Yet again another super evening meeting at Flowerpatch Quilters. We're very lucky to have such talented quilters here in the west of England who most generously share their work and experience with us. This month we welcomed Susan Denton from West Cornwall, who treated us to a screening of some photos of her travels and the quilts that they inspired, a number of which she brought along to show us.
Susan said that she started quilting 40 years ago, wanting to interpret the many wonderful sights that she was seeing on her travels both here and abroad; and also to satisfy her creative love of colour ....... and stitch.
Most of her works are machine pieced with hand applique and a mixture of machine and hand quilting. I feel that I must be disappointing you with my photos of such small sections of Susan's quilts, but it is her use of stitch that made the most impression on me - the way that she doesn't just quilt in lines on the quilt, but also does cross stitches, adding both extra colour and form.
Another of her ideas (of which there are many) was in designing a block for a quilt which she repeats, but with added or subtracted elements as the mood takes her. Being patchworkers we all love repetition and this seemed like an ideal starting point to stimulate, and not stifle, creativity.
Being an avid vegetable grower I was delighted to see her three quilts showing watering cans, scarecrows, and rhubarb forcers. I love Susan's bold use of colour and pattern.
A favourite quilt which I saw many years ago is the washing on a line in the Highlands of Scotland. After seeing this I had a whole year of making mini quilts with washing in a garden, hanging on the line and blowing in the wind!!
Thank you, Susan, for a lovely and engrossing evening.
Do Google, bing or pinterest Susan Denton to see some pics of complete quilts.
After seeing all that lovely bold stitching I feel another page idea forming for my "Love to Stitch" book!
The next Flowerpatch meeting is on 11th April when the speaker will be Penny Armitage - another talented local quilter.
Happy stitching - Anita x
I have two baskets of small fabric scraps in my sewing room. One contains all the blues, purples, pinks and reds; while the other holds everything else. I decided to pull out some of the fabrics from the "everything else" basket many of which were old favourites that I couldn't bear to part with despite their diminutive size. My challenge was to make something from just these fabrics with no additions allowed. What joy that in the basket I found a strip of green fabric printed with little houses.
This is the result:
I had been reading a quilt book by Colleen Wise called "Casting Shadows" and tried to create the effect, but with limited success because of my "no additions" rule. You may be able to see what I mean in the following pics.
This is after piecing - can you see the dark line is supposed to be the shadow of the green square?
I think it shows a bit better now that I've quilted around the green square, both inside and outside, and around the little house square, which also has a shadow.
And in this pic I've stipple quilted all over the background including the shadows.
Colleen chooses her shadow fabric very carefully to be a darker shade of the background fabric - mine's a bit of a hotch potch!!
I definitely needed the practise with free motion machine stippling, and just occasionally I felt relaxed enough to enjoy the process.
This is a link to the method that I used to make up the cushion ........ Making a Basic Cushion
The back of the cushion is a piece of curtaining that I had left over. I sewed a strip of the lovely little house fabric along an edge of one half of the backing.
One final look as it didn't turn out too badly ....
Happy Sewing
Anita x
