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

Poppies by the Sea

I've just finished a quilt inspired by a miraculous sight last summer when there was a beautiful flush of poppies by the sea near where I work in East Lothian.

They were such a surprise as they are not what I usually associate with coastal flora.

Although they look so delicate and fragile, with their silky petals, they seemed to stand up surprisingly robustly against the wind and rain.

I love those colours against the sand and sea.

This little quilt is at about 12 inches square.  It is pieced, quilted, appliqued using Oakshott shot cottons, and embroidered.

Poppies by the Sea at Cockenzie, East Lothian

12 x 12 inches

Pieced, quilted, appliqued, embroidered

Oakshott cotton, quilting cotton

Mounted on canvas

Positivity: A quilt gets a second life

Four years ago I made a quilt.  It was very difficult to make but I had a particular vision of how I wanted it to be.  At the time I was looking for a bit of optimism, and though I'm not religious the quilt was a symbol of my faith at the time that everything would be alright.     

The quilt was pieced with tiny squares - each one finished at one quarter of a square inch, ie the sides are a half-inch long - in Oakshott cotton and gold silk, and had on it a red cross under which I laboriously pieced the words 'Help Will Come'.

It was a kind of personal marching banner and when I was finished with it I was really happy with it, but looking at it I suddenly realised (duh!) that although it was a very personal quilt it might be taken to refer to an international aid organisation - not what I intended at all.

This realisation was a bit of a blow and I kept it under my bed for the next four years trying to decide what to do with it.  Yesterday I got it out again and, holding my breath, cut the bottom off.

Without the wording it is very reminiscent of Victoria Gertenbach's "9 Patch Quilt in Red and White" but I am still proud of it because it really was a beast to make and although I am its mother, so to speak, I think it is still beautiful even if it is in a different way to what I originally intended.  In fact its transformation rather matches my evolving attitude to life - I don't feel any more that help will necessarily come from external sources but that we have try to stay positive and make our own changes to the world.

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 #2, Change/Transformation - Cycles

Today is the day that The Endeavourers art quilt group reveal our second quilts.  This quarter's theme was Change or Transformation.

As usual it was a very thought-provoking theme!  The fact that it was thrown into the hat by four of our group was interesting in itself.  I guess that this subject has a lot of personal resonance.  So  my first thought was about change from the point of view of an individual human.  I also thought about the way that as we get older we become more layered - it would have been interesting to represent that in quilting.

Then I thought about change, especially transformation, in nature.  The transformation from caterpillar to chrysalis to butterfly for example, or from seed to plant - which is always on my mind as I sometimes work as a gardener.

Transformation suggests a transition into something completely new, which would have been an interesting line of thought to follow, but then I started to think about change as cyclical.  Change and transformation can be positive or negative, but some change is just part of the ebb and flow of life, neither good nor bad.

Anyway...this takes me to the background to my quilt.    When we were lucky enough to travel in New Zealand a while back we went to visit the Kauri forest in North Island.  The trees there are almost inconceivably old and huge, and convey a sense of stillness (like columns in a cathedral) that fills you with awe, while life goes on about them. In contrast to this stillness tiny humans scurry around, and other vegetation moves in the breeze, like speeded up events in a time-lapse film. Some of these trees may be over 2000 years old, and they have just quietly stood there while many many changes have taken place in the world.

Closer to home and on a very much smaller scale, trees live through the cycle of the seasons.  This cyclical change was what I chose to represent in my little quilt.  This change is neither good nor bad, it's just part of the flow.

"Cycles"

As the seasons pass, the sun moves across the sky and sinks lower in the horizon.   The leaves on the trees change colour and finally blow away, turning into birds who fly away in winter, only to return in the spring and begin the cycle of change again.

As the sun moves across the quilt it follows (nearly) a sine wave - I think there's something aesthetically pleasing about this shape and in the quilt it is there to reinforce the idea of a repeating pattern.

My trees are birches, which I think are very beautiful and textural.  (You can see my other quilt about birch trees here.)  I didn't want to fill the quilt with leaves as there is already a lot going on, and so I suggested the leaves with triangles, trying to capture the fractured and angular patterns of light you get when you look up through their rather sparse canopies.

The background is made using curved piecing which is densely quilted, leaves and birds are fused applique and the trees and suns are hand-sewn turned applique.  I added hand embroidery in thick perle cotton round the suns.  Materials are almost entirely shot cotton, with silk for the trees.

You can see all our quilts 'exhibited' together on our blog The Endeavourers, where you'll also find links to each individual member.  Please do have a look!

"Cycles"
Shot cotton, silk
Curved piecing with dense quilting
Fused and hand-sewn turned applique
Hand and machine embroidery
17 x 22.5 inches

Mini Hoop Swap

I seem to be coming out of the winter period of creative inactivity, which is just as well as the deadline is approaching for the latest mini hoop swap hosted by Ali.  I love taking part in these swaps, both for hoops and Artist Trading Cards, because of the challenge involved in making something very tiny, though there is always a period of fear when I wonder whether it's going to be a disaster.  After that it's just fun to play and I usually end up making more than one.

It's a secret swap and no-one knows who will be making their hoop but participants can give hints about things they like so I had a jumping-off point.  I started with some very tiny curved piecing...

Added some wavy lines in different coloured thread...

Made some sky...

Had a play with some little beads...

Then I was having so much fun, I did a bit more curved piecing and started on another piece with tiny  embroidered palm trees, a sequin sun, some whispy clouds and a funny little mutant whale.

There was a pause until the hoop I'd ordered arrived, and when it did, I looked at it and suddenly thought "Porthole!!"

Lentils make great rivets!

These little hoops (by Dandelyne) are only 5.5 cm across, with the space in the middle being even smaller of course, but making one seems to take just as much thought and effort as much bigger projects so you always desperately hope that your partner will like the result.

Anyway here are 'Porthole View 1'

and 'Porthole View 2'.

See what I mean about tiny!

I have an idea about which my partner might prefer, I won't let on which, but it will be winging its way to her.

Four in Art: Illumination (Number 4 in the 'Light' series)

If you've been reading for a while, you'll know that for three years I've been a member of the quilt group 'Four in Art'.  We have been making a quilt every quarter to an annual theme and quarterly sub-theme.

Our annual theme for this year is 'Light', and this quarter's theme, chosen by Janine, is 'Illumination'.

I've absolutely loved this year's theme - so much to think about.  The particular nature of the subthemes this year also made it possible to return to some sources of inspiration and with each quarter I got more and more interested in the qualities of light and in light as a metaphor.  So my thought processes for the final quilt in this series turned towards these again and spun off something like this:

• Illumination as in lighting, light, sources of light
• Illumination as in illuminated manuscripts - where 'illuminated' comes from the Latin for 'lit up' or 'enlightened' and refers to gold or colourful decoration of important and precious texts ...

...which might be a source of

• illumination as a metaphor for intellectual or spiritual enlightenment

...which all sent me on a train of thought back to

•  the beauty and colour of cathedral windows...
• ...as a source of illumination which in turn made me think of motes of coloured light dancing on old stonework (a different quality of light to that in Stained Glass Shadows)
• and back to the idea of colour and gilding in illuminated manuscripts

I wanted to incorporate all these inter-related elements.  So this quilt has all the things!

Patchwork cathedral windows represent the real thing, casting dancing coloured lights on old stonework.

The quilting, a combination of straight line and stippling, reflects rays of light on weathered stone.

But you could also imagine illuminated texts, with gilding and beautiful colours on paper or velum, and these texts are themselves a source of 'illumination'.


The gold represents beams of light (illumination in the physical sense), or gilding, and also contributes towards the idea of illumination in the metaphorical sense.

Illumination
30" x 30"
Oakshott cottons and gold silk
Aurifil 50 and 28wt in two colours
Faced binding

Sadly, this will be our last Four in Art reveal!  Thank you fellow members for being a constant source of inspiration and enthusiasm, many thanks to Rachel, our current chairperson, for organising us, and, most especially, thank you Elizabeth for being the drive behind such a warm, supportive and thoughtful group.

Please check out the other Four-in Arters who also reveal their quilts today;

Betty, Elizabeth, Janine, Nancy, Rachel, Simone or on the group blog.

and stay tuned for The Endeavourers, as Janine, Nancy and I move forward with a new group next year.

Four in Art: Stained Glass Shadows

This quarter's theme for Four in Art was chosen by Elizabeth.  Our annual theme is Light, and the quarterly sub-theme is 'Stained Glass Shadows".  I found the shadows above in the National Portrait Gallery, but Elizabeth posted some very beautiful inspiration pictures on her blog here.

I don't have much to say about my contribution - there's not much to explain, except to say that I was fascinated by the way the shadows in Elizabeth's photos read as purple and made use of this colour in my quilt.  I thought for a long time about the challenge, but what I could not find a way to capture what I really liked - the quality of light which she neatly described as 'powdery' - in fabric.

In the end I decided just to try to reflect the saturated colour, and the way that the 'shadows' cast by stained glass lose the definition of the original and become blurred, with colours merging into one another.  I also like the sharp edges and gaps that you see when the 'shadows' fall on a shaped surface.

The beautiful colours of shot cotton are as close as I could get to the quality of the colour and light, and I tried to blur the lines of the shapes with heavy variegated Aurifil thread quilting.

I wouldn't say that this quilt uses any exciting or novel techniques but I have tried to express what I find beautiful in the light cast by stained glass and reflect my response to the theme.

The other Four in Art members can be found below - please do visit them to see how they were inspired by the theme.

Betty         https://www.flickr.com/photos/toot2

Elizabeth     http://www.occasionalpiece.wordpress.com
Janine         http://www.rainbowhare.com
Nancy         http://www.patchworkbreeze.blogspot.com
Rachel         http://www.rachel-thelifeofriley.blogspot.com
Simone         http://quiltalicious.blogspot.com