New art quilt – day 1
August 6, 2011
I’ve decided to start this story right at the very beginning. With choosing the fabrics and producing the pattern. OK not quite the beginning. I’ve already selected the image and done some processing on it. The model sent me a whole selection of images and out of those a few leapt out as special. Once I see the ones that have something special I then look at them in GIMP. I look for good contrast and strange shapes. I look for details that might be distracting and I check for pieces too small to make. Once I have all of that working I have a possible quilt. The next step for me is to start thinking about how much detail I want and what colour I am going to use.
I was fairly sure I wanted this one to be purple but that is a tricky colour to get hold of. I did have a look both in my stash and at the shop but I couldn’t get the range of shades I needed. Today I had another look at my stash. As you can see there is quite a lot in there, although not as tidy as I would like, but not a massive run of purple especially not in large pieces. However as I was playing with them I realised the longer run is the slightly blue purples which means I can run into my second choice colour, blue. So the darkest parts will be very dark blues which I think will work really well. the darkest areas are the hair in this quilt so her hair will be blue with purple highlights, cool.
Having sorted out that problem I got on with putting the full size image together. I knew it was larger than I had at first planned, but well. It’s a lot larger. I haven’t got it all into one piece yet but I think it is going to work. It should be quite imposing when it’s done. While I was hunting fabric I also found my stash of extra large freezer paper sheets. That’s going to make things easier, if only I can find my big tracing paper too.
More customer quilts
August 5, 2011
This is another of the quilts that went back today. I loved working on this one. It’s a kit by Starr Designs and very nicely constructed by a regular student. It was very time consuming. Every leaf is individually quilted with veins and the threads change colour to blend with the fabrics throughout the quilt.
After the deliveries I’ve had a chance to work on my monster wholecloth quilt. I’ve also discovered how out of practice I am at this really heavy quilting. So until I get back into the swing of it I will be taking lots of breaks and working on a new art quilt. Today I managed to get the pattern printed, at least I think I have. I’ll put it together tomorrow and check, but I think it is going to be a bit larger than I had initially expected. Which will at least mean it fits in more shows so I guess that’s a good thing. I’ll need to see it to be sure though. Once I start working with the fabric I’ll give you guys a sneak peak.
Quilting quilting everywhere
August 4, 2011
I've spent this week quilting for customers and tomorrow (well today technically) I get to return lots of them. The pictures are of the back of a quilt I was working on today. My last step today was to reload my monster wholecloth. I am hoping to make good inroads on it over the next few weeks. I am also planning on starting on a new art quilt so watch this space.
Heart of Kent Hospice Quilt Show
August 2, 2011
It’s funny where life takes you. I was in Canterbury teaching recently when one of the students started talking about her local quilt show. I mentioned that there weren’t any near me and I would love to have more chances to display my work. Well that was all it took and three of my pieces were invited to the show. Of course being a rather late decision the logistics were tricky but two of the organisers came up to Patchwork Corner in Hemel Hempstead to pick my work up. That’s quite a journey.
The show is held at Aylesford Priory, which wasn’t easy to find with the sat nav but is a lovely place when you do get there. I guess having a few days of good weather, and a good size car park really helps bring in the visitors.
The show is in a large barn with the most amazing roof, The height means they can hang a lot more quilts that you might expect. The ones you can see bunched up on the line in the roof are all charity quilts.
The first of my quilts that was displayed if Bad Rain. I was particularly pleased with this one being displayed here as the Kent is where I met the author, and Whatever Comics in Canterbury is one of the shops where I can be sure people can get a copy of the book it is from, Cancertown. Hopefully I will soon have time to do another quilt fron one of Cy’s books. If only there were more hours in the day.
The next piece they displayed for me. is my Victorian Steampunk outfit. This is a particularly difficult items to display. The Sandown quilt show managed to fit it in but trying to find a place for the train where it won’t get trodden on it very hard. This plinth is fantastic. It brings the train up to a better height for people to see and it’s large enough to be stable and unlikely to trip anyone up. I somehow don’t think I’m going to get this lucky very often.
Next to the dress was there was a shelf wide enough to take a quilt stand, another very lucky break. It brings the Dragon up to the right height. When I designed the quilt I intended it to be hung so the dragon’s eyes are at the viewers eye level. It also kept the Dragon off the floor as it is a bit long for their quilt stands.
I’ve got to say I was really impressed with how the organizers of this show treated my work. They took exceptional care of them and thought carefully about how to display everything. It was interesting to hear them talk about planning the show, thinking about making sure the exhibits were safe and were hung to their best advantage right down to making sure quilts next to each other were not going to clash colourwise.
The plan is that next year I will see if I can get a couple more of my quilts displayed here. I am also hoping I might be able to do some classes too. If you are free do try and get to this show, it’s a lovely day out and all proceeds go to a very good cause. Last I heard they were expecting to donate over 4000 pounds to the hospice from this years show.
Carnation hall – wholecloths
July 31, 2011
Yesterdays workshop was wholecloths based on traditional blocks.. This is a good way to get people to start applying thier machine quilting skills hopefully without being too intimidating. As you can see pretty much any method of getting thread onto fabric works. We had bobbin quilting, decoratve machine stitches, plain machine stitches and free motion quilting. Some of the ladies even got on to their second wholecloth during the class! Otheres went with bigger and more ornate designs, learnig to draft their own compasses and other blocks. For me it was very exciting watching these quilts come to life. I'm guessing I wasn't the only one having fan as no one wanted to stop for lunch. Eventually we did have to pause and just as well , lunch here is great. Thank you all so much. I've loved sharing my machine quilting tips with you and I can't wait to come back for the insane wholecloth class and the large one 
Carnation hall – machine quilting 1 and 2
I fogrot to take any decent pictures of previous vists so on my third trip to these ladies I took the oportunity to photograph the work they did in the first 2 sessions. I've been seeing them about once a month for machine quilting classes and as you can see they've achieved a lot. They are also a great bunch to teach very friendly and enthusiastic which makes things so much easier. I think people learn more (and more easily) then they are happy and having fun.
Failed to visit, but not on purpose.
July 27, 2011
A few students on recent workshops have mentioned that there are areas of the country I haven’t visited. This has meant they needed to travel quite some distance to do the classes they wanted (and I am deeply flattered they made the effort). I had thought I had got pretty much everywhere but after checking I see they are indeed right. The places marked in green are the counties I have already visited, those in blue I have been booked to go to in the next few months. The ones I haven’t visited yet are in pink, they are in no particular order
- Cornwall
- Rutland
- West Midlands
- Shropshire
- Derbyshire
- Greater Manchester
- Lancashire
- South Yorkshire
- West Yorkshire
- The East Riding Of Yorkshire
- County Durham
- Northumberland
I’m really not ignoring any of you. I have half a plan to try and get to Cornwall next summer as it looks like I will be making another tour of Dorset and Devon then so it makes sense to try and add in Cornwall to keep the costs down. In a similar vein a lot of the area I haven’t been to is in one lump so if you do want me to come to your area it might be worth seeing if we can get together a tour to fill in other areas near by. Now people have got me thinking about this I really want to collect the set I wonder if there are any quilt groups in Rutland, it’s a small area so I am guessing it is likely to be the last place I get to visit.
Advanced? Machine quilting and home
July 12, 2011
Apparently I need to rename this class (hence the question mark above) the word is too scary for the actual class. I guess it will become machine quilting 2. I've only posted the clearest of the photos so you will just have to believe me the rest are great too. Some beginners weren't put off by the title and they did well. Often the less people know about the subject the better they get on. It probably means they have less to unlearn. I didn't take an overview picture but when all the samples were spread out on the floor there was an impressive amount of quilting. Bear in mind there is also a lot of talking (and time for another very nice lunch) and you will appreciate how much everyone got done within the class. A couple of students fount that the 1m square sample piece wasn't really quite big enough for them. I had a great time with this group over the weekend and I hope I will get to meet up with them again soon.Today it turns out I have a bonus day at home, well at least in theory. I thought I would start by going to the storage unit to unload the van. It seemed like a good idea at the time. Unfortunately by the time I got home the world and his wife had filled not only my road but all the surrounding ones, so it feels very much like I am still on the road. I've ended up at shopping center with free parking and I'm sitting in a burger bar. Nothing new there. Hopefully I will get home at a civilised time and be able to check my phone messages and answer email, but I'm not going to count on it.
Wholecloth workshop
July 10, 2011
Well here are some pictures of how far people got with their wholecloths in the workshop today. I hope the quilting will show up and I am sorry if I've missed anyone, it's hard to see exactly what I am doing on my phone. A couple of these little quilts are actually finished which is great and several more are very close to completion. As you can see there were many different approaches used during the day and some very impressive quilting. One of the purple quilts has feathers quilted in metalic thread on it. Imressive? Very, but more so when you find out it was her first attempt at feathers! Just goes to show what can be achieved if you just got for it, I don't know if she believes how cool that is yet.I guess it's time for bed for me as tomorrow I am back with Oast Quilters teaching advanced machine quilting. Night night.
Wholecloth class in progress
We have just stopped for lunch but I felt I had to share. Aren't they all doing well? I just hope the quilting shows.