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!