more relaxed and easy to get along with when I am working on it.

Interesting question - quilters from Stone

2011-09-17T22:58:00.000+01:00

I did a talk recently for a group in Stone where I was asked several quite interesting questions but one that really got me thinking. I was asked how designed my quilts are before I start making them. The answer was it depends. I might start with no very fixed idea, or I might know where every stitch goes or anything in between. That is a true answer but it really only gives you a flavour of what I mean.

I posted a lot about the process of my latest art quilt 'Quiet Moment', and I mentioned printing three versions of the reference image before I got one the right size. Before that there had already been quite a lot of design work, some formal some less so. First there had been talking to the model, then she selected some images she was happy with. I look at those images and see which ones 'talk' to me. I don't see any point in working with images that leave me cold. At best I won't do them justice, at worst they won't touch anyone else either. Once I have some images I like the look of I start playing with them on the computer. I'm looking for shapes that offend me, and details that can be misread, be it through shape, or shade. Only after that can I think about producing the reference image. My first thought it that as they follow an image pretty closely these are probably my most designed quilts, but maybe they are just the most formally designed, with paper and everything people think of when you say design. However they evolve a lot as I work on them. If you go back and compare the images of 'Quiet Moment' you will notice many little edits as I went along. I also don't think that much about the quilting until I get to that stage so really these quilts are somewhere in the middle of my planning scale.

'Leather feathers' is one of my least planned quilt. My whole idea when I started it was to sew on leather. Yup really, that was it. Once the hide was loaded onto the frame I thought about the thread. Black to hide errors. Only then did I wonder what I was going to quilt. A bit of hand waving and it got feathers. The big one across the middle came first then the others just sort of filled it in. Maybe this isn't the way you are supposed to make quilts, but if it works it ain't daft.

The next leather quilt and indeed most of my other whole cloth quilts did have a little more planning. Usually I design the straight lines which make up the pattern and I only worry about the colors and stitch patterns when I actually get to the machine.

'Phoenix Rising' I would say is my most carefully planned and designed quilt to date and yet there is very little on paper to show for it. This is where I seem to really diverge from most quilters (or at least the ones who talk about the process they use). I mostly plan in my head. Partly because I can't get down on paper what I can see in my head, and partly because I don't see the need to. I started off just knowing I wanted a quilt with a phoenix on it. That's tricky, you don't see many of them flying about and I am not good at drawing. On my drive out to Hemel Hempstead I see a lot of magpies though and I quickly realised they were the right base shape for my phoenix. Having solved that problem I could think more about the other details of the quilt. I spent a lot of time considering the pose, I'd have liked it to be more diagonal on the quilt but I couldn't get the aspect ratio right so it straightened up a bit, in my head over the space of certainly weeks if not months. I found fabric that read like flames and ordered it. I lay in bed at nights planning how to make and quilt the feathers of the wings. How to mark the background to get the applique in the right place, what size the quilt would be. The hardest task was the background. I could see a cityscape and I even planned that with it's applique and quilting but it wasn't right, and I knew it. It took at least eight months of play around before I settled on plain background with just the ashes quilted in. By the time I came to make the quilt I knew exactly what I was going to do. It was just like having a pattern to follow and it is exactly as it was designed, right down to all the quilting and the binding, but what design work do I have to show for it? A few photographs of magpies, and couple of printed reference images. That's it.

Some quilts do get a bit more work on paper. Usually so I can check the maths out. I think my most common sketch is a series of concentric squares or rectangles with numbers on. Down the side you will often find a list of numbers. The image is the first one I could find on my desk. It's on the back of a letter, that's pretty normal for me too. I write on whatever comes to hand when the idea strikes me. This is pretty typical of my sketch books, pages and pages full of numbers. I suppose they really look far more like maths books than sketch books but it's how I work. Greek Fossils started life like this. just a few concentric rectangles and some numbers. In fact so did Prometheus, my new monster wholecloth, although that did gain some diagonal lines in the middle.

So that's how I design my quilts, I hope it might inspire others who can't/don't/won't draw to have a go at design. You really don't need lots of art tools to design quilts (though they can be fun sometimes too). My students have become very adept at reading my design sketches, and I've noticed some of them starting to use a similar techniques for working things out. Most of the time quilts don't need a lot of details to get you the information you need. I might go from this sketch to sketches of the blocks in the quilt which would then have their cutting requirements with them. For very simple things I don't bother, I just need to know what sizes I should have at important points. Sorry if this disappoints the folks with the beautiful sketchbooks, but they don't work for me, this is how I think. I kinda wish I did produce the fancy prep work, but at least I can make the quilts.

New term

2011-09-15T00:38:00.000+01:00

Just a quick post to prove I survived the day. There are some mysteries of the world I will never understand and seem doomed to forget before they hit me again. Why is it that traffic is always worst the first classes in September. I could almost understand it if the shop term started the same week as schools but it doesn't. Even then it's a bit of a stretch. Surely there are the same number of children going to school and about the same number of cars taking them, therefore the same amount of traffic. So why is it every year the last two weeks in September always have worse traffic, and why do I forget until it happens again. It's just weird. At least I left plenty of time today and I do know it will settle down fairly soon.

It was good to catch up with the returning students and see what they had achieved over the holiday. Looks like one of my regulars is hooked on hand applique so I guess now is a good time to start designing some. I've been putting it off as I just can't do that much hand work, but she can and it looks like she is going to get really good at it.

It was also the first chance to meet new students and find them projects to work on. I'm looking forward seeing my book quilt made up in latte colours. It's going to be very subtle but I think it will also be quite stunning. That's the upside of a new term, lots of new possibilities. Having finished my lesson prep for tomorrow (a new pattern for some of my evening students to play with) I think I had better get to bed. I need to be recovered from today before I get tomorrows set of questions in. I wonder what other new projects will appear then.

Calendars

2011-09-13T10:24:00.000+01:00

I've just heard from the printer that I should have the calendars by Thursday morning. I will try and get them up on the web site as soon as possible, in fact by the time you read this they will probably be there in my web shop. This year they are desk calendars and will be selling for 6 pounds each. As usual it's a limited run and when they are gone they're gone. I hope you will all enjoy them, they are have couple of new quilts in them. The cover is a close up from my new wholecloth, Prometheus. They also have several quilts that you may not have seen before.

Brrrrm - part 2

2011-09-11T23:42:00.000+01:00

Some time ago, Tet decided he wanted to go for a driving day for his birthday but it turned out to be harder than we expected to arrange. We had to buy a voucher from one company, wait for it to arrive and then book with another company, who had no useful dates. Over a year later the only date we could get clashed with a race weekend but we decided we had to go for it anyway.

Of course the venue isn't that close to Santa Pod and we were having a very early start so to make things easier we drove down to the nearest services on Friday night and stayed there.

The experience is run on an airbase, mostly on a run way with the circuit laid out in cones. For me that wasn't great, I found spotting the yellow cones in the sea of orange tricky but after a few laps I knew where the corners were and it was less of an issue.

We were booked to drive three cars, an Aston Martin, a Ferrari and a Lamborghini. I was put in the Aston first, which was a bit of a shame as really that was the one I was most looking forward to but I had long enough in the car to get to know the circuit. It may have been the heaviest most armchair like car there but I loved it. It does however have terrible visibility. Nice and solid, yes, but huge windscreen pillars.

From there I went on to the Ferrari. I don't think it really worked for the track they had set up. It is very tame at low revs and there just wasn't enough room to really get it up to speed. It is very solid in corners, again in this environment perhaps to much so. I can see why the instructor says it is the most rewarding car to really get to grips with but it takes more than a few laps on a short circuit, so really it did nothing for me. Perhaps if the cars hadn't all got extra silencers it might have at least sounded good.

By this point we had decided it was enough fun to be worth booking a few more laps. Tet went for a Porche and a Mitsubishi and I added the Lotus and Subaru.

The Lamborghini I really wanted to like, and for the most part I did. Both of us were shocked by how slow and jerky it's gear changes were. It has flappy paddles and man do they look cheap and tacky, but there is a very long delay between you asking for the change and actually getting it. I really hope this is just a feature of how the centre have their car set up. Like the Aston visibility is poor, but not to the point of being a problem, more something to be aware of (the Capri can hide an articulated lorry so I can't really complain). It's real issue is that you are going faster than you think. The instructor did stress that if he said brake just do it the speed is deceptive. OK, first significant corner I brake, then more then he asks for a lot more brake. It felt like I could have got out and walked, so I asked if the car just didn't handle well in corners. No, he insisted I was gong faster than I thought. Hmmm, OK, but it didn't feel very quick. I checked the speed the next time we cam around, at the point I would have said we were doing 30 ish, it was 70 ish. Ouch. The car is lovely in corners, but man you need to watch the speedo. It won't even notice you losing your licence. I'd love to try another one just to see if the horrible gear change is just a feature of this specific car.

My next drive was the Lotus. Other than having the monopoly on door sills and the most painful seat, I loved it. It was just so much fun to drive, quite indecent given how much cheaper than the others it is. Were money no object I would love an Aston but bang per buck the Lotus really beats them all. I am quite certain the seat could be changed to one that didn't bash my hips about like this one did.

The Subaru was a car I wouldn't have gone out to drive but as it was there I wanted to see what the fuss was all about. I'm none the wiser. I spent most of the drive home trying to come up with a positive about this one, and my best offer is you can probably carry more in it than any of the others, but if load capacity was the thing I was after I'd be looking at a Transit van. Apparently most people like the easier clutch, brakes and gearbox. I hadn't noticed the others were hard. There was a large notice in this car warning against rushed gear changes and it wasn't kidding. I found I had to be actively slow changing gear. Yes it's gates were easier to find than the Ferrari but the slow motion changes were just frustrating. I'm also very used to rear wheel drive cars and they drive very differently to a four wheel drive vehicle. To me it seemed to need a lot more babying than I would have expected to get it round corners. Maybe it should have been at the drag strip.

It was a very fun way to spend a day. I really enjoyed getting to play with all the different cars. I will be keeping an eye open for events where I can spend longer with some of them. They say this is designed as a taster day, and that's a really good description. The problem is, once you've had a taste you want more.

Brrrrmmmmday

2011-09-11T14:00:00.000+01:00

This post is a little delayed due to lack of power, but Saturday was all about cars. We spent the morning at a driving experience and then went back to the drag strip. We made it back just in time to see a pro session which was great. The rain help off just long enough to run the promods. I'm sorry the photo isn't great but as ever I was working with my phone for blogging. I am so thrilled tohave seen Red Victor 3 making runs this weekend. Not only that Andy Frost has now completed his licencing. This is a really special promod as it's street legal. Number plates, MOT, tax disk, the whole thing. He not only has lights indicators, horn and windscreen wipers but also electric windows in a race car. When it's run in (yes he is running it in by racing gently) it will be a 6 second car. That means from a standing start it will cover a quarter of a mile in 6 seconds, that's very quick. For comparison my car is running 17 seconds. Right now top fuel eliminations are about to run so I'll leave this here.

Weekend reading material

2011-09-09T21:08:00.000+01:00

Maybe eye candy would be a better description given the books are all mostly illustrations, but they serve the same function. They are all books I've been looking at for a while and they all arrived this week. The Welsh quilts book is research for a wholecloth idea i have which will also become a class, but the other two are pure fun. I've seen an lot of Dusty's work and I wanted a better look at some of his patterns. They are very good books, my only complaint is that he says a lot of the same things I do thus making my quilting book harder to write. I'll let him off, not only did he get it to print first I think most of it will bear repeating. I was especially pleased to find out that he quilts one handed too. I completely agree with him that it's a lot easier, and that the key to quilting is body memory. Some of the patterns will be fun to play with too. Guess I should go, desert has arrived.

Cosby quilters

2011-09-08T20:18:00.000+01:00

Today I was teaching 'Autumn Leaves' to some of the ladies from Cosby quilters. They are a fun group with a lot of ideas. I think these ladies will take the ideas from the class and play. In fact I know they will because they were already doing it. I hope they will send me so updates on how the experiments pan out. It's also given me some ideas I would like to play with at some point. I really like it when suudents ask why, and especially when they ask it about things I might not have fully considered.

Last night was a different venue but the same group. I was giving my talk, 'Quilter? Artist? Lunatic?'. It was an interesting venue, but I was pleased how much I managed to display and how many quilts I got to show during the talk. Despite a lot of the group being on holiday there was a good turnout and I think people had fun. P.S. Thanks for the water ;)

Great North Quilt Show - Harrogate - Susan Briscoe

2011-09-07T22:16:00.002+01:00

These are two quilts from Susan Briscoe's special exhibition at the show. The show is quilts from her book, Japanese Quilt Inspirations. The first one is called Furoshiki'. It's a quilt I quilted for her and is now for sale here. It will be coming back to me for a bit more quilting before it goes to a new home. When I quilted it initially we were on a very tight schedule and it had to go back for photography before I was completely happy.

The second quilt is called 'Kunimoto', and is also up for sale. This one was interesting to quilt the border is a very slinky fabric, which looks good especially when it's quilted but man does it try to wriggle. I did really enjoy working on this quilt though as it had a lot of different textures in it. I like quilt where you feel the different fabrics as you quilt over them, but then, to me, quilting is all about making things that are tactile.

Great North Quilt Show - Harrogate - Winner

2011-09-06T21:16:00.001+01:00

It's not often I am so pleased by the judges choice of Championship quilt, but this year there have been two winners that really pleased me. Unfortunately at Sandown one of those beat this one, but all's well that ends well, it's made it this time. The quilt is called 'Overleaf' and was made by Susie Corke. I just love this quilt. I'm a sucker for stars anytime and small beautifully pieced ones are even better. I'm also a huge fan of sampler quilts (hence Ferreting Around) and on point settings, especially when I don't have to quilt them.

The photo really doesn't capture the detail of this quilt, you'll just have to take my word for it, the piecing and quilting are both lovely. At Sandown we saw this quilt before we saw either the second place or winner of the bed quilt category and our initial response was it should have been the champion. It turned out there was a glut of exceptional bed quilts this year there.

The spiky rosette if the champion quilt award, one of the others is first place in bed quilts and I think the third one was for hand quilting but I may be wrong on that. The certificate is a judges choice. I hope this quilt will be displayed again somewhere. I would love to see it again and I'd love as many people as possible to have a chance to admire it. I'd love to make a quilt like this at some point, but I'm not sure I have the patience for it.

There are more pictures of this quilt on Susan Briscoe's blog here.

Great North Quilt Show - Harrogate

2011-09-05T20:23:00.000+01:00

Here are my quilts from the Harrogate quilt show this weekend. It's the first time I have entered this show and as I was lucky enough to pick up an award it was also my first visit to the show. It is a bit of a trek from London to Harrogate so we set off Saturday evening and stopped at a services for the night. As we are both night owls it really makes things a lot easer for us. After a gentle Sunday morning drive we arrived at the show about lunchtime. Perfect. It's a lovely area and I would very much like to spend a day or two exploring the area at some point.

Before setting off I had checked on the location. The show organisers mention that the entrance is a fair distance from the main road. They aren't kidding. On the other hand there is a Sainsburys with a petrol station at the entrance too, handy after a long trip. On route to the quilt show I noticed there had been a wool craft show on the Friday and Saturday, which I would have enjoyed, I wonder if it is an annual feature?

The first two of my quilts were in the Bed Quilt category. I really didn't think either of them would have a chance of an award here as I had heard this is a very competitive show so I was really pleased to find that Ferret Fractal Stars had picked up a Judges Merit award.

The other bed quilt I put in you probably remember, it's Holiday Starrfire. It's my interpretation of Starr Fabrics Starrfire kit. I made it as a holiday from quilts I needed to think about with the intention that it would go on my bed last winter. I had been thinking this might be it's last show so I could use it this winter, but then it was invited to a show in France. So I guess I can wait another year. If it's going to be around for another year I may see if it can go anywhere else too.

My other two entries were in the small wall hanging category. This is a great category when you need to ship your quilts to shows, you can send smaller lighter quilts :) See I do sometimes think about the shipping problems.

The portrait is "A brief moment of clarity. It is of a friend of mine who is also the writer of Cancertown, the graphic novel that inspired the quilt "Bad Rain". I had hoped this might picked up and award but I had forgotten it wasn't in a specific art quilt category, that does make a difference. It did also mean the small wall hanging category was larger than I would have expected.

Finally there is the quilt that brought me to the show. "Leather Star" won the small wall hanging category. It was great to see it there with a ribbon on. They are really nice ribbons too. In the UK they are colour coded by show not by where you place in the show. I love these shaded blue ones. The certificate next to it is a judges choice award from Jenny Rayment, thank you Jenny.

Below are a couple of pictures of me with the trophy, I think we were having way to much fun during the presentation, but hey it was a lovely day at a really good show, what do you expect :)

Art Quilt

2011-09-04T23:22:00.000+01:00

Thank you all for your help, it's been much appreciated. After much discussion and chasing down all the suggestions that came in, three of us have just sat down to name the quilt. Tet, the model and I each chose our favourites. Of course we didn't pick any one the same so some negotiation took place. After some entertaining mistypes we realised some titles I can't be trusted with so we went for simple. The quilt is now called, Quiet Moment.

I found it really interesting the different things people saw in the image, it's something I really love about making art quilts. They go and talk to people in so many different ways. I do love the idea that this quilt is linked to Wait, and this title works in with that idea. There were some titles suggested that may appear later. I have some other pieces in the planning that we think they might fit rather well.

Now Tet can get on and finish the calendar, which was the critical job. I am really look8ing forward to that now. We've just got back from Harrogate quilt show, which I will post about tomorrow, but for now I think it's bed time. Why did they put Harrogate so far away?

Art Quilt - name me please

2011-09-03T14:32:00.001+01:00

I've just realised the art quilt needs a name. Urgently. I am producing my new calendar and it will be in there, so it needs a name by Monday when the calendar has to go to the printers. I may work well under pressure but I'm not so good at naming things that way. So, can you help me please. Here is the finished (well almost it's not bound yet) quilt, what should it's name be? Please leave your answers in the comments then other people can share what they think of the current suggestions. I names one of my other quilts like this and that worked really well so I have high hopes for your creativity. Please feel free to share this link and see if anyone you know has any ideas.

Van project progress

2011-09-01T17:35:00.001+01:00

It's been a while since I worked on my van project. It will be a king size double wedding ring quilt one day. Today I have just completed another batch of arcs. I think that makes 44 out of 163 in this colourway. Now I have a dilema. Do I do another batch of this colour or try to do some of the other arcs. If I did the B arcs I would be closer to putting something together, but I would have to think about where the colours go, and I think it will need a lot of cutting which is easier without the talk in the van. I guess it's more A's then isn't it. Oh well at least it's progress.

I'm due to give a talk tonight in Stone. It's quite a posh venue, 2 halls and a few other rooms. There's a good size car park too. Fingers crossed for a good night.

Art quilts - shoes and things

2011-08-31T11:23:00.000+01:00

If you remember last time I showed the top of this thigh I had paused my quilting to add some more detail to the arm behind it. Now you can see what I meant. There is a shadow on the arm and her bracelet. Pausing when I did just made for a tidier edge. When I was working on the lower legs I also made use of the thread to do the feet. It saved a couple of thread changes at least. One of the downsides of doing this sort of work (and especially the way I approach it) is the number of thread changes. It's surprising how much time and thread that eats up.

Once I had the bulk of the body quilted I went looking for threads for the shoes. Would you believe I had trouble matching those as well? I really think Moda need to bring out a range of threads to match their fabrics. I've got a lot of thread but I could only get close to two of the blues. I had an almost perfect match for the second lightest and decided to use that on the palest areas as well, after all those are just highlights right and using the slightly darker colour will just add detail.

The other shade I could match fairly well was the darkest although to be honest my thread was a little dark. I couldn't just leave the mid blue unquilted but I didn't have a blue thread even close. So I tried grey. I use a lot of grey as most of the time it blends in really well with other colours. Unfortunately I had a little too light and a little too dark and it didn't want to play ball.

Fortunately luck came to my rescue. I looked at the machine. The purple it was loaded with at that moment was very blue looking, and about the right shade. Amazing it's a pretty close match and was right in front of me. I did swap the bobbin thread I used with it so if the bobbin did show at all it would add blue to the mix not purple. I used about 15 threads in this quilt and I really didn't have enough. I will be looking to extend my collection sooner rather than later.

I really enjoyed working on the shoes I think the quilting probably adds more to them than any area other than the hair. Suddenly you can see the ribbons and the curves of the feet. In this picture you can also see that the background quilting has more or less kept pace with the rest of the quilt and in the one below why that is so important.

The body quilting really does draw in the quilt a lot and if the fullness in the background is just left it becomes really difficult to quilt in without tucks despite the fact it is all one piece of cloth so we know it must have fitted once.

As I said at the beginning I did roll back and take another look at the hair before I unloaded the quilt. I decided I couldn't add any more quilting. The quilt had enough distortion already I didn't want to add more. It is now pinned out being blocked to flatten everything before I trim it up.

Art quilts - legs

2011-08-29T23:25:00.000+01:00

I've made the thumbnails a bit smaller today because I wanted to share more pictures that usual, you can still click on them to get the full size images.

The legs seemed quite simple at first glance then as I thought about it more I realised how much was actually going on that wasn't being shown by the shades of the fabric. The most obvious area was where the top leg met the arm, both were the same colour and needed to be separated by the quilting. There are many more subtle areas too, the knee for example needed some sort of transition as did the lower leg and body.

As ever I started where I could see what was going on with the highlights on the muscles. I was trying to both follow the underlying contours of the leg and the shape of the fabric. It did mean making some compromises but it came together. The next lightest shade on the top leg was also fairly easy to deal with, although I had to start thinking about the fold in the leg, with this colour.

By the third shade I was clearly coming up against the crease behind the knee, but more importantly I spotted some details I wanted to add to the arm. In one of the pictures you can just see a couple of pieces of paper off to the side. I stopped here to work out what needed adding and decided I needed to leave that area of the leg until I had put some more detail on the arm so I could tuck in the edge of fabrics that were supposed to be further back. It's amazing how often quilting past something can point out a problem with it.

I left that for later and went on the lower part of the leg. By comparison this bit is easy. There are some fiddly narrow pieces to control but at least the shape is clear and simple. You can see in this area what I meant about the arm and the leg trying to blend together.

You might also notice that in some places there is a lot of fabric to persuade into quite small places. As I am quilting fairly densely the quilt is drawing up as I go so pieces further down seem to big to fit. They will but the need a lot of coaxing. Its one of the reasons I longarm one handed. I use my left hand to manipulate the fabric as I work in just the same way I did on the domestic machines. It worked there right so it must work here, and it does. It also scares people when they see me doing it. I do have my fingers very very close to the foot of the machine, I have to if I am manipulating small pieces. Yes it is possible to sew through your finger but mostly I get hit by the needle screw, it hurts but it lets me get the fabric to do what I want.

The lower leg is again more of a challenge than I first thought. The tiny piece of dark fabric is the where the calf muscle is pressing against the thigh, so again the quilting needs to change direction there to provide the appropriate shape. It is also a good example of silly little things that are critical to the overall design. When I am teaching my art quilt classes I do talk a lot about small things that matter and small things that don't. I try to explain how to tell the difference because there is no way to make a list of them. This may not seem important but trust me if it wasn't there you would know it was wrong.

Art quilt - shoulder and chest

2011-08-28T18:08:00.000+01:00

While I am working on the quilting I have a print out of the image next to me. I use this for two things. The first is to allow me to keep checking the fabric pieces as I go along. and certainly on this quilt there has been quite a lot of editing as I have quilted. I am looking for places where the pieces are the wrong shape or colour or are completely missing. There are usually a few bits I failed to trace at some stage and others that have gone missing during the cutting so the constant reference to the printed image is really important.

The other use for the image is to translate the strange shapes into a human. It's hard enough to tell what the fabric represents in the photographs, but trust me it is far harder in real life and it is one of the reasons I always take a lot of pictures they help. Once I have worked out what the fabric is trying to show I can try and figure out which way the the quilting lines need to go to improve the image. Fortunately with humans I do at least have a sample on hand. You can feel your own shoulder and feel where the bones are. I've done different styles of quilting on different quilts but for this one I am trying to have the quilting follow the body structure. It's fiddly but it seems to work quite well.

The collar bone was fairly easy to deal with and the indentation next to it. The central section of the chest was harder to sort out so I decided to start work on the opposite arm instead. I tend to jump about a lot. When I can see what needs to be done on an areas I do it, and come back to the trickier pieces. Sometimes the tricky bits have vanished in the easy bits which is always nice.

The pins in the quilt are marking transitions to give me some guidelines. Quite often one shade of fabric will span multiple body parts and for this quilt I want the quilting to separate them. I like to use pins for marking as they are easy to remove. I've had enough bad experiences with marking tools I try not to use them at all now. You can see on the arm how I have followed the line of the arm but also the shape of the fabric. I don't want to use the same colour thread on the two areas. If I did the thread would be very visible on one of the fabrics, which could make it too invasive. The thread may also reduce the contrast in the shades of the fabrics. Sometimes that can be helpful, but on the whole I want the best match I can get. On this quilt I had some problems choosing the palest fabric. It wasn't really as pale as I would like, so the thread I used on it is bright white, just to lift it a little.

I applied the same principles for the top of the other arm and quilted a bit more of the background. Mostly the background is keeping pace with the quilting on the image.

Art Quilt - quilting the hair

2011-08-27T21:21:00.000+01:00

First let me say it is very very difficult to photograph the quilting when it matches that fabric and the quilt is still on the frame, but I've done my best. Hopefully if you click on the images you will get the idea.

As I think I mentioned in my last post about this quilt I had some problems finding the right colours of thread. After turning the house (and van) upside down I did find a few more. I found far more that were the wrong purples though. Of course all the threads I really wanted to use didn't want to play ball. Some of them I have never managed to get to run on my machine and I really should get around to either chucking them out or rehoming them before I waste more time playing with them. I did try them and I did fail.

After a lot of fiddling I did persuade masterpiece to run provided I kept the speed right down, which for me, quilting hair just wasn't going to work. I think hair is my favourite part of quilting people. It's the easiest for me so work out what I am doing and it tends to flow better than other areas of the quilt. I can also be more flexible with my thread colours as I want to blend the fabric shades more in the hair than anywhere else.

I started with the darkest thread to start getting the direction of the hair in place. The dark thread was the one happiest running at speed which made it easier for me to get the flow right. From there I could work on the mid shades. These had to be stitched slower, which I found hard, but possible once I had the dark lines in place to keep me going in the right direction. I was also looking to secure as many of the raw edges as possible at this stage, it makes the quilting easier later.

As you can see in the firs picture as soon as I start quilting the hair it draws in the quilt. This can leave me with a lot of fabric to ease in in the background. I deal with this by doing a bit of background quilting every so often. It not only keeps everything in place and behaving but it gives me a rest too. The background is quicker more flowing quilting that I don't need to think too much about. Yes, I often do a bit of it when I get stuck on something on the main image, or indeed when the threads annoy me too much.

I build up the quilting on the hair in stages. I want it to be ver clearly hair but I can't quilt it too densely or it will distort the quilt even with the uber wadding in it. I worked on the hair until it read OK and I will come back to it when I have finished the rest of the quilting. If I think I can add a little more quilting I will. It is one area that really benefits from heavy quilting.

Sharon go!'s to Dresden - gone can you find it?

2011-08-26T14:42:00.000+01:00

This quilt was designed and made by Simon Henry. It was hung at the Festival of Quilts at the NEC in Birmingham this year, where it was awarded Highly Commended. It has failed to get home to Derby. It should have been shipped with Expofreight who are looking into it, but at the moment can't find any tracking information for it. I'm really hoping it has just got left on the lorry or something equally daft and easy to do, but who knows. So here is the plea, have you seen it since the exhibition? Any leads would be appreciated. You can contact me, or Simon just click on his name above and it will take you to his web site where there are contact details. Please keep your eyes open and I hope I will soon be able to tell you it's been found.

I am quilting the art quilt today but I will leave posting about it until tomorrow, so this has a chance to reach as many eyes as possible, sorry.

Art quilt loaded ready to quilt

2011-08-25T17:30:00.002+01:00

Having done the two urgent customer quilts I can load up my art quilt. It is getting the same backing as the wholecloth I've been working on, a black floral from Moda. The wadding is the thickest 100% cotton from the dream company, it is really thick and hangs really well as a wall quilt.
The floral batik you can see pinned on to the quilt is just there to protect th applique as I work. I float my tops (and even if I didn't normally I would for these) and I don't want to brush against the pieces as I am quilting.
I was thinking I would start right away with the hair as I am happy with that part of the quilt, but then I remembered the other problem with working in purple, threads. There just aren't enough shades of blue purple thread. Lots of red purples but those don't match the fabrics I've got. The group of four cones are the quilting weight purples I've got that might work on the quilt. I'm a bit lacking in the mid ranges with them. The set of three are threads I mostly use in the bobbin. I used to use them as top threads a lot then they suddenly stopped working for me. There is a much better range of colours with them, so I think I will have to have another go and see if I can get them to run again, otherwise I think my best option would be shades of grey which do tend to pick up the colours around them so might work in a pinch.
Tonight though is a night off, I'm off to see a band with some friends. Maybe inspiration will strike overnight.

World Quilt Show Photos

2011-08-24T22:50:00.000+01:00

Thanks to Donna from Follow That Thread, I now have some pictures of Greek Fossils hanging at the world quilt show. I really appreciate it when people around the world not only take and interest in my quilts but also take the time to send me pictures. I can't often go and see my quilts and getting the pictures is rather like getting a good postcard from a friend. In this case it's also the first time I got to actually see the award, doubly good.

Yesterday I did finish the areas of pebbling I was determined to do before giving the quilt a rest again. I've got a couple of customer quilts I needed to have done and actually they have been a very nice break. There comes a point where you would really like to see some progress when you are working and getting a quilt fully quilted today was just what I needed. I think tomorrow I will finish the customer quilt I have on the frame then start on quilting the art quilt. It's not hanging in a terribly safe place and it should be fairly quick to work on. Before I get to quilting it I do have few tweaks to do but I think they might actually be easier once it is lying down.