Quilt Show in Prague at Flowerpatch

We had a real treat at Flowerpatch Quilter's recent meeting with a slideshow of Melody and Dy's trip to Prague last Springtime. They stayed at a hotel in the beautiful old part of the city and enjoyed river trips and exploring. We loved their photos of the old houses built into the castle walls, many of which are now museums. But, of course, the highlight of their trip was a visit to the Quilt Show. This was a large exhibition of over 800 quilts and 6000 visitors. It is held each year.

These are just a couple of unusual quilts among the many quilts that they showed us:

The exhibition included art quilts, quilts based on antique quilts, traditional Czech quilts, some Cuban quilts, and other international quilts and challenges. A really diverse and interesting assortment.

They met the much-travelled Gillian Travis who was exhibiting at the show and who's work I saw in Bristol. This is a little taster of some of her wall hangings

More exploring followed their quilty day and I love this modern building that they showed us. It is called the "Dancing House" or "Fred and Ginger".

Many thanks to Dy and Melody for putting together this thoroughly enjoyable evening, ably assisted by their chaps Martin and Paddy.

Liz brought along her Little Harbour quilts which she has put together as a foursome in a wall hanging. They look brilliant. 

These are the two links if you'd like to see more and read a bit of a tutorial on making your own. Little Harbours at Flowerpatch Exhibition and Little Harbour Workshop at Flowerpatch

Next meeting is on 9th March when Sue and Jo will be showing us their collections of antique quilts. It would be lovely if any members who have old quilts would bring them along as well, to share with us all. - Anita x

Bramley's Seedling Apple

I have been really enjoying myself - playing with printing and stitching, after the workshop with Louise Nichols a few months ago.
This is my second attempt at embellished lino printing and what better subject to choose than the wonderful and versatile Bramley's Seedling apple. 

I used ordinary "system 3" acrylic paint mixed with Daler block printing medium so I had a wealth of choice colour-wise and each print tended to be a slightly different colour. These are examples of the lino prints in 3 colours.

and the resulting apples, which were printed in similar colours, after they had been embellished with fabric and stitch.

I put thin wadding on the back of each apple before I started stitching (by machine and hand) and then backed with more wadding after I had sewn them all together with the sashing and border. I actually included a little extra wadding behind the individual apples. 

I hope you can see some of the very simple stitches that I used - mostly straight stitch, french knots, cross stitch and couching.

I used Steam a Seam 2 to apply any fabric pieces. Each apple print measures approx 3½" x 5" and my finished wall hanging measures approx 9" x 18".

It is over 200 years since the original Bramley tree was grown from a pip, but sadly now it seems that the tree is dying. You can read all about the apple on the Bramley Apples website.

Happy stitching - Anita x

Hexagon Horror Story

I've been plodding on with my paper pieced hexagons most evenings and finally decided that I have enough to join them together. (or is it 'I have had enough!!') 

I still have the half-hexagon sides to fill in, but I will leave the top and bottom pointy. At present it measures 37" x 33" and I have plans to add some interesting fabric borders.
Here are four hexagons that I particularly like.

So where is the "Horror" of my hexagon story. Well, having sewn the big hexagons into rows and bemoaning the fact that it would take me many evenings to sew these together by hand, the man in my life (who knows absolutely nothing about sewing) said "I don't see why you can't sew these by machine!".......... I can't resist a challenge!
I decided to use this stitch on my machine as opposed to zigzag which I thought would make a very stiff and obvious line.

I used grey thread so it wouldn't show too much and a shortish stitch length and width. I sewed slowly, stopped frequently and turned the needle by hand at times - it was very stressful!! .... but quick nonetheless by comparison with the hand sewing. I don't think I would have attempted this if I had been making this for anyone other than myself! 

This pic compares the two different seams - hand and machine.

My two previous posts about this project are making donuts and hexagons update.

Happy Sewing - Anita x

Fruitful sewing at Flowerpatch

January is the month when all the blocks that have been made for Flowerpatch Quilter's yearly charity quilt, come together at our Thursday evening meeting. How exciting to finally see them in place ready for sewing and everyone is keen to get started and take part. Hand sewing commences right there and then.

This is the fabric that has inspired the colours of fabric chosen for the quilt, many of which have come from member's own stashes. This fabric is used in the outer border and elsewhere in the quilt.

This is the gorgeous centre piece of a wreath of fruit

and here we have a tantalising glimpse of some of the borders.

I love the colours and it's going to look wonderful. Monica B has done a brilliant job organising this and I can't quite believe how calm she was last Thursday!! Our Charity this year is Cornwall Blood Bikes.

I had taken along some of the sketches of local buildings that I had drawn (see my last post). This is for another project that we are doing in the next couple of months and many members chose a building to aid them in making a small A5 wall hanging. All will be revealed at a later date.

Liz B reminded us about this year's Chairman's Challenge which is titled "From Tree to Match", so plenty to inspire us and keep us busy.

The 9th February 2017 meeting will be an illustrated talk by Dy and Melody, about their "Quilt Trip to Prague".

What a great group to belong to - Anita x

From photo to line drawing

How I wish I could draw!
Drawing from life, even still life, seems an impossibility to me and even copying a photo proves difficult. Nothing ends up in the correct proportions and my efforts are always a disappoint to me.
But I have ways and means to get around this lack of talent and would like to share one way with you. I'm sure it's not the only way, and probably not the best way - but it works for me.

I have been wanting to do line drawings of some local buildings, to turn into small A5 size fabric pictures (approximately 6" x 8"). I have been out and about with my camera at the ready, and also scoured the internet for suitable pictures.

ORIGINAL PHOTO

I use photo editing to rotate the picture a little if necessary and to crop in the proportions that I want - in this case 3:4. Personally I use the free to download "Photoscape" photo editing.

CROPPED PHOTO

Then I open a word document and insert the cropped picture into it. I can change the page dimensions, margins and orientation; and format the size of the picture to be just right - in this case 15cm x 20cm. I use Microsoft Word, but for many years I used "Open Office" which is free to download and very good, too. I could also have done this online with Google Docs.

Printing next and luckily my printer will print a draft copy which is a faint image of the picture and uses very little ink. Otherwise I would alter the transparency of the picture before printing to achieve the same effect. Printing can be done in colour, but my printer is old and iffy so I resorted to black and white for some prints.

I really like this next bit as I sit in front of the computer with the cropped photo on the screen, and draw on top of the draft print, selecting the lines of the picture that I want for my fabric hanging. I use a black pen. I alter things as I go because buildings and windows might need straightening, or other bits moving about. I add quite a lot of detail as this can always be ignored later. You can see the faint print of my draft beneath the black lines.

DRAWING ON DRAFT PRINT

I usually make a tracing onto blank paper now. If I can't see my lines through the paper I use a light box or tape the print to a window with the blank sheet of paper on top, using mother nature's light.

TRACED COPY ON PAPER

Here are a couple of other examples:

Now I'm ready to play with fabric and, for the not-quite-finished example below, I used the same method as when making Flowerpatch's Little Harbours. 

I decided to try the Eagle House Hotel first because it looked so difficult, but it proved to be easier than expected. Nevertheless I always wish I had the time to do everything twice as I'm sure a second effort would turn out better! :)

Well, I hope I haven't made this sound too complicated - after the first time it's fairly quick, easy and satisfying.

Never a dull moment - Anita x

A Fabric Christmas at Flowerpatch

Despite a very misty evening there were plenty of members at the Flowerpatch Quilters December meeting and we had a relaxing time sewing some simple folded Christmas decorations, chatting and eating yummy mince pies.
These are the three designs that we sewed with links to the methods for making:

Folded 5" circle making a square

Folded 5" pentagon making a star

and this is a link for printing out different sizes of pentagon


Folded triangle with 5" long sides

Below are some pictures from the Flowerpatch 2016 exhibition last August, where the theme in one of the rooms was "A Fabric Christmas"

Happy Christmas all - Anita x

Eva Owl - lino printing

A while ago I had a brilliant day at Cartwheels Craft Centre doing a lino printing workshop with Louise Nichols. (Louise gave a talk at the last Flowerpatch Quilters meeting which you can read about in a previous post.) We could draw our own design to print and I decided to do Eva Owl from my wall hanging "It's a Hoot" for my first attempt.

This is how she has finally turned out!

On the workshop day we did the drawing, then lino cutting and finally printing all with helpful and friendly advice from Louise. This is one of the prints that I did then.

After embellishing with a little applique and lots of stitching I ended up with this picture - Eva is 5" tall.

I felt that she was a bit lost in the background so I changed the lino and cut more away to give me extra areas of white like this

So here she is again with less, and simpler, stitching than before - mostly straight stitch, fly stitch, couching and french knots.

I'm really happy with the result this time and feel encouraged to try some more designs.

When I started blogging I was determined that I would write about sewing and only sewing, but as Christmas approaches I just have to show you these cute wood slice snowmen 

..... and Father Christmasses, all made from our homegrown wood.

I got the idea for these on Pinterest which is a wonderful resource for all things crafty.
Oh! what fun! - Anita x

PS. Flowerpatch's 8th December 2016 meeting has moved venue to The Epworth Room at Central Methodist Church

And there is a brilliant Craft Fair at Upton Cross, nr Liskeard which starts tomorrow (Friday, 2nd December, 2016) for 3 days