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.

The Endeavourers, #6, Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head, "The Pond"

Today's the day for the sixth quarterly reveal of The Endeavourers art quilt group, and 'Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head' is the theme of our reveal.

When I first learned this was our theme I initially felt a bit despairing as nothing came immediately to mind except Paul Newman on his bicycle and the song in Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid, but luckily we have a whole quarter and I started to really enjoy thinking about it.

Once I'd got Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head out of my head it quickly got replaced with Chopin's Raindrop prelude, which is a beautiful piece of music evoking the kind of lovely, peaceful, heavy but gentle rain you sometimes get (except where I live where more often than not it is accompanied by a high wind and coming at you horizontally).  It really makes me think of rain falling on greenery, on a still dark day, and so eventually I settled on the idea of rain falling on a pond and its surrounding plant life.  Since the raindrops also had to be falling on someone's head I added a frog, who is making the most of the wet.

Although I know someone who has a complete horror of frogs I love them.  I have the smallest pond liner you can get, about 1.5x2 ft, in a corner of my allotment and in a good summer I can come down and find seven frogs peeping above the surface which makes me very happy.

The pond in my little (15 x 16.5 inch) quilt is surrounded with marsh marigold, rushes, and water forget-me-nots.  Fish swim below the surface.

I used shot cotton, mostly Oakshott which is my favourite fabric to make pictures with, and began by appliqueing the fish and adding a little embroidered detail for their spines.  With some darker fabric
I also made a shadow in the water at the edge of the pond where vegetation would hang over.  I then made the surface of the water shiny and 'submerged' the fish by layering a piece of blue-green gauze on top of them.

The idea to use the gauze came from two things - my mother-in-law had made a lovely shimmery cushion cover by sewing a piece of gauze over an appliqued pattern and I was reminded of this when I used tissue paper to protect the blackbird quilt of my last post while pressing it and really liked the softened effect as the image showed through.

When I'd added all the foliage and flowers round the edge of the pond I finished up by adding some quilted rings for the ripples in the water made by the falling raindrops.

I added some squiggles and lines in the background to suggest more greenery, and it's quite a textured quilt because of the quilting and free-motion embroidery which I used to add details to the leaves and flowers, which also have french knots: but the water is still and calm except for the ripples.

I am very intrigued to know how the other members have tackled this theme - you can find all the quilts on our blog together with links to each member's own website.

15 x 16.5 inches
Shot cotton and gauze
Raw edge applique
Free-motion embroidery and quilting