Blog 404
There is an extra-special excuse for the late blog this weekend. The granddaughters!!
This week I have been continuing to cut my fabric up into 5”
squares and sew them into half square triangles. I have now given away the remaining
cotton fabrics to my local craft group so I can’t look at them anymore and feel
guilty for not using them! This has been
a very cathartic process and something I have needed to do for years. The remainder
of fabrics suitable for creating gardens will be donated to my Polish friends
who are making backgrounds to go behind wrought iron gates. And after this
massive clear-out, I will eventually be able to do what I love to do and that
is work with Batiks, Bali’s and colour.
There are 5 distinct stages in the preparation of the
squares for this scrap quilt. It is naturally a repetitive process and all
about sitting at the sewing machine and applying onesself. If I have half an hour
to fill, I can do any one of the stages as I have several pieces at every stage,
a bit like a conveyor belt!
Another long term project I have started is a small rag rug. I have created one before for a family bathroom and it still looks as good now as when I made it. Such a rug provides a warm place to stand instead of on cold bathroom tiles and all it needs is a periodic shake outside to refresh it. This one will be for an ensuite bathroom. And the reason for starting one (and there usually is a very good reason)? When I investigated my sweetie jars of batiks, I discovered masses of strips and scraps that could hardly be used for making a larger piece of work. So I am cutting them into ¾” strips by 1 ½” length. It is painstaking cutting and not for the faint-hearted but I personally get a buzz from creating something out of practically nothing. This is recycling at its best and all you need it a piece of sacking, a pointed gripping tool (I don’t know what it is called but I loaned it from a friend who’s grandmother used to used it) and fabric …. Oh and a lot of patience! No knotting is involved. One end of the strip is pulled down and up through two holes in the sacking (so that both ends are free on the topside and the backside shows a stitch). So far I have marked a grid with a dark fabric, and I am just going to fill them in with lights and darks.
First attempt
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