Calico Christmas

I need a medal.  I visited Calico Christmas, the exhibition of the Auckland Patchworkers and Quilters Guild with many, many merchant stalls and I did not come home with a single skerrick of fabric...but I did come home with this book.  (And if anyone knows where my camera is, please let me know.  So image borrowed from Amazon!  And no you can't click to look inside.)

I've seen it advertised in a magazine before and thought I'd like to have it as my interest in eco-friendly quilting grows.  Then after I flicked through it at the Minerva stall, I just couldn't leave without it.  The most vibrant and luscious photography adorns its pages and it's full of ideas and recipes for natural dyes.  I can't wait to get started. 

I forgot to take my camera to Calico Christmas (and now it's MIA) so used my cell phone instead.  Problem:  I can't get the pics from camera to computer.  So if you want to have a lookey at some, go here to Leann's blog.  She's a little more organised than me!

Friday Fleashop Finds

I can't think of a word to alliterate with Op Shop so Friday Fleashop Finds it will have to stay for now. 

Friday is my quilting-in-the-morning with a friend day, errand day, grocery day, farm store day and, if I can squeeze it in, a browse around the Op Shops in our little rural town.

Again, I checked out the fabrics and remnants that they have, but nope, yucky polyester curtain linings for the most.  But then I walked past the men's shirts and found this little (x-large actually) beauty.  100% cotton and the cutest stripe.  And I can cut the buttons off for my button jar.

My man's a bit rough to wear this, although I did hint he might look nice in it! 

So I vowed not to buy any new fabric in 2010, but this doesn't count right?  The only problem is, if I really examine the concept behind ethical consuming, reuse is all very well, but I'm still reusing a non-organic, unsustainably grown and processed shirt.  Urggh, sometimes it all makes my head hurt.  So I'm going to ignore that thought for a while and just be happy that I found a nice piece of cotton fabric for cheap for my stash and saved it from being chucked in a landfill and supported a local charity, all at once.

I also found more 1 litre Agee jars (heavy preserving jars) to add to my collection and a medium sized ceramic casserole dish, complete with glass lid.  It'll replace the one that my darling hubby broke last week.  And a bag of lemons.  I feel a lemon meringue pie coming on.

Do you have days like that at Op Shops?  Where you walk in and come out loaded, even when there was nothing on your list? 

Finally something quilty (ish).

Look closer - there is a castle there I tell you!

I'm still working away on my son's quilt for his birthday (in 3 weeks - work harder!!).  But because I was a dope conscientious quilter and decided not to buy any new fabric in 2010, I was in a pickle.  One castle to cut out and applique, no grey fabric big enough.  In fact barely any grey fabric at all.  Really, nothing that remotely resembled stone of any colour in my stash.

So, one toddler in bed for afternoon nap, what did I do but break out the fabric paints.  I've had these sun reactive paints since Symposium 2007, they were only slightly gunky ;)

I mixed up some grey (black and white, mostly white) added a touch of purple and pink to warm it up a little and then watered it down heaps.  I sprayed my fabric with water then sponged, splatted and sploshed my way to stonework bliss.

This is before (yes, big piece of white fabric, how handy, but it WAS in my stash, I promise)

And this is after - it looks grey, right?

So then, remembering that these were sun reactive paints, I went and pinned it down outside with a piece of wire netting over it, hoping to get a grid effect on the cloth.

Yes that IS a dog bone pinning it down, I was working fast, afternoon naps don't last that long.

And blow me down if it didn't work!   I was over the moon!  You can see the paler, unpatterned bit to the left where the netting didn't cover to and it was flapping round in the gentle breeze howling gale we've been having lately.

That could pass for stone couldn't it?  Those sun-reactive paints are pretty cool.  Especially when they still work after three years.  So then I heat set it with the iron and it's waiting to be washed before I use it.

Truly, this vow not to buy any new fabric is both an utter pain and a creative stimulus, I curse it and thank it all at the same time.

Work in Progress Wednesday

My mother-in-law's quilt.  Almost done. (You can see the completed top here.)

Ahh, the ugly duckling phase.  It's all quilted but there are threads hanging off it every which way that I have to tie off and bury and there is fluff everywhere from the cotton batting.  (I could have cropped out the mess in the background, but hey, what's another sword or two?!)

The backing was also another challenge in my 'not buying any new fabric in 2010' journey.  I didn't have any large pieces in the right colours so I had to piece one.  A nifty trick to centre the backing and the top when you are basting is to tape a cross of matchsticks or kebab sticks to your basting surface, then you can feel them through the layers to make sure you are all lined up.

I marked a big swirling pattern on the back in chalk and quilted it from the back. 

Just the binding and labelling to go! 

Flea Market Finds

Okay, so we're kiwis here and it's more of an op shop find.

The hard work that someone put into all that stitching!  It's about the size of a placemat and I'm thinking it would make a very cute bag.  I had a look for pieces of fabric (research only!) but there were only nasty polyesters and some really, really ugly nylons.  So my plan to make quilts out of only thrifted materials is not really a goer.  I'll carry on looking though, you never know what you might find......like these!

What funky cutlery!!  There were only a few pieces, but I thought they would make great additions to my camping cutlery box - too distinctive to get mixed up with the mother-in-laws.  But my kids dived on them with glee and have been using the 'pretty forks' for every meal since I brought them home.

Tentative steps.

Last night I read Julie's (from Towards Sustainability) parting post.  It made an impact.  She talked about how she loses readers every time she blogs about the hard issues - peak oil and the like.  She is saddened by it and wonders why.

I think I know a little bit of why.  Because I'm one of the guilty ones.  I'm guilty of ignoring those hard issues and hoping they will go away.  Also, blogging is a little bit of escapism for me.  In the evening, when the kids are in bed, I can zoom around the world learning interesting and useful things, looking at beautiful work and peeking into other's lives.  After a hard day's work, the last thing I want to do is be scared, depressed and overwhelmed by reading about global warming and the oil crisis.  But can I really afford to be so ostrich-like?

From Julie's blog, I jumped to Causabon's Book and I watched this clip.  Go watch it for a little humorous but serious de-ostriching.

One big reason I know I've been ignoring the issues lately is quilting....

Quilting.  My obsession, my love, my sanity, my work (maybe one day).  Quilting is not generally an environmentally friendly hobby.  It has it's roots in thrift and recycling, but not any more.  The vast majority of quilters, me included, buy new fabric to add to our stashes whenever we can.  And our preferred fabric is cotton. 

Cotton growers traditionally use a hideous amount of synthetic fertilisers, insecticides and herbicides to grow their crop.  And when it is grown in a developing country, like India, safety practices with these chemicals can be severely lacking, leading to human poisoning.  Then, of course, is the genetic modification issue - another thorny one.  If you want to read some more scary facts, click here for Organic Trade Association's Summary of Cotton and the Environment.  Shall we talk about dyes?  Let's not, we might all end up naked for fear of poisoning ourselves.

If I acknowledge that we have a real environmental crisis on our hands and that I really need to keep making changes in my life, then I can't go on blissfully ignoring my quilting and fabric addiction.  My conscience just won't let me.

So where does that leave me?  I've had a little look around in the past and organic fabric is not readily available and is very expensive in New Zealand.  I could source only thrift store fabrics fabrics and cut up old clothes etc, but that limits me with colours and patterns.  I could try dying my own colours with vegetable dyes, but I know they are not that stable.  All my immediate options that spring to mind all have drawbacks that makes me want to dismiss them.

Maybe this issue was a subconscious factor in my recent vow not to buy any more fabric this year.  I don't know.  But I do know that I can't really ignore the elephant in the room anymore.

I have made plenty of other steps in my life to live a little lighter on the land.  I compost.  I grow my own veges.  I raise my own meat and have chooks for scrap disposal and egg production.  I'm mindful of food miles and try and buy local and organic when I can.  I reduce, reuse and recycle.  I combine outings to save gas....the list goes on.

But fabric is what is niggling in the back of my mind every time I quilt.  And I don't want to feel guilty and sad about my most favourite past time. 

So it is with some trepidation and some excitement that I'm going to take some steps  in what I hope will be a journey towards more sustainable quilting.  I am going to seriously investigate organic fabric supplies and eco-dying.  I am going to add fabric to my shopping list when I visit thrift stores and I am going to restrain myself from buying new fabrics 'just because'.  And I'm going to regularly post about what I've learnt and where I'm going on my little journey.

I'm going to stick to my pledge not to buy any new fabric this year, however I'm not going to turn my back entirely on commercial fabrics.  Quilting is my art as well and I don't want to stifle myself so much that I begrudge the whole journey.

What a challenge!  Environmentally friendly, sustainable and, hopefully, beautiful quilts!

Wish me luck!

Challenge Number One.

So the first challenge of not buying any more fabric this year has occurred.  I needed a big piece (30 1/2 inches by 24 1/2 inches) of a sky blue fabric for the background of the applique dragon I'm making for my son.  Did I have such a piece?  No.  But I did have two smaller pieces.  Problem was, they were slightly different shades.  Solution:  piece them together in curved strips. 

I didn't realise it when I made my decision, but not allowing myself to buy any new fabric is providing challenges.  I haven't done a lot of curved piecing.  I know the theory, but just don't really do it.  So I got to practice and it was good for me.  I wonder what my next challenge will be.

This is the completed background with a few of the applique dragon bits laid out on top.  I love this part - seeing it take shape bit by bit is exciting!