Friday, July 27, 2012

Thank you ladies

Summer school is over so I am relaxing with Hendricks courtesy of my students. It's great, thanks.

Summer school day 4

Summer school day 3

Tuesday, July 24, 2012

Summer school day 2

Yesterday was the first day of the first summer school where we mostly worked on design. Today people have started sewing which is good. I found the design stage exciting but I think the ladies will enjoy the fabric more.

Wednesday, July 18, 2012

Prometheus is going to Houston

I've just got the news from the Houston quilt show that Prometheus has been accepted into the show :) Sadly Quiet Moment didn't make it in. YOu have no idea what a relief it is to know. The uncertainty is horrible and I am not good at waiting for anything.

If you would like to have a closer look at Prometheus, the quilt show made this slide show of it with a lot of the in progress and detail photos I took. I think they did a great job and I hope you will enjoy it. Here at The Quilt Show.

Thursday, July 05, 2012

The last of the family quilts at Sandown

 Finally I am at my computer and it's working and I can get it to load the photos. Must be time to share the last of the 'family' quilts. For this post I'm adopting Susan Briscoe, or at least our quilt. It isn't quite as cheeky as it sounds, I did at least quilt this one. It is called 'I can only do so much pink in one go'. Susan says "After making a scaled-down replica of a quilt shown at the V & A's 2010 exhibition. I wanted to give it a modern twist. The fabrics are all from the Sultry range by Moda. There are 1536 1 1/2" squares in the mini checkerboard blocks"

It isn't actually too pink. I quilted it with green leaves and vines all over the non brown areas. In the brown Susan asked for a garden gate effect so it has brown curls in a wrought iron sort of style. These curls extend from the central area in the the brown sections at the sides of the quilt. We were both very pleased with how it came out. I was thrilled when people were admiring it folded up on it's way back to Susan at the Malvern show. For me that is something that really speaks volumes about the quilt. When such a small piece can inspire people.


Next quilt up is another one of mine. This is Quite Moment. I started this quilt last August and posted all the steps on here.  It's still being very tricky to photograph. Most of the image is in shades of purple, with the shoes in blue.  It seems that whenever I photograph it inside the colours come out wrong. I know I should choose colours that I can photograph more easily, but I like purple :)
 This is 'Stars Innit', made by Tet to test the new pattern Ferret Fractals, friendship stars. It seems to have been a very popular quilt. A lot of visitors came and talked to me about it. It is also the cover quilt of the pattern. It was made from fabrics in my stash, and we had hoped to be able to offer a kit to make on the same, but it would be only one kit. What do you think? Should I make up one kit for someone to make a quilt just like this one? I really like the border Tet designed for the quilt. I stopped with the stars, as for me that is where the fractal principle took it.  The border though does finish it nicely and I think I might have to get him to come up with a borders for the rest of m designs.
 This is my charity entry. I really don't like pink and there was no way I was going to make a pink quilt, but I couldn't let the charity down. So 'No effing p**k' was born. I knew this would never be a show winning quilt but I was determined to have fun with it. I tried out a lot of different threads, I tried blending two very thin threads as my top thread. It gets some very interesting results. Using a cotton thread with a metallic does support the metallic thread very well, but maintaining a good tension is tricky. It was certainly fun to have a play.

The background black quilting is many many patterns. I figured that this quilt would be recycled as a teaching tool, so if I come to teach you machine quilting expect to see this quilt. If you look back on my blog to May you will find a few close ups of the quilting.
 Remember that you can click on any of the images to see a larger version, where you should be able to see the background quilting quite well.

The other fun thing about this quilt was seeing what the fonts day to people. I could see several bands, and Blade runner (although none of the fonts are exactly right they have a strong flavour of something). My students spotted loads more familiar brands in the quilt. It's funny how distinctive a font is even when the word is completely wrong.
Finally, a rather special picture. I've wanted to be able to do this for a while and things just came together on the Sunday of the show. This is the model for Quiet Moment standing with the quilt. The rosette she is wearing is a Judges Merit that was awarded to the quilt. We have been trying to get the two of them together for quite a while but things just hadn't been working out. It was great to be able to use the free tickets from my entries to get her and her dad into the show. Even better she wore a branded t-shirt and was prepared to stand in for me while I was at the awards. I'm thinking it's a good sign when the model is prepared to stand with the finished quilt :) Oh and yes you are likely to see more quilts staring this model, just as soon as I have time to play. Speaking of time, I should be getting ready for tonights talk, where several of these quilts will be getting their next outing.


Tuesday, July 03, 2012

Quilter know thyself

Ho hum, I really should know myself better. The last few days I haven't been able to settle to anything for any length of time. I have managed to do a lot of washing and paper work but no t much sewing. That should have rung alarm bells. Some of the paperwork did need doing but normally I have to dilute it with fun stuff. Finally I realised the my paper work and washing obsession was the same as my loo cleaning probelm, there was something I wasn't doing.

I gave myself a stern talking to and figured out the problem. I have a test piece on the frame left over from Sandown, and I really wanted to play on it. I also wanted to get it out of the way and do a couple of quilts but I was doing 5-10 minutes then giving up. My quilting wasn't working, which was because the machine wasn't sitting flat. Duh! Well it's not the most fun job in the world because I have very little room to work in but the machine is now more level and useable. I'll get Tet to help me finish leveling it. I took the chance to play with some new stencils. I've not liked stecils because I find following the line really hard but today they went pretty well. I'm looking forward to using these in anger. I can't help wondering if Jennys quilt has improved my skills in this area.

My plan is now to get this off the frame and extract the last of the Ferret Bites then get on with some serious customer work. I just wish I had worked out the problem sooner. On the other hand I suppose taking a break and doing paperwork is good too. I'll have to get the rest of our Sandown quilts up on here too, but that will probably be tomorrow now.