Festival of Quilts 2014

Last week was the Festival of Quilts at the NEC and Maggie Grey/ d4daisy Books had a stand to promote the new book Cut, Shape, Stitch.  We were all there in force, aprons at the ready for some messy demos and had all gargled with TCP to get us ready for all the Talking.

And what a fantastic show it was.  I went over on Wednesday to help Maggie and Clive to set up and we had a great time seeing a lot of pieces from the book displayed in all their glory together.

Here is Maggie mentally preparing herself for the next few days ahead.  The stand did look fantastic though.

Those poles on the left have die cut flowers wrapped around them.  This is my favourite piece in the book.  I keep dropping hints to Maggie about how great it would look in my house, but she is determined to keep it.  Curses!

That was about as empty as it would be for the next few days so it was good to get some pictures of it before it all started.

We all took it in turns to do some demos.  Maggie did her wonderful Gesso and Quink Ink technique which drew in huge crowds and new fans.  That technique is covered in the book and Maggie has produced some amazing work with it.  Paula did a lot of metal cutting on the Sizzix and I did some cutting on the Sizzix using fabric and some snow paint stencilling.

Paula applied alcohol ink to metal and cut it on the Sizzix

Alcohol Inks on metal

I had printed onto hand-dyed fabric from Alter Ego (Jo Lovelock) using Sizzix cut stencils, then machine stitched into the fabric.  I cut squares and triangles and am going to make some 3D houses, slightly different to the ones that are featured in the book.

All our supplies to demo with.

Maggie's Gesso and Ink sample and my snow paint strips

More gesso.  Looks fantastic in the flesh but a great example of this technique is in the book.

Maggie in full flow and trying her hardest not to spray ink all over the front row of watchers....

Luckily, we did manage to get out and see some of the exhibitions and quilts and other wonderful pieces in the show.  I am going to do a proper write up in the September issue of WOW but these are some of the highlights!

Annette Morgan and Louise Batten - Indigo Two Step

Cas Holmes - detail of Sandshadows.  Part of the Art Textiles exhibition on Identity.  This was a fantastic exhibition with many of my favourite textile artists.

Rosie James - another piece from Art Textiles.  Her work is fabulous and I will be reviewing her new book in September Workshop on the Web which I loved.

Stephanie Redfern in Art Textiles.  Stephanie is one my favourite artists and I just love her work.

Goldfinch Triptych by Chloe Redfern (Stephanie's daughter).  I loved her pieces too.

Daisy May Collingridge - A Collection of Quilted Monsters and Bedtime Beasties.  This piece was beautifully quilted and in yellow, my current favourite colour.

Jo Lovelock's quilt in the Fine Art Quilt Masters exhibition.  I loved the combination of text and the pieced pattern.  This is a detail photograph.

Ineke van Unen detail from Course of Life.  Her work was amazingly colourful with beautifiul stitching and composition

Judith Gundwiler and Gabi Mett had an exhibition together.  This piece by Judith is called Transmigrations of Life and this is a detail picture.

This clock by Kate Crossley won the Quilt Creations prize and unsurprisingly.  It was exquisite.  A fully working clock that was stitched, embellished and had an inordinate amount of treasures and hidden secrets for the viewer to search out.

Ineke Berlyn's Red Kites was included in Linda Seward's exhibition to accompany her book on Art Quilts.  I loved this piece.

Louisa Peers Bushfire.  This is a detail of a long piece with one of my favourite subjects - trees.  The colours were fantastic.

Having managed to get away from the stand long enough to take around 500 pictures, it was hard work to narrow these down!

One of my highlights though had to have been the presence of Amy Butler at the show.  Having been my fabric design hero since I made my Rainy Days mac (you can see it on one of my earliest posts), I was suitably humbled to be able to talk to her and listen about her work (all of her designs are originally made on paper and later transferred over to computer technology).  She was a beautiful and calm presence at a time where I was feeling a little manic with stealing moments to look around the show.  I regretted that she wasn't there on Sunday when it started pouring, as I was running around in my lovely mac, slightly damp around the edges.  Although she probably has people telling her all the time about what clothes of hers they have made...

I had a fantastic time this year, made special by the fact that we talked to so many people who were interested in our book and the techniques we have used in it.  Seeing some amazing work, talking to lovely people, putting faces to names and meeting an idol made it a week to remember.

Cut, Shape, Stitch by Maggie Grey, Paula Watkins and Me!

I am very excited to report that the new D4Daisy book, Cut Shape Stitch is progressing at a rate of knots and is being prepared for its launch at the Festival of Quilts.

The book covers all forms of cutting, from simple hand-cutting, die-cutting through to amazing computer controlled cutting.  We have had a Scan N Cut on loan from Brother and it has been one of the most exciting things I have done recently.  There will be more coming on the blog soon, but I just wanted to make an announcement here.

Just one of the pieces that didn't make the final cut was this one, using hexagons from graduated dyed fabric and then overlaid with flourishes and swirls:

But there is plenty more to come soon!

Back from my post post summer lull

Oh dear, time seems to be flying at the moment.  I am currently working on reviews for the December issue of Workshop on the Web, and I'm very excited to be working with a selection of Wonderfil threads, Brusho sprays, transfer paper and some fabulous Aarti J trims.  You will find them under products.  I won't be able to put my pictures on the blog though!

Aside from that though, I have been doing a few of my own lovely things.  Taking inspiration from Paula Watkins and her fantastic Herts Open Studios that were on recently, I have decided to revisit the felt panel that I made in Paula's felt class in June (seems like yesterday) and get on with it.

I painted my background with a coral silk paint (my most favourite colour) and then stencilled a flower design using a Crafter's Workshop stencil. Then I melted it away with the heat gun, and left a lovely pattern.  I need to find where my piccie of the melted piece is.  It might be in the Hard Drive of Horror (my computer files).

 

I also painted some coral coloured cotton that I have.  I loved this and will need to do a bit of stitching to make it even more wonderful.  But my favourite bit was the back (not something I usually big up as there's usually a mass of threads and it's the place where I hide my mistakes!).  The paint had embossed the fabric. Now I'm not sure what to sew and what to hide....

 

 

 

My other exciting news is that I have some new threads for crocheting!  My lovely brother bought them for me.  I have done a few bits with them (their purchase in turn necessitated some new tiny crochet hooks).

 

They are Lisbeth Cordonnet Threads size 20.  I saw a pattern for a necklace in the Vogue Crochet 2012 magazine and found some in the UK.  Hurrah!  Will take some pictures of what I've done and post those.  See a theme emerging for this post on colour?? They are also all coral or coral related...

 

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Paula's birthday

For my good friend's (Paula Watkins) birthday this year, I did a mini quilt to reflect everything Paula.

Quilt for Paula

I used cotton fabric as a base and did some simple piecing around the centre piece, which was text printed onto cotton on my printer.  First I had sprayed with a walnut ink wash, then painted over with Magical Mica pots.  These little pots of powder produce amazing colours when they are wet - you dip your brush into the pot before wetting.  For this I used Autumn Maple, Tibetan Poppy, Ponderosa Pine and Red Hot Poker. Because of the walnut ink, they look a little muted but they can be incredibly vibrant.

For the text, I thought of everything that Paula loves.  Anyone who knows Paula knows that there wasn't enough space for everything, so I needed to be choosy.  But I made sure that some of the essentials were there - woolfelt and her Sizzix particularly!

I hand stitched on the centre panel, but found that there wasn't a lot of space to stitch without covering the writing, which was a shame, because I think it could have done with quilting.  As the outside edges were securely machined, the centre piece puffed up a bit and creased. 

The outer panels were stencilled with some lime green paint and machine stitched to quilt.  I used pelmet vilene to create labels.  I used tissuetex to cover the labels and  TAP (Transfer Artist Paper) to put the images of the scissors on (using copyright-free images from the internet), and then I managed (after much blood, sweat and tears) to put eyelets in and hand-stitch the labels to the quilt.

copyright free images of vintage scissors were used

My label - nade with my wonderful Sizzix Wordplay die

 

I think she liked it!!!!  It was the mention of woolfelt that clinched it....

Fabulous Felt Course

I recently did a Fabulous Felt course run by the Community Learning Partnership.  Our tutor was the lovely Paula Watkins (see the link to her blog below) and it was a wonderful course.

We launched straight into it on the first day where we started by making prefelt.  I have seen prefelt for sale before and didn't really know what it was, so this was a great opportunity to get to know about it.  You basically felt the wool fibres together very slightly, so it holds together but doesn't felt as such.  I made pieces of orange and green.

Lining up the wool fibres to make prefelt

finished prefelt

Then we put the 2 pieces together and felted them and then made them into a flower.  My leaves looked a little droopy to begin with, but as the felt continued, they shrank up a little and looked more leaf-like.  They are still a bit wispy but a bit of stitching will sort that out.

Next we made some felt sausages and made beads out of them.  After all the felting on the draining board and heavy duty pummelling, Paula took pity on me and rolled my felt a little bit to get me on the way to an acceptable sausage.  I really loved how the beads turned out!

We also did a panel.  Most people went for blue sky and grass, or sand, but I went for something reminiscent of Johnny Nice from the Fast Show.  Please see this link:

 You Tube Johnny Nice

Anyway, with all the blues and greens and fluffy clouds, I found purple and dark grey and us crawling towards our doom (watch the link).

But I like it anyway, as it suits the colours in our dining room.  And some very generous people glossed over the [BLACK] dark tones and admired it anyway.  Both the flower and the purple trees need some stitching, so I will put another photo in when I get the chance to do some stitching.  And more crochet as I have been very lax recently and wouldn't be surprised if I couldn't remember how to do a double crochet.

I then made a large panel, which was white and coral and salmon pink (trying to show an artistic diversity after all the BLACK). Again, I'm going to do something with that at a later date, and will post when I have the time.

We learnt needle-felting as well which was really enjoyable.  I have used the Clover Tool before, but was hooked with the single needle, as found it gave so much more potential for detail.  You could add wisps of wool to create a highlight and incredible detail.

Overall, a fantastic course, and I would definitely look at doing another with CLP and Paula!

Machine Quilting (in my pyjamas)

Oh dear, I noticed how long it was since I last posted something.  The past month has been so busy that I have hardly had time to think, never mind sit down and compose.

I have been making a quilt/wall hanging for a friend's birthday recently. It's her birthday today, and I held off posting anything earlier in case she had a sneak preview.

It started when I was spending time on Pinterest (just 5 minutes, honestly), and I saw a print which said "Oh dear. I really should do something but I am already in my pajamas". I think it's a quote from Futurama, but it made me laugh. However, the spelling of pyjamas was not the English spelling, (is it the American spelling?), so I thought I'd make my own. I changed the wording slightly, but the gist is still the same. Basically, we both love not having to get up for work/school and time off in the holidays is usually spent conferring about how late we are getting dressed in the morning. It's a well-kept secret I think as the more people I speak to, the more widespread this guilty vice appears to be.

I used my Wordplay Sizzix die to cut out the words and bonded to some plain stone-coloured fabric I bought from Lovely and Lovely. I pieced a border (I have never done traditional pieced quilting so this is as far as I get) and then set about machine quilting it.

I tend to have a ad hoc approach to free machining usually, but I have recently resolved to have more method and create pattern. A couple of things have influenced this. I recently reviewed a book by Angela Walters called Free Motion Quilting and I found it really useful.

She takes you through lots of different styles of machining and there are diagrams showing you how to 'draw' them. What I then did was use the advice given in the book and practice doodling patterns electronically before attempting them on fabric.  I found it helped a lot - you get into a rhythm of working and the pattern flows easier.

I also have done a felt course (more about that later) and it made me look up some pictures I had taken from The Festival of Quilts in 2008 of the work of Jacqueline Heinz. Her work combines felt and wool tops on large pieces of cloth with exquisite stitching. Luckily, I had a few close-ups and could see the kind of effect really neat stitching can have. It was with Jacqueline Heinz in mind that I resolved to do this wall-hanging with neat and tidy stitching.

Jacqueline Heinz.  I bow at the altar of perfect machining

Jacqueline Heinz

It took me quite a while, but I think I did a good job.  This is the finished piece:

Finished quilt

All the lettering was hand-stitched around the outline

Close up of machine stitching

Machining from the back.  Note that I cut away all my loose threads as my [late] New Years Resolution is to be fastidious in my work.

Next up will be a book I have been making for my daughter's teacher's leaving present.  And the felt course I was on with my very good friend Paula Watkins.  Her blog has a link from here, and there are more photos from this course.