Definitions and distractions

We heard from our buyers yesterday and they are not pulling out and so we will shortly be on our way to our new home, or at least somewhere to sleep while we look for one! This has led to the realisation that we will only have a short time to get all our stuff packed and this week we have been rationalising and decluttering, but not necessarily in that order. My DD and her partner came and helped us clear the attic and apart from two sheds and some cupboards we are almost clear of rubbish.
 
In the process of emptying various cupboards, I have found  a bag of crochet squares that I had meant to join together into a throw, but hadn't; a half knitted waistcoat that may or may not have been savaged by moths: various quilt tops at different stages of construction: a bag of hexagons cut from scraps let over from dresses I made back in the 1960s: a big basket of all sorts of scraps of fabric: three half made jackets: four handbags each containing a lipstick and an old tissue: six pairs of glasses and three odd socks!

What a haul! Please don't ask me to say how much of it I've managed to throw away!

This process of clearing out stuff so we know what we have to pack is not my favourite activity and I am very easily distracted, so as light relief, I decided to make a bag to hold my laptop! We will be taking it with us when we go to Cornwall so that we can house hunt from the comfort of the sofa and we have bought a dongle, successfully installed it, and are more or less set. Obviously, I must have a laptop bag and it must be hand made and preferably quilted. I measured carefully and spent a merry day constructing it with a zipped pocket etc, only to find that I had made it just 1/2 inch too narrow and to get the laptop into the bag takes a lot of wriggling around and then I can't get it back out again!

What next! As if I don't have enough other stuff to do, I decided to revisit my goodbye to the grid quilt that I had carefully packed away. I had tried several times to get the top sewn together, but as I found that my cutting had not been accurate enough, it just wouldn't lie flat.  I decided to revisit the design from scratch so I printed off the black and white design and used some felt tips to colour it in.

It's a bit rough and ready, but I scanned it and used a posterizing program called Posterazor to enlarge it to actual size. Now it's printed out and waiting for me to put it together so I can cut the pieces and start putting it together again!  I have simplifed the piecing by using a single colour as a background, shown grey in the drawing. My actual background will be white and the coloured blocks will not be in the colours shown, but I will be using a complementary colour scheme to create maximum impact!

Inspiration to get going on it again came from reading Hazel's blog post about a new book she had bought called Quilting Modern and a new group called The Modern Quilt Guild. This seems to be an American version of the Contemporary Quilt Group of the QGBI, but without the artistic angst. Although I belong to the CQ group, I don't really feel as if I belong there. I'm not a dedicated textile artist and don't want to be. My interest in quilting arose from a love of sewing pieces of fabric together and at heart, that is really what I want to do. I just love working with textiles and apart from quilting, I need to find time for spinning, weaving and embroidery too. That is not to say that I want to always follow a pattern and not to design my own work, but I need to free myself from the tyranny of the " Art Quilt" and just make the things I want to make the way I want to make them.

There really doesn't seem to be a distinction between a Contemporary Quilt and an Art Quilt but yet many CQ members would disagree. Trying to maintain such an artificial distinction is, to my mind,  a complete waste of time and takes a great deal of energy that is better employed in doing a bit of sewing!

Anyway for now, I have so much to do, that this is not of any real significance.  Knowing that our stuff is safely stowed in the removal van, and we have somewhere to put it at the other end, now that is top priority. Oh and I must make a laptop bag that fits!