Textile Maids

Today I went to the inaugural meeting of a proposed new textile art group which is to be called Textile maids and we met in the cafe at Heartlands. This is a new feature built on and around an old mining site and is part of the Cornish Mining  Heritage Development  and it is hoped will attract lots of visitors into an area not noted for tourist attractions. Carolyn and Sue who run Beyond Patchwork came up with the idea and after a bit of to-ing and fro-ing it seems that the group is going to go ahead.

There will be a monthly meeting and each month there will be a group challenge and the aim is that eventually, we will have enough work to hold our own exhibitions. It was a very lively meeting and everyone seemed to be very keen, especially when Carolyn stressed that the main idea behind the group was to have fun! Well, no arguing with that!

Our first theme is Heartlands itself, and although it is rather bleak, there are a lot of things there to inspire.

Railway tracks in the yard.

Water running in a leat.

Old machinery.

And there has to be a plaque!

More machinery and some interesting shapes.

Some lovely rust on a pillar.

An old tin stamp.

Marks on the walls.

More machinery.

and finally, some stones in the chimney.

So, I think I may have a go at producing something that will reflect both the bleakness and the hope that the site aims to generate . With all the other things that are on, it may be a bit of a tall order, but we'll see! I think this may just be a impetus I need to get me going again on producing some arty pieces rather than worrying about patchwork!

Having said that though, I have to say that it is a comfort and my new machine is helping me get those points matching!

This quilt which was on show at Cowslips when we visited on Tuesday is so lovely and I so fell in love with the quilting, that I must have a go!

Trying to work out the pattern has proved to be a bit of a challenge so I'm giving it my own take!

Now I'm off to sit in our newly heated sitting room and listen to our central heating boiler doing it's thing now that the oil has been delivered. Note to self and DH check the oil level more often so you don't let it run out!!!!

Branching out ...again

Since arriving here in Cornwall I have discovered that there are lots and lots of quilting and patchwork groups, but very few have websites and they don't tend to publicise themselves. Occasionally there will be an advert in a local paper, or on a lamp post  or shop window about such and such a group holding an exhibition in a village hall, but trying to find out about groups near me, and then finding out if I could join has not been easy. What has struck me is how little interest there is in the Quilter's Guild down here and sad to say it seems that the Guild itself doesn't really seem all that interested in us. However, a friend recommended South West Quilters and on Saturday they held a meeting  nearby so I went along.

It was a very lively meeting and I thoroughly enjoyed it. So  much so, that I decided to join. It's cheaper than the QGBI, they also produce a nice magazine and they hold regular workshops at a very modest cost.  So, I sent off my cheque and today I received my new member's pack and membership card.

After all the terrible rain and wind we have had here, there isn't much chance of long cliff walks, so a nice quilting project will fit the bill nicely. To that end, I've used my legacy from my DH's Aunt to buy a new toy and here it is!

It is a Juki TL98P. No fancy stitches, not even a zig zag stitch, but it is fabulous for free machine quilting and it's really robust. Not suitable for taking to workshops, but I'll soon have my new Horn quilting cabinet for it to sit in and away I go!!!

Tomorrow I'm off on a trip around various quilting shops with the Trevithick Quilters, floods permitting to stock up with essentials! I anticipate that fabric will find it's way into my shopping bag, but I must try and be careful not to get overloaded. I think the stash is beginning to resemble a small mountain and there's real doubt that I will ever be able to use it all!

More to the point!

Last year I signed up for a Craftsy class with Kimberly Einmo called Magical Jelly Roll quilts. This class is all about using jelly rolls, charm packs and layer cakes to make some traditional blocks but with a more contemporary look. I'm not really interested in patchwork for it's own sake, but this class looked as if it might be useful to me in my quilting journey.

I have a number of jelly rolls, charm packs and layer cakes in my stash, all of which I bought with an idea in mind that didn't in the end come to anything. So I started in on  the flying geese tutorial where Kimberly shows how to make flying geese in a way that doesn't waste any fabric and combine them with squares and triangles to make a very pretty quilt pattern.

Sometimes I do wonder about people who sit at their sewing machine and turn out perfect squares and triangles that lie flat and where all the points meet exactly.  Can it be that difficult? Well, it might look easy, but it isn't and some, including me, would say, so what?  But you know, there's something about the exercise of joining two pieces of fabric together and actually getting the resulting shape to behave just as you want it to, and for me recently it's become a bit of an obsession! Some would say, and who could blame them, to the point of becoming a nerd!!!!

So Kimberly's flying geese turn out to be perfect rectangles which need no trimming and are all the same size! My flying geese have wonky edges and are not at all the same size. So I practice and again and again I come up against the same problem. Kimberly advises using spray starch to stabilise the fabric so I try that with mixed results. Oh, I'm fed up so I'll move on to the next class!

Onto the Lonestar Strip magic! Once again, I followed the instructions and made a bit of a pigs ear, but I thought with practice again, I could do better. So I tried one of my new jelly rolls and found that no matter how I tried, it just wouldn't go together as it should.

I persevered, and after putting on a fake piping strip to conceal the fact that the points of the star disappeared in the border and some quilting; here it is made up into a cushion cover;

After a lot of head scratching, I finally got my ruler out and measured the strips and you know what? They're not 21/2 inches wide like it says on the packet, they actually measure 23/4 inches wide! Doesn't sound like much, but it explains a lot.

So, now I'm trying again having shaved 1/4 inch off each strip, measuring my scant 1/4 inch seam with a ruler before, during and after sewing, pressing not ironing etc. Will it make a difference?

Know what, yes it did! After being so careful with the measuring, cutting and sewing, I have a beautiful star. All the points meet, well almost; the middle is in the middle and,,,, wait for it..... the points at the edge are all 1/4" in from the edge, so haven't been cut off when I sewed on the border!

So here it is. Not yet quilted, but very satisfying to have done it!

Now having got that out of my system, I'm going back to "art"!

Friendship

Sometimes I wonder about what friendship means. Many times we think of people we know as if they were friends, but then it turns out that they may have been nothing more than acquaintances who happen to have a common interest. I did wonder how many of the people I regarded as friends would keep in touch with me after I had moved and only a few have kept in touch. So, even though I had known some of them a long time, and saw them on a regular basis, it seems that they did not regard me as a friend, merely an acquaintance with a common interest.

Now we have emails, facebook, ipads etc, it's very easy to keep in touch at a distance and so I have been trying not to mind very much about the ones who haven't. Some have kept in touch and I really value them, but things move on, and I am slowly getting used to my new surroundings and have started making friends here. Of course, it goes without saying that my best friend and constant companion, my DH is as dear to me as ever.

So, off to Trevithick Quilters today and had a lovely time chatting and getting on with some Christmas projects for my nearest and dearest. These ladies have really welcomed me and I hope that in time some of them will become true friends. They are a very lively bunch and their programme for the coming year is packed full of activities, group quilts, trips and workshops. Today I met two ladies who I hadn't met before and they were both engaged in some truly lovely hand embroidery which I really must try.

So, as I felt a bit isolated just after the move, I decided to join in with a "Friendship Quilt Swap" organised by the Quilters Gallery . I signed up to register my blog with them a while ago and they always have lots of interesting things to look at. The aim of the swap was to make a small quilt incorporating some hand embroidery to a design downloaded for free, from The Stitching Cow.

Here's my little quilt ready to be posted to my swap partner who lives in Virginia USA.

A rather twee message, it's true, but not too challenging to sew!

I did go a bit overboard on the quilting, but in the end I was really pleased with the result.

 So, on the 24th September, I posted my quilt off and chose to send it by air mail, sent an email to my swap partner and the coordinator to tell them it was on it's way and waited. A long silence followed and so last week I emailed the coordinator to say that despite two emails to my swap partner, I had had no reply and still didn't know if my little quilt had arrived safely. My swap partner is not the person who is sending me a quilt, and I haven't received one yet so pardon me for feeling that this had been a waste of time and that the hands of friendship do not extend very far!!!

Then today, my swap partner, Patricia sent me an email to say that my quilt had arrived safely, but it took 42 days to get there rather than the 7 to 10 days I had been given to believe! Also, the reason she had not replied before was that she had had a really bad fall and had suffered some horrible injuries and had not been able to do anything much  until now. In fact she had decided that as she had not been able to make a quilt herself to pass on to her swap partner, she was going to send mine on to them and not keep it, even though she said she really loved it.

So I'm rethinking my definition of what friendship means and even though I probably won't ever get to meet Patricia, I feel she is a friend in the true sense and I'm glad I took part in the swap now.

Beginnings and finishings

Finishing first! My scrappy doodles quilt started at the workshop with Sheena Norquay is now finished!

How do I feel about it? Well, of course, like many others, I can only see the mistakes when I look at

 something I've made, but I have to say that I am quite pleased with how it's turned out.

The idea behind the quilting is a good one and one I shall use again, but it will take a bit of planning to get it right on a bigger piece. Drawing inspiration from the actual patterns on the fabric is a good starting point, but in order to make the quilting blend, I think I would need to actually draw the designs out first, partly to get them in my head. but also to see how different designs will blend together.

The close ups of the quilting are shown below. As with any design process, it's a matter of choice how you interpret a pattern  and bring it out. So now that I've done them, I can see all sorts of other designs I could have used instead and so the next one I make will be different.

This exercise has given the phrase "quilt as desired" a whole new meaning. In fact it does seem that having done the piecing or putting together the quilt top many of us simply blob out of the quilting altogether. How do you decide what thread to use, what patterns to use, how dense the quilting should be? This is what fascinates me about this craft and the more I do, the less I know I know, if that makes sense.

In our village back in August, a local group called Kernow Quilters held their exhibition. There were a lot of quilts on show, many of which were beautifully made, but most had almost no visible quilting at all, and those that did were mostly stitched in the ditch or with simple straight lines. It seems that for most of these people, the patchwork was the most important bit and the quilting, well......

Now I think I can safely call myself a quilter, because for me, the quilting is the most important part and is what should bring the thing to life.

And so to the beginnings! On Tuesday, I went along to a meeting with the Trevithick Quilters who meet in Camborne. Not exactly on my doorstep, but unlike the groups who meet near me, they seemed a very welcoming and friendly group. They are very much a traditional patchwork group, but at least one  of the members attended the Sheena Norquay workshop, and after talking to them, it seems that, like me, they just don't know where to start when it comes to the quilting. Perhaps we will make a start on the search for ideas to our mutual benefit. I hope so.

They are having an exhibition this weekend and they have asked me to put my little pieces on show. So now I've got to get hanging sleeves done before I can move onto the next project. What that will be, is a bit uncertain so watch this space!

Showing off!

Last Saturday I went to the  Quilter's Guild Regional Day for the Cornish group which was held in a village hall in Golberdon, a place I had never heard of, and in the back of beyond! There were very few people there, which was not surprising given the remote location, but it was an enjoyable day.

There were two speakers, Lynn Carr who is a member of the Contemporary Quilt Group and Sheena Norquay whose work I have admired for a long time. Lynn's talk was interesting, but went on a bit too long. Sheena's talk was just too short and I could have listened to her all day!

Then to Bude to spend some time with my sister leaving the DH at home with his fishing rod and on Monday and Tuesday to Launceston to a workshop with Sheena at Cowslips. We were using scraps of fabric as inspiration for designs for free machine quilting. On Monday we were making a small quilt using scraps of fabric on a background and then quilting around them using motifs inspired from the patterns. Here is my effort which is still work in progress.

I had not realised how much pre-planning was involved in something which was meant to be "free" and the planning and marking took me much longer than I had thought it would. Sheena recommends marking the quilt before starting any quilting at all, and also drawing each design on paper so that when it comes to the quilt itself the designs are somehow programmed into the brain.

Then on Tuesday, we made a second quilt using similar quilting designs, but now in the form of a grid. Unfortunately, I made a bit of a pigs ear of the grid markings on the fabric and then didn't have enough left to make a 16" cushion cover, so I went smaller. Once again, all the planning took a long time, but really it is well worth taking the trouble as somehow the stitching seems to be a lot easier when the designs are already in your head. I wasn't able to put my squares into my grid because they would have looked too big, and so I just copied some of the lines and marks. As the weather was so awful, I decided to use a bright yellow thread to cheer me up and here is the result.

 These are the little fabric squares that I used as the inspiration for the quilting designs.

This is the finished quilt and below are some close ups of the quilting.

This was a very enjoyable workshop and Sheena is a very inspirational teacher. There were not very many of us in the class and so we all had a lot of one to one tuition with Sheena which was a real joy.

Cowslips is  lovely location and apart from the shop selling fabric, threads and lots of lovely things, they also have a fabulous cafe! Jo Colwill, the owner is also a prolific quilter and very friendly and so I think I will be visiting quite frequently even though it is at the other end of the county!

It was nice to meet up with other quilters, some of whom live quite close to me and so I am beginning to think I will be able to find new friends with similar interests. Sadly, being a member of the guild is not really of much advantage. The guild is not a popular organisation here. It is seen as stuffy, stuck up and unfriendly and many of the people I have met, just don't think it's worth joining. I can see why this perception is so prevalent after attending the regional day when apart from one or two members, no one took the trouble to speak to me, or welcome me as someone new to the area. In fact I would go so far as to say that being known to be a guild member is a positive disadvantage! Having just renewed my membership I have a year to decide whether I want to rejoin next time!

For now though, the sun is shining and I've got a lot of stitching to so when we get back from our walk!

Meet the family

No, not the relations, the "family" of dyed fabrics I made at the Festival of Quilts. The task was to dye a range of values using just two colours. I chose lemon yellow and black and my fabric was some basic cotton. We used fifteen fat quarters in all. Twelve were used in the first dyeing using the black dye;  sorted into three groups of four with three different strengths of dye solution, light, medium and dark.

In order to get a flat colour without texture we had to manipulate the fabric in the bath and exclude all the air bubbles. This did not prove to be so easy and my fabrics do show quite a bit of unintended texture. Never mind! So left overnight the next task was to rinse thoroughly. This proved very difficult partly because we had to share the sinks, but also it proved very hard to shift all the excess dye. Had I been at home, I would have put it all in the washing machine.

The next job was to  resort the black and grey fabrics into four groups, each one containing a light, medium and dark. One group was set aside and not overdyed. One of each of the three undyed fat quarters was added to each group of three. Each set of four was then dyed as before in a light, medium and dark dyebath but this time using lemon yellow.

More manipulation, rinsing etc and here they are, but now having been thoroughly washed, dried and ironed.

Unfortunately, the light lemon yellow did not take too well and I think was contaminated with some excess black that hadn't been washed out.                

And here they are in black and white showing the range of values.

Not 100% successful, but a start nevertheless and next time I will do better I'm sure having learned a lot. One thought occurred to me was what difference, if any it would make to dye the yellow first and then overdye with black. the possibilities seem endless, but will have to wait until I have a permanent home where I can make a mess with dye that won't matter.

In the meantime we are enjoying walking the cliff path and just chilling out while we wait for the dream home to come on the market!

Sore feet...

but never mind! Having done three days dyeing with Jo Lovelock at the Festival of Quilts, I had some lovely hand dyed fabrics to take home with me. Also, I had got to spend time with some lovely people, both in the class and also around the show.

So here are a few photos from the class.

Jo giving lots of advice!

Susie's rainbow silk scarf in the greenhouse tray!

 Tray dyed pieces drying on the wall board.

Pat and Ann deep in conference!

Family dyed cloth drying,

Susie with her rainbow silk scarf!

A quiet moment!

Jo and Noreen discussing the latest tray dyeing experiment.

A thoughtful moment while Pat drinks her coffee.

This was a wonderful experience, but it involved a lot of standing so was very hard on the feet and ankles. As for the show itself. well that will be for another post because my dinner is ready!

Don't you just......

hate it when you've got a train to catch and you've packed your bags, had breakfast, cleaned your teeth and are ready to go a whole hour before you need to leave!

I remember my Mum insisting on leaving so early that we always got to the station hours before the train was due leading to being teased about leaving the night before "just in case". Now my DH teases me about my anxiety whenever I have a train to catch. So here I am updating my blog!

Some quilting has been done, but we have been taking advantage of the fine weather and have been exploring during the day before crashing on the sofa in front of the olympics in the evening.
 What will we do now it's all over? More quilting, obviously!

We have discovered that we can see the sea from the garden and we are rapidly falling in love with it here. I am beginning to wonder why I decided to go to the Festival of Quilts for almost a whole week, but then I think of the wonderful people I will see and the lovely things I will buy!

Time to get the car out and go!

To do list

So now I have a lovely room in which to produce lots of lovely work, I'm spending most of my time on the sofa watching the olympics! But I have made a start quilting the disappearing nine patch quilt which I hope to send off to my DD for her birthday.

I signed up for a Craftsy class called quilting a big  project on a small machine  and there are a lot of different techniques which I'm sure will be helpful The main one is to ensure that your quilting surface is at the correct height and sadly, mine isn't! This makes it very difficult to move the quilt smoothly and ensure that the stitching is even. Still I am making progress and I hope to get it finished by the end of the week.

Just a little taster;

Then I have to get my fabric prepared for the dyeing workshop with Jo Lovelock at Festival of Quilts oh, and I must also do my four yellow journal quilts by the end of the month! So no pressure then!

And what is my DH doing while I am sweating over a hot sewing machine?

Boys and their toys!

Life after the move!

Well here we are in our new home for at least the next six months. Yet again we have chosen a spot where the removal lorry had trouble getting in and this time, the men gave up and parked it down the lane and used a smaller van as a shuttle. Sadly this additional loading and unloading led to a few breakages, but we can live with that.

Here are a few pictures of our (soon to be elegant, not) home

 Is there anybody in?

Our well tended lawn!

Elegant lounge!

Dave's office!

Spare bedroom!

My work room!

The ultimate kitchen!

And when we had finished unloading and had unpacked until we couldn't face another box, this is the last word in elegant garden features!

I have made a list of all the things I must do in the next two weeks before I go to The Festival of Quilts, but for now the sun is still shining, we are busy meeting up with old friends and family. It's almost as if we were on holiday!

But I must get my CQ journal quilts done and apparently the Jet Stream is going to oblige and provide us with some rain on Monday. So the sewing table is up and all the fabric and yarn mountains are neatly, well nearly, stashed so no reason not to start right away! Well, perhaps tomorrow!