It's so satisfying to finish this small textile picture which I have called "Living in the Woods". I loved every minute of the making as this is such a personal picture. I thought about it a long time before actually starting because I didn't expect it to look anywhere near as good as it did in my head, but I'm really pleased with the result. It measures approx 12" x 8".
I was inspired to do this picture after seeing the wonderful landscape paintings of Jan Phethean , and also by the beautiful area where I live.
I cut a circular piece of lino to look like branches, and stamp-printed in brown on lots of different greens to make the trees and bushes, cutting a bit more from the lino after a few prints. These were then cut out in rough bush shapes and sewn on by machine, with raw edges. The really tiny pieces like the buildings are stuck on with Steam a Seam 2 and then most have a few stitches added.
I finished off with a pale, narrow flange and then binding in brown.
The picture isn't an exact copy of my house, garden and buildings, but looking at it gives rise to all the lovely feelings I have about being lucky to live here - it makes me very grateful and happy.
Feeling content - Anita x
Linking up with Crazy Mom Quilts - Finish it up Friday
A return visit by Lesley Coles, to Flowerpatch Quilters October meeting, was an enthralling delight. Lesley brought along so many of her quilts, etc for us to see, spanning 4 decades of patchwork sewing from hexagons, through an abundance of Christmas sewing to her latest modern wall hangings. Here is just a small selection:
This small rectangular cushion lies on a riot of colourful quilts
This block is one of nine that make up a Sudoku quilt. Can you see the clever use of fabric so that no.1 square is made from one fabric; no.2 square is made from two fabrics, one of which is the fabric in the first square; no.3 square is made from three fabrics, using the two fabrics from before plus another; etc. etc? This means that the no.1 fabric is dominant and appears in each square of the quilt linking them all for a pleasing effect. The fabrics used are Oakshott.
Lesley is lucky enough to live near our beautiful Cornish coast and many of her later works reflect her love of the coastal scenery. These two small scenes are of Godrevy lighthouse and of engine houses on the cliffs.
I love the colour blend of these two pieces inspired by the sea, especially the addition of the subtle fish in this first pic which shows just a small section of a finished wall hanging
and this is a smaller wallhanging in similar colours - I like the strippy piecing.
Lesley is always full of new ideas and enjoys running workshops and writing articles for patchwork magazines, as well sewing for charity, herself and for exhibition. Thank you Lesley for a lovely evening.
October is the month when we present a cheque to charity. Money is raised by selling raffle tickets for a quilt and at our exhibition. This is the quilt that we raffled - Autumn Gold.
Cornwall Blood Bikes was our chosen charity for 2016/2017 and we were so pleased that four volunteers came to our meeting to accept the £3000 that we had raised. They were delighted with the amount ........... and they were delightful! Alan Moss gave a short talk about the organisation which has 70 volunteers in Cornwall. They are on call from 5pm to 7am the following morning and at weekends, delivering blood, and sometimes breast milk, as needed. This saves the hospitals having to use expensive taxis during these hours. Last year they totalled over 2000 deliveries on their motorbikes. Please do click on this link if you'd like to know more about the charity - Cornwall Blood Bikes and this is the article that appeared in our local newspaper. when we presented the cheque.
Next meeting is on Thursday, 9th November 2017 at Central Methodist Church Hall, Launceston, PL15 8BA and starts at 7.30pm. Penny O'Connor will be giving a talk about her lovely machine stitched embroideries.
It is also our AGM so please bring along any thoughts on how we can improve Flowerpatch and ideas for next year's charity as we will be voting on this.
Happy Stitching
Anita x
2016 was supposed to be the year that I came to grips with free motion quilting and now, as we head towards the end of 2017, I'm still struggling! At the Festival of Quilts I was lucky enough to see a FMQ demonstration by Philippa Naylor and just a few days later, at an exhibition of her work at Cowslip Workshops, Sheena Norquay was kind enough to share some of her FMQ tips.
So back to some FMQ practise .........
Philippa suggested using Microtex needles size 60 and these slid beautifully through the fabric layers - and I didn't break even one (much to my surprise). Instead of quilting gloves she uses a piece of anti-slip grip mat under one or both hands - this was great to use and so much better than my gardening gloves!! :)
Sheena said that she sometimes uses an embroidery hoop to hold her fabric layers. I didn't even own one of these and was surprised at how cheap they are! I bought an 8" one and found that it fitted quite easily under my quilting foot. It gave me a lot of confidence having the rim to hold - not that I didn't make lots of errors in my stitching. In fact once I'd messed up the stitching a bit it made me relax a little. Another of Sheena's tips was to always draw out your design on paper first to get your brain into gear and I found that it helped to actually make up some of my own designs.
So this is my rather wonky sample piece - it measures approx 9" x 9"
And I still find random squiggles really difficult!! :)
Happy wobbly stitching - Anita x
