I'm working on...

... this quilt, I loosely called Pebble Path, although that's just a working title.

I'm not very keen on Christmas and try, as far as possible, to avoid it. Today my girls have gone with their dad and his family, which is wonderful, as they all have a rollicking good time (waving to them all - have a good one!) and I can sit at home and quilt, to which I really hope no-one takes offence - (it's not that I don't wish to see you!)

So I am sitting in the lounge today, with the following view out of the window (isn't it great??)

(please excuse the strings dangling in the middle, which I should have untied - those are kitty toys!)
... and here is what is in the machine:
To those who are celebrating today: may your day and year ahead be filled with all you wish for! And I certainly WILL join you in wishing for peace on earth....

Just finished this

This piece is called "All that glitters (- is made in China)"
The quilting shows rows of textile workers sitting at their sewing machines - both the workers in China and the ones in South Africa who have lost their jobs because of all the cheap Chinese imports. You can't see the quilting here, but you can see it in the previous post on marking quilting patterns.

Pieces of Me 2

I cannot seem to solve the problem of why Blogger won't let me post this picture in the previous post on this topic, but I'm tired of struggling with it, so here is the pic in a separate post.

How to transfer quilt patterns?

I found a great way!

I've been working on a piece (pics coming soon as it's almost finished) and wanted a particular repetitive quilt pattern in specific areas of the quilt. I can't do them free-hand as they need to be uniform enough to be recognisable, so they had to be marked onto the quilt somehow.

I've been struggling with this issue for a long time and none of the solutions I have found in books have been good enough. I've been through innumerbale vanishing pens and pencils which most often either vanish too quickly or not at all, and when they do work, don't show on either light or dark fabrics (and my work has been VERY variegated) etc. etc.

A while ago I hit on the idea of tracing the design onto tissue paper (tears easily), pinning it on and sewing on the lines. This worked well, except that tearing off the paper tended to leave tiny bits which had to be scraped off with fingernails - better than marking the fabric, but still not the greatest.

Yesterday I had a brainwave, while at work watching someone wrap a bowl of Xmas biscuits with cellophane. Cellophane! It's transparent and tears beautifully. I was tired when I got home and had a bad headache but just had to try it. I only had some red cellophane in the house, but it worked like a bomb. I drew a template and traced it onto the cello with a permanent marker in rows. I then cut out the rows and pinned them onto the quilt and then free-motioned over the lines. I think I might just have solved this issue for myself!

The bottom row shows the cellophane after the pattern has been sewn and before it is torn off. The middle row shows the cello just pinned to the quilt, and the top row is after it has been sewn and torn off.

It tears neatly along the stitching line and doesn't pull the stitches and doesn't tend to tear into little bits the way paper does, as it is not fibrous.

I'm so chuffed! I found this all by my widdle self. Next purchase: some clear cellophane!

A Blog of Note

VERY cool pics :)

Small things

My memory card arrived today. My camera has 24 photos of internal memory and since I was used to film containing 24 exposures that was all I needed for the first little while. But I am now becoming a hardcore addict and felt I needed more memory! I was advised to get more than I needed (thanks Jorgen!).... so I gulped and bought 1 Gb, which seems excessive to me now, but I guess I will find a use for it. My camera can do movies, so maybe.....?

S-l-o-w!

This is a slow medium. It sometimes frustrates me. At other times I love it, love that I can take it around with me, to tea-time at work and just sit and plod along on it. I love sitting on the couch with a good movie on, and making slow progress.

But it does mean that I get bored with one thing taking so long to complete. My answer is to have several projects going at once.... like around 12 to 15. So here's an oldie I blogged about earlier, with a bit more progress:

MandelBrot resurfaces

Very Zen

My therapist had this little Zen garden - absolutely gorgeous.

Pieces of Me

I had the good fortune this past year to be in (psycho-) therapy. I say 'good fortune', because therapy is expensive and my medical aid cover exhausts after about 9 sessions. Our local psych hospital trains psych interns and I was able to get a place with an intern for a year. As it happened, we just hit it off and it turned out to be an excellent match. I was able to get so much done and I feel very, very fortunate.

As a thank-you, I gave her this quilt entitled "Pieces of Me".

Still busy quilting, having Escape Hatch'ed the quilt sandwich.

Left: The Ankh (Egyptian symbol of the soul)

Actual colours below. The strong sun tends to bleach the colours when you take pics, but it does show up the quilting detail quite nicely.

Below is the final product (which I will post as soon as Blogger lets me...grr)
Edit 20 Dec - it just won't. I'll try in a separate post.

A lampshade

During a few days of feeling a bit uninspired about working on any pieces, I picked up this old lampshade frame and decided to cover it. Some time ago I had started the wire-and-bead crochet below, and had meant to repaint the frame, but didn't have the paint. I decided it would look even better covered with coiled copper wire, of which I had plenty (cheap at the local electrical supplies shop). I don't think I have enough crochet, so will need to do some more.


Here is what I currently have and below I am holding it as it will be "sewn" (with thinner copper wire) onto the frame. It will look quite nice and best of all, will have cost very little. I found some marked down lampstands of beautifully turned wood at the same electrical supply shop and bought them without lampshades. So once the first is done, perhaps I'll feel encouraged enough to make another :)

I'll post a pic when it is done.



Edit 19 Dec 2006 - and here it is:

Books

I've once again been shopping at Kalahari :) I have spent way too much money there, but these virtual shops are irresistible!
I've posted Amazon.com links here as they tend to have more information about the books than Kalahari does. (I always look up the books on both sites to read as much as I can about it before I buy it, as I have to buy them unseen.)
Uncommon Threads - Gayle Pritchard. Just published in November 2006. My, how small the world has become :). I was interested in reading the history of the art quilt movement, and although it is American history, it's still interesting to see the developments and how they happened.

Art Quilts - Lark Books. A GREAT buy. Large and thick with colour pictures of 400 quilts. Awesome. I bought this one some time back and often just sit and page through sections again or leave it open on a page and just gaze.

Gaudynski's Machine Quilting Guidebook - Diane Gaudynski
I'm about half-way through reading this and it is a great How-To book. I'm wanting to work on my machine quilting skills and as usual it is a case of practising and practising and making all the mistakes. But this practising is great fun so it's going well. I'm making LOTS of mistakes :))
Diane Gaudinski really seems to know what she is talking about and I'm finding it very useful having guidelines to follow.
Contemporary Quilts - I have only glanced in this book so far. It seems to be English. I can't find it on Amazon as the book is at home and I can't see the author from the above pic! Will search some more.

Colouring with Thread - Ann Fahl (sorry, but I cannot resist correcting the spelling of 'Colouring'!) This looks VERY promising. I think it was the 'no-drawing' phrase that drew me, if you'll excuse the pun :)

Some time, no blog

Work has been busy, and I've just been a bit dull and uninspired. Plus we have a new cat: (with green-eye, which is the feline version of red-eye)

... who has needed some attention to settle in (as have the two resident cats who are very rattled, especially as my tenants have acquired a cute medium-sized puppy who is often in the backyard.)

Super-aptly (and quite co-incidentally) she is a PATCHWORK cat (tortoiseshell/white) and has really pretty markings, huge ears, and a very, very cute face! Okay, I am biased. Reminds me of a cat quote: "People say that with cats, training is much more difficult than with dogs. It's not. Mine had me trained in two days."

But I have been plugging away at some items so there will be a few new things to show.

My girls will be going off on holiday with their dad later this week, so I plan to arm myself with a pile of DVDs (wish I could find talking books!) and settle into my studio/lounge and happily stitch some days away, and perhaps quilt some of the tops that are piling up around me.

New beady shoes

Edit 17 Dec 2006: MORE beady shoes: :)

My feet are dressed for this summer! (I'm not a big shoe fan, so it's unusual for me to have several pairs of shoes I really wear and love. Most are obligatory-wear eg work shoes and shoes I can wear with my uniform etc) I feel very shoe-rich now!
Below are my all-time favourite pair of shoes, which may help explain why I am not a big shoe fan. My feet are possibly my best feature at this stage of my life!
(Okay, perhaps that was more than you needed to know. This is, after all, a quilting blog!)

Tread Lightly

(I know I haven't written anything about this. I don't feel I have had a peaceful moment by the computer to sit and type it out. This post will be modified when I do find that moment.)

Thought for the day

I read somewhere that fishes cry
every time their kinsfolk die.
What is sea, and what is ocean?
Little drops of fish emotion.

- Author unknown

Inspiration for future work

Two pictures I plan to use as inspiration for future work. The first is a fractal image and the second a photo I took of a protea that grows outside the 1820 Settler's museum.

A fruitful weekend

This is what I've been working on over the last three days. The background is pieced and there will be numerous things fused on top of the background. I'm really pleased with the way this is turning out and it may even end up looking as good as I've envisaged, which is really, um... unusual. I've had a lot of fun using my hand-dyes and hand-painteds.

Another reason I like living in South Africa

I've just returned from a trip to our local fruit and veg shop and after I had unpacked, I just *had* to take a picture of the bounty. :) After I returned from a trip to Toronto some time ago, it struck me how lucky with are with all the fruit that we have access to. Not so much because there is a lot of fruit available (there was even more fruit available in Toronto, and these days fruit is flown eveywhere) but because it is so CHEAP here, that we can afford to buy so much of it.

Butterflies in Houston?

A butterfly flaps its wings in the Amazon and the knock-on effect causes a tornado halfway across the world ... or how does it go?

Well, when tons and tons of American quilters get together in Houston, the ripples can be felt even way over here in South Africa. I found a nice website, courtesy of Deborah (thanks!) with lots of pictures of quilts here.

What is quite exciting to me is that I recognise some of the quilts! - from having browsed the Web and seen the quilts on the person's website or blog. I also recognise quite a few of the quilt artists names.

Some of the very traditional quilts don't do much for me, but there is enough TOTALLY AWESOME stuff there that my mouth just hangs open. I WISH I could do this sort of thing. Wow, it is *very* inspiring.

Headaches again

I'm so sick of these headaches, I could cry. What else can I say...

I'll just try and bury myself in work, and at least that'll get done - maybe I'll be finished by the time the headaches let up; won't THAT be nice.

Mandelbrot

Fractal art caught my attention many years ago when the psychedelic images first appeared. Only later did the idea of interpreting them in fabric come to me. One day I stumbled onto the website of Rose Rushbrooke which completely captivated me. As far as I can gather from her notes she needle-turn-appliques (is there such a verb? there is now!) all her fabric down. Since I have been duly "corrupted" by Melody Johnson et al, I mix fusing, with needle-turn, with satin-stitching raw edges. It goes so much faster when you can fuse the very fiddly bits.

So here is what I have been doing over the past few days. The purple background was auditioned but rejected in favour of a brown (which will also be cut down and in turn appliqued onto another background.) I LOVE doing this kind of work.

Here is another Mandelbrot set, which I did some time ago and had just put away, not knowing what to do next.
I was surfing online and googled 'Mandelbrot' and was absolutely delighted to discover that Benoir Mandelbrot is alive and well at 80 and is an Emeritus Professor in Mathematics at Yale University in the USA. I even found an email address for him. I think it's wonderful that he has lived to see his mathematical work take off in various popular art forms!

I downloaded a freeware Fractal program and had great fun looking at various fractals. The maths is beyond me, but you don't have to understand it to enjoy the intricate shapes that are works of art in themselves. Try your hand here.

More leaves

During the workweek, I am not really able to do a lot of creativity-work, so I tend to focus on brainless practical tasks that prepare things for creative input. This has been the Week of Leaves - I pick up leaves outside wherever I am, bring them to work, photocopy them and stickly-tape them to X-ray plates to make templates. The above leaves are from the grapevine and wisteria that grow outside my front door. At tea-time, I go and get my cup of tea and sit in the tea-room listening to various conversations while cutting around the shapes. It's relaxing and I feel like I am making *some* progress creatively, even while at work.

And now it's T-time! :)

A small change

This morning I made a very small change to my profile. It used to read blah blah "... devoted to the part of me that aspires to be a quilt artist..." or something like that.

It now reads: "...devoted to the part of me that is a quilt artist..." .

It is, after all, permissible for me to think of a part of myself in this way.

These work-weeks...

This is another sighing post, so feel free to skip it.
These workweeks really take it out of me. What can be so tiring about sitting down all day just dealing with paperwork? - but by 17:00, all the funk has gone out of me. Yesterday was Monday and things were really quiet at work, but still, by the time I got home, I was even too tired to cook. I cut out a few more leaves in front of the TV, but then just went to bed at 20:30. Sigh. I hate being so tired all the time. I also know I need to lose some weight and get some exercise, and then the tiredness will improve, but try pushing through the tiredness to get there!
OK enough sighing, at least in this spot. Have a good day! (this mainly directed to my brother in Singapore, who as far as I know is the only reader of my (now public) blog so far - howzitbru!)

Magic happens here!

I've moved my workspace to the bay window, partly for the wonderful light right next to the window (tho' a bit sharp on the eyes just as the sun rises) and partly to make a little more space on the big table (um, which is coming as soon as I clear off all the other stuff that has instantly migrated there!)

It's wonderful having the garden right next to me (this photo was taken at night).

T'was a good weekend

I began to cut out oak leaves from the dyed fabrics and now have a whole pile of them. I want to piece the background from various hand-dyes and painted fabrics and fuse the leaves on top.

... and I dug out my old fabric paints, which were due to be used up before they dried out or became unusable. I just splodged it on and it could have been neater but I wanted a brushstroked finish. Fun was had.

Arb stuff

The other day it occurred to me that I've posted pics of one of our cats, but not the other, so herewith a picture of Her Abbyness. Abby is around 3 years old and was recently diagnosed with food allergies. Yes, really. My initial reaction was "Puh-lease! a CAT with food allergies?" What would she do in the wild...?

But I guess if I look at the ingredients of some of the cat food brands, it isn't all that surprising - much the same as for humans. We really eat a load of junk. Abby had scratched the two patches above her eyes and up to her ears completely raw from the itching. She is now on an allergen-free cat food (very easy actually, if a bit expensive) and as you can see on the pic she is completely healthy again. And here is another completely arbitrary photo of some rose quartz I bought at a new garden nursery in town. Really nice stones and not all that expensive either.

And yeah, the above had absolutely nothing at all to do with quilts.

Munch Scream dolls

These dolls are for a project that I hesitate to say too much about before it is a little further along. That's really not fair, I know and I shouldn't even be putting the pics here, but I was really pleased with how the dolls looked, so I snapped a few photos. Plus I was on a roll with the camera...

dyeing fun

These so called "Sun paints" are really a lot of fun. They're paints, not dyes, and since the dye migrates from dry patches to wet patches, the idea is that if you retard the drying by placing objects onto the cloth, then those areas will be lighter. So here is a tour of my pretty wild garden.

First we have the ferns. They're pretty, I guess.


Next we have the geraniums in a patch that was once a herb garden.







And lastly the dandelions which compete with the lawn for space, and next to the dandelions, the bamboo which flourishes despite repeated efforts at eradication. Pretty, but horribly invasive. I'm sorry, the photos seem to be all over the place and whenever I try to change them they disappear, so I've settled for the uncontrolled look. Rather like the garden itself.




I want to do an autumn-coloured nature quilt, hence this dyeing. With oak leaves on it from the oak next to my house. (See earlier post "Oak leaves".) After looking at Gabrielle Swain's website and Frieda Andersen's blog I am so inspired!

It's also done

Still no name for this one (other than i name I used for the file to upload the pic, which is 'greendye'). It's also a bit skew, but I'm quite pleased with how it has turned out. Some detail shots:



On this last picture you can just make out that I wrote some of the text from the Leonard Cohen song Suzanne onto it:
"... and the sun pours down like honey/ on our lady of the harbour/ and she shows you where to look/ among the garbage and the flowers..."
I'm not sure it looks all that nice, but it is sufficiently subtle that it doesn't completely spoil it.
Laura is begging to have it hang in her room, so I guess that it where it will go for now.