BLOG 511

 

Blog 511

 I am back in playing mode this week and enjoying the spontaneity of creative endeavour. This project takes me straight back to my teaching days, many moons ago, when I used to show my method of creating a flower vase/jug as part of a still life wall hanging. I recently came across a folder with some ready-constructed vases/jugs and I made a mental note to use them in the near future. That near future arrived this week and I think this sequence of pictures speaks for itself.

 

Jug

 

With sheers

 

With background

 

With base

 

Daffodil sketch

 

Daffodil fabric (free-cut)

 

Leaves

 

Another flower

 

Several flowers

 

I intend to continue working on this over the next few days as we slowly and inevitably slide into autumn and then winter; the daffodils will remind me that spring will surely come again. The nights are drawing in and the temperatures are dropping gradually, wood has been delivered for our log burner and the radiators have started to click on when necessary. The garden has done its cyclic thing and shrubs are begging to be cut back as they shed their leaves and sink into dormancy. September is my month to saw and cut and slash and lop and do all sort of savage things to my plants. They thrive on it and I get a certain amount of perverted pleasure from the destructive process!

 

 

BLOG 510

 

Blog 510

 

This week has been devoted to the systematic and painstaking construction of the Contemporary Sampler, from beginning to end (the wet weather helped to keep me motivated!) After some experimentation, I decided to use a black machine zigzag stitch for the construction of this quilt, in keeping with the notion of ‘Contemporary’. I used a narrow strip of a multi-coloured shear fabric to over-lay the butted edges for a softer look. I joined the pieces row by row so it was either a square-lattice-square row or lattice-block-lattice row. There were only 6 blocks that were directional, namely the four fan corners, the Maple Leaf and the Clipper Ship.

 

Lattice and corners

 

Lattice and blocks

 

After a false start, when I tried to join blocks that varied by as much as ¼” (I never thought to check them as they had all gone through the same process!!), I trimmed them all fastidiously and the pieces all fitted together like a dream. I decided there and then that I really enjoyed working intricately in smaller sections especially on a firm background (felt in this case) and I will pursue this process in future large quilts.

Completed row

 

 

Detail

 

Joining blocks/lattices

 

 Joining lattices/corners

 

Progress

 

Finished quilt

 

And finally, I was doing my daily walk today and I came across this lovely quote beside a wooden seat over-looking the surrounding Welsh countryside. My mother, who has been dead for several years, would have loved this! She was fiercely proud of her Welsh heritage and, although she lived out of Wales for about 75 years, she still spoke the language and visited as often as she could.

 

Quotation

BLOG 509

 

Blog 509

 And I did knuckle down and make progress this week! It was slow and steady and mainly done to the sounds and rhythms of Radio 4. I am desperate to get this project behind me so that I can do something creative again. But don’t get me wrong! This IS a creative project but, as I said in an earlier blog, once the major decisions have been made, it is all about application and slog! It gets boring to be continually repetitive and I long for the freedom to play again, to try and to fail and to try again, and to search for pastures which are challenging and new. I know I could never make things commercially, and I am in the fortunate positon of not having to, but all that repetition would be the death of me I’m sure!

This reminds me of the time when we came back from living on a remote and tiny Pacific island in the seventies. We settled in a B&B in mid Wales whilst ‘he who cares’ settled into his new job in Llandrindod Wells and until we had found a house to buy. In typical B&B fashion, we had to vacate our room by 9am so I was left on my own for the day to potter around the town of Kington (a small market town, a handful of shops and a population less than 4000).This dismal state of affairs soon propelled me towards a local trouser factory where I instantly became employed to sew waist bands and fly linings! After a short training course, I was let loose on a treadle machine and batches of 50 trouser sections were dropped by my side for me to do my part in the construction process. As you can imagine, after a tentative and careful start, I got quicker and quicker and after a couple of weeks I worked my way up to piece time rates. All the girls around me were already doing just that and they were slumped at their machines day after day, largely uncommunicative and fiercely intent on completing batch after batch. I was just getting into my rhythm when I was moved onto another section. This slowed me down considerably and I was indignant at not being allowed to work at piece time rates. I left at the end of the third week and thank goodness I did. It was scary to reflect on how easily I settled into this repetitive boring work, how obsessed I became by numbers and targets and how unaware I became of the people around me. It was a valuable lesson for me and here is my preferred repetition these days!

 

Sheers

 

Stitch

 

Soldering (claustrophobic)

 

Mask (not a pretty sight!)

 

Corners before

 

Corners after

 

 Lattice before

 

Lattice after

 

Completed (centre section)

 

Close up

 

The same repetitive process went into the outer border and corner stones, so the body of the quilt is complete and all I need to do now is decide whether I am going to lace all the pieces together or sew them on my machine. I know which will be the quickest!!

 

Outer border

 

Lacing

 

Machine stitch

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

BLOG 508

 

Blog 508

 

Progress is steady and varied on the Contemporary Sampler. Once the creative work has been done and design decisions have been made (and that’s the best apart as far as I am concerned) it is then all about constant application and hard work. The different processes concerned are lengthy and repetitive at this stage and it takes shovel loads of grit to carry on. There is also the desperate need to see what the finish quilt is going to look like and this is the best metaphorical carrot in the process for me. Background radio helps but, if I am working on the sewing machine, I miss half of what has been said! Anyway, here’s the week’s progress.

 

Stitch detail 1

 

Stitch detail 2

 

Stitch detail 3

 

Soldering detail 1

 

Soldering detail 2

 

Soldering detail 3

 

Fan before soldering

 

Fan after

 

Dutchman’s Puzzle before

 

Dutchman’s Puzzle after

 

At this stage, all the individual blocks have been completed now and here they are on my design wall.

 

Soldered blocks

 

I toyed with the idea of finishing it at this stage but felt that the blocks needed to be separated by lattice work and corner blocks. I knew this would take a huge amount of extra time but I felt that adding them would be in the true spirit of the sampler quilt. There are 31 rectangles and 12 corners in the main body of the quilt and another 18 rectangles and 18 corners in the outer border!! I asked myself ‘what have I done!?’ and then I started to knuckle down and make some progress.

 

Bordered blocks

 

Lattice preparation

 

Stitching

 

Corner stones

 

Soldering

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

BLOG 507

Blog 507

As I promised, it’s more of the same this week. Here are some close-up pictures of the detail on each block, showing the decorative sewing in the dark, medium and light threads.

Detail 1

Detail 2

Detail 3

Detail 4

Detail 5

Many more designs have been added to the collection and it is just a case of application and repetition now. As usual, I prepare blocks at various different stages so that when I get fed up of doing one process, I just can go onto another for some light relief. Trimming the blocks helps to give me a sense of progress and I can see them develop into a potential quilt on the display wall. So far, so good!

Blocks

Trimming

Progress

We have just had a treasured lunch time get-together with our family. I cannot tell you how good it was to be with them once more after so many months apart! We have all been very careful as individual households, and we have isolated in line with to the somewhat muddled instructions, but we still socialised outside to be on the safe side. I wonder if the underlying fear of this virus will ever go away?!