This is my finished “Summer Garden” piece which, you can see here, was started back in September. The challenge was to create a 20″ x 15″ quilt using pieces of fabric no larger than 3″ in any direction. To be true to the challenge I made a background consisting of forty eight small squares machined together and layered this with small scraps of fabric and stitch as demonstrated in the Wendy Dolan book Layer, Paint and Stitch.
At the beginning of the Summer members of the Cranwell Group were all asked to submit ideas for future quilt challenges. Although not exactly in sync with the current season, the theme to be drawn out the hat for our latest challenge was “Summer Garden” and for this quilt we were asked to create a quilt with fabric scraps no larger than 3″.
I recently discovered Wendy Dolan’s book Layer, Paint and Stitch and particularly liked the heavily textured project that features on the front cover. I decided to use a similar method to create my Summer Garden quilt.
Layer Paint and Stitch by Wendy Dolan
I sketched out a rough design for the foreground on tracing paper before making a start on the base layer.
The base layer consists of forty eight 3″ squares of cotton fabric which I pinned to a thin vilene ground and roughly machined in place.
Next I added small pieces of different natural fabrics and some flower heads cut from lace and free machined these in place.
The scraps of fabric that make up the background of the quilt.
More texture was built up by adding flower stems, using a thick thread such as crochet cotton in the bobbin and sewing from the reverse side of the fabric. I found this a particularly useful tip as in the past if I have needed thick stitching I’ve either hand sewn or couched……this method is so much quicker and easier!
I began colouring the fabric with blue acrylic paint but wasn’t happy with the result so changed to procion dye for the grass and gave the sky a once over with the green to dull it down. When it had dried I began building up the foreground using sheers for the flower heads and wool for the stems.
I’ve done a lot more work to it since this last photo so will post an update within a couple of days once it’s completely finished.
Three Tall Trees 30″ x 40″
My Three Tall Trees quilt is finally finished……I think. I haven’t put as much detail into this 30″ x 40″ quilt as I did the smaller 30cm x 40cm version, however there is the possibility that at some point before this is handed in for the David Hockney Challenge I just might add to it.
30cm x 40cm version
At long last, after making 3 small quilts for the David Hockney Challenge and promising Mary from LINQS I would make a large one, I have finally made a start on it! It’s going to be a scaled up version of the quilt I made at the Cranwell Group earlier this year with the theme “what Winter means to me” (20″x 15″).
What Winter Means To Me
Last Winter had been all about trees as far as I was concerned. Researching Hockney’s work led to me developing a fascination of my own for trees and woodlands and I began photographing them wherever I went. This quilt is based on a photograph I took while out walking in the woods at Woodhall Spa.
The woods at Woodhall Spa
I began by soda soaking my fabric prior to dyeing with Procion from Artvango. Unfortunately I think I must have used too much soda. Although I covered it before ironing I still managed to burn the entire area of fabric above the tree tops! The dyed area was fine, just the white space above was burnt. I decided, rather than start again, to cut out the trees, back them with Vilene and make a huge piece of appliqué. This turned out to be a blessing in disguise as it was so much easier to handle under the machine than the whole cloth would have been!
Coloured with Procion and Inktense…..prior to burning!
I’ve layered organza and netting and machine stitched the background trees in various coloured threads, the same way as I did for the smaller version, but this time using more variety of colours.
Layered organza and netting.
The next step was to add the woodland floor before layering my appliqué woodland, sky fabric and wadding. The foreground trees have now been tacked in position and can be machined once the finer branches have been hand sewn.
Foreground trees tacked in position
I’m not particularly looking forward to quilting the three tall trees in place as the quilt sandwich is already very bulky. With hindsight I should have sewn the three trees on to the “sky” layer before I started quilting……..another lesson learnt!
After attending the Eco Dyeing workshop at Artvango I came home all fired up and eager to start my own experiments with plants and dyeing. My first attempt wasn’t a huge success but I did manage to make a few marks and dye some fabric which I then incorporated in a quilt for the Cranwell Contemporary Textiles challenge “Flora & Fauna”. In this challenge we had to include “stamping and printing” so Eco printing was the obvious choice combined with some really nice dragon fly stamps from Papermania which I have had for ages but hardly used.
My two Eco dyed cotton fabrics
The fabric on the left of the photo was covered with eucalyptus leaves, tiny ferns and onion skins before being wrapped around a copper pipe and boiled. When I turned off the heat I added a tiny pinch of ferrous sulphate and left it to cool.
The fabric on the right turned out very grey (very, very grey!) after being tied around a large rusty drill bit before boiling. The leaves included a vine of some sort which grows over from my neighbours garden and some miniature rose leaves. Although the colour was a lot darker than I had envisaged at least some of the leaves can be seen.
Close up of my Eco dyed cotton fabric showing marks left by the leaves
I decided to combine these two fabrics with one of those I dyed at Artvango and these would form the background for the quilt.
Three strips of Eco dyed fabric which form the background of my Flora & Fauna quilt
I played around with the layout adding stamped Papermania dragonflies and a selection of leaves which I had dried and preserved with glyserine. I preserved a whole load of these leaves two years ago for an Autumnal workshop I did with adults with special needs. They were so beautiful I couldn’t bare to throw them away and this seemed like the ideal opportunity to use some of them.
Trying different layouts incorporating dried leaves and stamped dragonflies
In keeping with the “natural” theme of this quilt it didn’t feel right to use my machine so I decided to do all the stitching by hand.
The finished quilt
This is the finished Flora & Fauna quilt, complete with frayed edges and wonky stitching.
My latest art quilt has been made in response to a challenge set by the Cranwell Contemporary Stitch group. The challenge was set in January and the theme was “what Winter means to me”. Being a new member meant I didn’t have much time to lose as the deadline for handing in the finished work was going to be the second week in April.
Since signing up for the David Hockney Challenge last year I have become very interested in depicting trees in my work and all through the Winter I have been noticing trees like I have never done before. With this in mind I knew immediately that I wanted to create another tree themed quilt so took my camera on a walk through the woods in Woodhall Spa. This is a beautiful spot and I came home with dozens of images which will provide me with inspiration for a long time to come!
The image I chose to work with is the one shown below.
I began by painting a very pale grey sky and a grey/green backdrop for the woodland using Procion dyes. I bought a starter kit of Procion dyes when I visited Artvango and this was my first attempt at working with them.
The next step was to machine sew the background trees in shades of green and cream thread. I then added torn strips of green sheer fabric and a little black netting to create shadows. Silver embroidery thread was hand stitched to make the tall thin silver trees in the mid-ground.
At this stage I machined the thin branches of the trees, added grey sheer fabric in patches over the top and held it in place with a criss-cross of hand stitches branches.
The woodland floor is hand stitched silver thread over dyed muslin which has been roughly cut and layered with small snippets of gold organza.
The three main tree trunks were formed from iron-on Vilene which was coloured with Procion and bark detail was added using Inktense pencils.
The finished piece measures 15″ x 20″ and unlike my last “tree” quilt, which was done with free machine stitching, all of the machine work on this one was done with the feed dogs up using a walking foot.
Yesterday afternoon saw the 3rd meeting of LINQS, the Lincolnshire Quilters group, which was formed last year with the aim of creating “inspired” quilts to form the basis of a travelling exhibition. Our first “inspirational” theme is the work of David Hockney. The brief is to take influence from his work however you want to do it, whether that be colour, shape, subject matter, etc. it’s up to the individual. Gill set herself the task of reproducing, as accurately as possible, a specific Hockney painting using textiles, threads, beads and found materials. The finished quilt is shown below with a photo of Hockney’s 18th VN painting. Isn’t it beautiful?
Click here for more photos and info about LINQS.
Royal Crustacean by Rose Rushbrooke.
I recently came across this photograph of a beautiful art quilt by Rose Rushbrooke which has been based on a “fractal” design. Not knowing what that meant I googled it and discovered a whole new world of amazing images created using “Fractal” apps. I won’t attempt to explain the mathematics behind this process, there are lots of websites that explain it better than I ever could, but I did download a free app and after a few minutes of playing with it I came up with the following designs. The app I used is Fractile Plus, it’s simple to use and quite addictive. I don’t know if I will get around to doing anything with any of these but it they were fun to create and have the potential for inspiring future textile designs.
My first attempt with the Fractile Plus App.
My Riverside Trees art quilt is now finished and just needs to be edged. This 30cm x 40cm quilt was done as trial ahead of making a larger version at 30″ x 40″ for the David Hockney Challenge. It’s just as well I had the dummy run as there are a few things I have learnt while doing this project.
Firstly, I must start using a sketchbook…..I tend to launch straight into something and make it up as I go along. The sky would have been different, and I would have been happier with it, if I had planned it before I started.
Secondly, I naively thought that using iron-on Vilene would mean I didn’t have to sew the trees in place…….yeah, right! The more I handled the quilt the looser the trees became so they all had to stitched down. This leads me on to the third thing I learnt which is “remember to breath” while free machine stitching!
The fourth thing I found was that organza and net, although looking very effective when layered, can also be problematic as loose fibres sometimes migrate between the layers and are very fiddly to remove. My fabrics were simply laid in place, pinned and stitched, I’m guessing that if I had ironed them onto Bondaweb before stitching I could have avoided this happening.
The finished quilt
I’ve finished sewing the smaller branches and twigs onto my David Hockney inspired quilt and have been giving some thought to the reflections on the water. The simplest way would be to create a mirror image of the riverbank, but my original photograph didn’t show the trees like that. The tree trunks were distorted by the ripples on the water, which I am finding harder to replicate.
I’ve tried roughly sketching a few wiggly tree trunks onto paper and layering them with organza and netting. The intention is to draw directly onto the top fabric and cover this with strips of sheers. If it’s a failure, which I half expect it to be, it won’t matter as I’ve left the wadding and backing loose at the bottom in case I need to patch it in with a second attempt.
Lincs In Stitches 