Saturday 29 May 2010

BLOG 15

If you are visiting the blog for the first time, you will see that there are 3 sections to each entry. Life Before Quilting documents my early years up until the time I started to quilt. My Quilting Journey covers my 25 years of teaching and the quilts that I have made during that period. Quilting 2010 addresses what’s happening in my quilting life now. Just enjoy what you are interested in and visit often!


LIFE BEFORE QUILTING

I was met at Tarawa International Airport, (a tiny building made of local materials), by the acting Head Mistress and a couple of teachers and whisked off to the house where I would live for the next 2 ½ years. It was a functional breezeblock dwelling, C grade and posh by standards, with wooden shutters and an unkempt pandanus roof. Situated on the ocean side of the island, it nestled comfortably in white coral sand, about 20 yards away from the fluid boundary of the high tides. At low tide, I looked out on a ledge of hard packed coral sand, edged and protected from the relentless pounding of the waves by the visible reef. At high tide, the Pacific Ocean stretched away endlessly to the horizon, with the submerged reef defined only by the waves curling and breaking over it. The sand was white, the sky mainly blue and cloudless and I was surrounded by pandanus trees and coconuts palms.
My job was to be responsible for the PE throughout the boarding school for the girls and the boys: EBS (Elaine Bernacchi School for girls) and KGV (King George the Fifth school for boys). And I was launched straight into it, over-lapping for just a few weeks with the departing New Zealand volunteer, and left to get on with it. I couldn’t have been happier!


MY QUILTING JOURNEY

So I was determined to make my first quilt for a competition in hand appliqué, made in smaller sections and joined together after it was quilted, but what subject? I really started to ‘look’ for the first time, to open my eyes to design possibilities and one of things I witnessed was my mother sewing a Jacobean motif in cross stitch. Interesting, I thought.

I went to the local library and started to research theses distinctive floral designs, to take photocopies and to make simplified drawings. I saw the Jacobean style simply as a stem rising from the earth, winding its way up the fabric, throwing off exotic flowers and leaves as it went. Plenty of artistic licence here I thought!

I chose a simple palette of fabrics and made 4 repeated corner motifs (see Jacobean corner motif below). I reviewed them on completion and realised that there was no real impact and that something lacking. So I ‘auditioned’ a variety of colours and discovered that it was a cornflower blue next door to the terracotta that enhanced the palette of fabrics. That was the accent colour I needed to give the ‘pow’ factor (see Jacobean motif below).
So, another valuable lesson learned, colour was a very important aspect of quilt making. Not only did I need a palette of compatible fabrics I needed small scraps of an accent fabric to enliven them.


Jacobean corner motif




Jacobean motif


QUILTING 2010

Most of my present time, in between gardening, is taken up with quilting the Prancing Horse wall hanging. It is bulky under the sewing machine and requires constant rolling, folding, twisting and turning. This makes it physically challenging but the reward is to see the horse emerging in stitch on the back. The horse is being scribbled in thread, the tail in free-flowing lines and the background in wavy lines following the lines of the strips on the front. This copious stitching helps to hold down the bonded fabric on the right side and define a secondary picture of the wrong side. Much more work is needed to complete it ready for exhibition.

Horse in stitches

Monday 17 May 2010

BLOG 14

If you are visiting the blog for the first time, you will see that there are 3 sections to each entry. Life Before Quilting documents my early years up until the time I started to quilt. My Quilting Journey covers my 25 years of teaching and the quilts that I have made during that period. Quilting 2010 addresses what’s happening in my quilting life now. Just enjoy what you are interested in and visit often!


LIFE BEFORE QUILTING

So there I was at 21, recently qualified as a teacher, and standing on a coral atoll called Tarawa, in the middle of the South Pacific. There was a wearying 36-hour journey behind me, and a 2-year contract ahead of me. I had one suitcase with all my worldly belongings, a collection of postcards (to share with them the wonders of the outside world) and a melodica (which I couldn’t play!)

From high in the air, I had seen the whole island as a tiny pinnacle of coral surrounded and protected by a reef, not unlike a tiny blob of paint seeping into the endless azure blue of the Pacific Ocean. On closer inspection, it revealed itself as an L-shaped strip of coral planted with coconut trees, enclosing a lagoon and surrounded by a reef. On landing, all I was aware of was white coral sand, coconut trees and I felt the intense tropical heat of the fierce afternoon sun. The simple sign saying ‘Tarawa International Airport’ was proudly fixed onto a locally constructed structure made from the ribs of coconut leaves and topped with a roof of pandanus leaves. I had arrived!


MY QUILTING JOURNEY

At this stage in my journey, in 1985, I had started home-based classes and the word is spreading. Periodically I would do a one-day workshop with a 3-course lunch to spread the quilting messages wider than my immediate classes. I heard about a craft class in Gresford and started to go there when I was free from teaching (regular readers may recall the mention of one of my current projects: the Gresford sampler) I also joined Chester Ps & Qs (Patch workers and Quiters) so that I could get to know a wider circle of quilters.
I worked hard to be enthusiastic when I taught any technique for the umpteenth time and I coaxed students along week by week in classes. But I needed to develop my skills too. It was about this time that I heard of the National Patchwork Championships. As one who needs to work to a deadline, I decided to enter my first quilt, Appliqué Sampler, of which I was justifiably proud.





Appliqué Sampler






I ran this idea across a ‘friend’ who said the organisers were looking for something a bit more special than that! After recovering from the unintentional hurt of the comment, I wondered what to make instead. I genuinely thought that ‘special’ meant that I had to design something new so I started to look around for an idea and I fretted about what I was capable of achieving. I knew it had to be hand appliqué because this was all I could do well at this stage and the quilt had to be worked in smaller sections to be joined after it was quilted.


QUIILTING 2010

My main focus at present is to get the horse wall hanging machine quilted now. I have thought about this process on and off during the last few days of its construction but apart from the fact that it has to be machine sewn because of the bonded fabric, nothing definite had been decided. I chose to put plain black fabric onto the back so that the quilting with coloured threads could be seen and appreciated as a picture in its own right.





Horse detail 1









Horse detail 2

Thursday 6 May 2010

BLOG 13

If you are visiting the blog for the first time, you will see that there are 3 sections to each entry. Life Before Quilting documents my early years up until the time I started to quilt. My Quilting Journey covers my 25 years of teaching and the quilts that I have made during that period. Quilting 2010 addresses what’s happening in my quilting life now. Just enjoy what you are interested in and visit often!

LIFE BEFORE QUILTING

My initial VSO destination was to have been Mauritius but some problem arose with that posting during my final days at college, forcing me to rapidly apply for jobs for the coming September (1970). I left college to go to a school in Stafford where I filled in for 3 weeks for a PE teacher who was on maternity leave. I half-heartedly attended a couple of interviews in schools in the Midlands but then I was contacted by UNA International Services (a branch of the British Volunteer Programme) and asked it I was willing to go to the Gilbert and Ellice Islands Colony (GEIC) in September. Not half I thought! I posted my acceptance letter, looked on the map to see just where these islands actually where and then told my parents of my intention. I can vividly recall the conversation now:
"Hello Mam, I’ve got a job."
"Oh lovely dear! Is it the one in Leamington Spa or are you staying in Stafford?"
"No, I’m going to Tarawa."
"Tarawa dear? Which county is that in?"
"Actually it’s in the middle of the South Pacific!"
At this point I hear the phone clunk and my mother shouting ‘Dick, come and talk to your daughter!’
And where was my destination? I had to fly from London to New York, then to Los Angeles for a flight to Hawaii and on to Fiji. The Gilbert and Ellice islands (now called Kiribati and Tuvalu since independence) are located vertically north from Fiji, where the International Date Line crosses the Equator. If I had gone any further, I would have been coming back home!

MY QUILTING JOURNEY

So, just to recap, there I was in 1984 in Sychdyn (Soughton in English), N Wales, with a husband travelling to and fro to Bootle daily and 2 daughters at the village school next door to the house…..and still pondering what to do career-wise! It’s fair to say that we had a lot to do to get the house in order but there was plenty of space for creativity.
There was an extra lounge along one side of the property and one day I stood in there and just wondered if I could get home-based classes running in that. I put my 3 quilts on display in a shop in our nearest market town of Mold, with a poster saying ‘If you can sew along a straight line, you can make these!’ I got so many enquiries that I was able to establish 3 classes immediately and over the next few years built up to 7 classes a week. That equated to 12 ladies per class, and 84 per week. I used to teach 3 classes on both Monday and Tuesday (10am – 12 noon, 1 – 3pm and 7 – 9pm), and the final class on Wednesday evening. I just loved it! As I began to stock and sell fabric and supplies, I nominated Thursdays as my ‘At Home’ day when quilters from miles around knew I was there for chat, coffee, fabric and advice. And that’s what I did for 20 years, fitting my own work in between the essential teaching samples.

Few people realise just how much conscientious teachers give up of themselves. They have to put their interests and creative needs on the back burner and devote time and technique to their students. Any particular technique I was interested in was filed in the recesses of my mind to be unwrapped when I had the time and space to attend to it.

Here is a quilt from that early teaching period, inspired by a paper doyley and sewn using a hand reverse appliqué method and needle-turning technique.







Doyley Art











Doyley Art (detail)





QUILTING 2010

I have now managed to get my Prancing Horse picture together but it needs more fine-tuning before it is ready for the quilting process. It is often difficult to control the size of a hanging when you work freely as I do, so it is larger than I anticipated (famous last words). It just grew to fill the space! The fields around me are full of horses and ponies during the winter months so there is always plenty of visual inspiration. Add to that the resources of the Internet and pages of poster art and you can’t go wrong!
The wall hanging is made from squares of bonded fabric, each square being constructed with fabrics bonded on the diagonal to give a sense of movement. This part of the project is the problem solving, the part I particularly like. The next step is to place the picture onto wadding (batting) and a background ready for quilting. This will be done by machine.




Prancing Horse: unquilted









Prancing Horse: detail 1








Prancing Horse: detail 2