Mr and Mrs Blackbird

I've just finished working on this quilt, which is the fourth in a series of blackbird quilts, though the third is still waiting for a few finishing touches.

Like my other blackbird pictures this has a curve-pieced background which is quilted before I start to lay on the applique.

Then, as usual I sketched out various elements on pieces of paper, and tinkered with the composition until I felt it was right.  This part of the process takes ages.

I use Oakshott shot cottons a lot, as you can see if you look for the label in my side bar.  The different warps and wefts create a feeling of dimension, and the colours are extremely beautiful, so they are ideal for applique.     

Only the brown was difficult to get right and so I used a single French General fabric (front and reverse) for Mrs Blackbird.  This turned out to be very fortuitous because I have run out of the second-hand black beads I used for the eyes of previous blackbirds and I couldn't believe my luck when I looked at the colour test circles on selvedge.

I added a shine to the eyes with a french knot.

This piece is a commission, and I wanted to give it a bit of clout so, rather than binding, I finished it by wrapping round a homemade wooden 'stretcher'.

Mr and Mrs Blackbird

Shot cotton and quilting cotton

Curve piecing, raw-edge applique, free-motion embroidery

38 x 38 cm

Winter Blackbird II

This poor blog doesn't see much action these days as I'm rather neglecting it in favour of Instagram, though my recent absence has mostly been due to a winter slump in creativity which I'm just coming out of.  

Hopefully the slump is at an end, mostly thanks to a commission which meant I had to get my big girl pants on and get on with it.

Winter Blackbird II is made using a curve-pieced panel on top of which I've added the blackbird and cotoneaster branch using raw-edge applique:  they are fixed in place with free-motion embroidery in Aurifil threads as I find that using the 50 wt with a sharp new needle helps prevent too much fraying round the edges.  The background is made using shot cottons supplemented with some old cotton curtain lining, and metallic gold silk for the winter sun. The blackbird and branch are also sewn using Oakshott cottons - the different warp and weft colours add so much life to the fabric and stop it looking 'flat'.   The blackbird's eye is a shiny black bead sewn on with a couple of stitches of Aurifil wool to add the highlight.  

  

The Endeavourers - #1, Nature

Today is the first ever quarterly reveal for quilts made by The Endeavourers.  You can find all the quilts gathered together on our joint blog, together with WIP posts and thoughts about the theme, which, this quarter, is nature.

What a great theme to get started with!

"All the animals, plants, rocks, etc in the world and all the features, forces and processes that happen or exist independently of people, such as the weather, the sea, mountains, the production of young animals or plants and growth..."   Cambridge Dictionary

I liked the idea of the drama of forces of nature, and I thought of the phrase "Nature, red in tooth and claw" which would have lent itself to something interesting but possibly rather gory!   But nature to me a source of happiness and interest, so I abandoned those lines of thought and I'd been mulling over various ideas when I looked out of my dining room window and saw a beautiful male blackbird sitting in a very healthy Cotoneaster bush, covered with red berries, which is in the garden below.   I live in the city, and I love that even among all the buildings and industry nature is all around!

So that, right there, was my inspiration and here is my blackbird sitting in its cotoneaster on a winter day, representing the natural world.

I decided to make the most of the wintery sky which is made using curved piecing, heavily quilted, and the blackbird and branches are raw-edge applique, which was then free-motion embroidered to add detail and fix it in place.  Apart from the winter sun which is pieced with gold silk, I used shot cottons from Oakshott which are ideal for works like this because the different warp and weft give subtle variations in colour rather than being solid, and this quality is perfect for anything from the natural world.  The centre of the blackbird's eye is a small black bead sewn on with white wool thread to make the eye sparkle.

I wanted my image to be stylized rather than hyper-realistic so I have not filled in the fine detail in the image but have left it so that you can mentally join the dots.  In the past I have done a fair bit of printing and I'm drawn to more graphic images.

There are no 'new-to-me' techniques in this quilt so it wasn't very adventurous, but my quilts have more often than not been abstract so it's been good to make something pictorial!

Please do visit The Endeavourers - you should be able to find all our works together by the end of today, and from each post be able to visit each participant's own blog for more detail.  I'm really looking forward to seeing what inspired everyone, and how they interpreted the theme.