And we have a winner(s)....

First up, a massive thank you to everyone who took part and left a name suggestion for my latest quilt.  I had a lot of fun reading them and thinking about them.  I love having an online community of quilters and artists who can have a bit of fun together, or solve a problem together, or provide a bit of support  for each other.

Moon Flight by Charlotte Scott

I've decided to call it 'Moon Flight', which I think sums it up perfectly.

So, on to the winners!

My random number generator picked 12, so the twelth commentor is Maree, congratulations!

I also put the competition on to Kiwiquilters, a Facebook group for New Zealand quilters.  And lots of people left me suggestions there.  I decided to be generous and do a drawing for them too.  The random number generator picked 3, and the third commenter was Biddy, congratulations!

I'm also going to send a bundle to Gretchen, because her suggestion, Moonlight Flight, was so very close to the name I eventually picked.  Congratulations!

Thankyou everyone, I hope you had fun coming up with names.  I know I enjoyed reading them all.  I'll be in touch with the winners shortly.

Name That Quilt!

Every step in making a quilt is a little step closer to a finish.  But there is 'finished' and then there is 'finished, finished'.  Too often in the past I'd breath a satisfied sigh when I'd taken the last stitch in the binding, then I'd put the quilt down and never get the other little finishing tasks done.   I now consider a quilt to be finished when it is named, labelled, has a hanging mechanism, and is documented and photographed.

When I talk to other quilters and artists, each has a least favourite part of the process of making their work.  For some it's the cutting out, others hate binding.  Some claim they don't dislike ANY part - but I'm sure they're telling fibs!  I bet there is one thing they they always put off, even if just for five minutes...

My least favourite bit varies.  Quite often it's the photography.  I'm getting better at it, and I've got lights now, which make the whole process easier.  But it's just so much faffing around!  I'd much rather sew, or dye, or audition fabrics, or anything else really.  I can't say that sewing labels or hanging sleeves has ever made my heart sing, but I actually quite enjoy hand stitching binding on, when I know it makes many people groan!

Anyway, this last week, my least favourite bit has been the naming of quilts.  I'm trying to come up with a name for my lastest finish.

Untitled as yet by Charlotte Scott 36cm x 55cm

This quilt is relatively small and was started with offcuts from the larger quilt that I'm working on.  

(In case you were wondering about my 'restart my making mojo' process that I was going through - well, it was a success!  I've been working away steadily, and now it's just the usual challenges, like time managment etc)

Here's the larger quilt still in progress:

This one will need a name at some point too, but at present its working name is The Heron Maiden quilt (the HM quilt).  Have you ever read any of the classic Japanese folk stories about cranes turning into women to return the favour of being rescued from a trap?   I've been telling myself those stories as I've been making the quilt, but twisting them into tales about a New Zealand white-faced heron turning into a maiden, then turning back into a heron after she loses her love, or perhaps after she tires of him, depending on how I feel on the day.

 

Can you see how the nameless quilt has connections to the HM quilt?  The branch in the nameless quilt is the cut-away background of the branch in the bottom right of the HM quilt, and the heron is a third, brighter, version of the two herons behind the girl.  The overlay of silk organza on nameless is the same piece of fabric that is used in the sky of the HM quilt.  So they are nicely related.

But here is where you come in, dear reader!  I'm at a total loss for a name for the untitled quilt and I'm hoping you'll help.  Hit me with your ideas and help spark my naming mojo!  Just as a little incentive, I'll do a random draw from all the people who leave me a suggestion in the comments section below and I'll send the winner a bundle of my hand-dyed fat quarters (and I'll send it anywhere in the world too).  You'll need to be a reply-enabled commentor or add your email address to your comment so I can get in touch if you're the lucky drawee.  I'll give you a week, so will be drawing on Saturday 21 April 9pm NZ time.

Please help me out, and join in the fun!  Names can be as silly or as deep and meaningful as you like, but I'd love to hear from you.

COMMENTS NOW CLOSED.  Thanks for all your help!!

Art Quilt: Early Morning Fishing - A Quilt Process Post

Recently I completed a quilt that was commissioned by a previous customer.  I took lots of photos during the making, and I haven’t done a quilt process post for a while, so here goes.

The client wanted a quilt the same size as the previous quilt she had purchased, portrait in orientation and featuring a white faced heron fishing amongst bulrushes (or raupo as we call it in New Zealand).

This is the first quilt "Morning Waters at Opua"

She had particularly liked the water, transparency and reflections that had been features of the first quilt so I had to take that into account.

I ran up a rough sketch for her and she was very pleased. 

I began by marking off the correct finished size on a piece of light cotton lawn.  I was going to use a lot of silk organza and the white would be my base fabric so I wanted it as light-weight as possible to avoid building stiffness with too many thick layers.

When I started auditioning organza I realised I didn’t have quite the right colour – I wanted to be close to the colour of the water used in the first quilt.  So my next step was to dye some silk.

I found a piece of cotton that I had dye painted that would make perfect sky.  I used the edge of a foam brush and some fabric paint to paint background raupo.  

Then I began layering my silk organza pieces to get the depth I wanted in the water.

On a separate piece of white cotton, I had begun ‘building’ my heron.  I took the sketch I had made, enlarged it and used it as a pattern to fuse pieces of silk organza onto the cotton.  If you look at the photo, you can see the photocopy underneath the white cotton to help with placement of my organza pieces.   You can see I decided to lengthen the legs.  

I cut him out very carefully and then I had him in one piece so I could more easily move him around the composition.  Once I had my heron correctly placed I cut into the top layer of silk organza and inserted his leg so it appeared 'under' the water.

The raupo is made of hand dyed cotton mostly.  There’s a couple of strips of organza and I think if I did it again, I’d use more organza as it frays less when it’s fused down.  But it is more transparent so it would change the look a bit – there’s a question/experimentation idea that I could try and answer in my next heron quilt if I was looking to do a series!

The fish took several tries to get their shapes for perspective right.  The bottom left corner could have ended up as a big ‘blank’ space that drew your eye, so I needed the fish to fill in the spot and then I arranged them in a bit of a circle to hopefully draw the viewers eye around and then back up into the quilt.

Then it was on to the quilting.  I quilted the raupo and the heron down rather than appliqueing it and then quilting it as well.  I call this quiltlique ;-)

There are many different colours of thread in the water quilting.  This helps to provide texture and interest and a slight reflection of the heron and the raupo.  And then to finish it off, a binding in the same colour as the first quilt to provide cohesion.  A binding also makes it easier to control size rather than a facing.

I named the finished quilt 'Early Morning Fishing'.  I was really pleased with the final result and thankfully, so was the client.  She took it home and intends to frame it the same way as she has the first, with an un-glassed natural wooden frame, and display them either side of a big window.  She has requested a sketch for a third commission….I must be doing something right!

Wingbeats II - SAQA Trunk Show Quilt

SAQA (Studio Art Quilts Associates) have travelling trunk shows available for shipping and display around the world.  These are collections of many small (7" x 10" portrait) pieces of textile art from a wide variety of artists.  There is no theme and no jurying, so skill, technique, subject and interpretation is wide and varied.  They are also mounted on card and in protective cellophane sleeves so all in all, they make a great addition to any quilt show or exhibition (just in case anyone was looking for something of the like).

This year the call for entries closed November 30, 2016.  I squeaked in with my finish and was about to enter my piece online when SAQA announced an extension to the deadline of about two weeks.

I had sat down the day before and written a critique of my first piece.  It's something I've taken to doing after my starting it in my year of mentoring.  It's really useful to stand back, take a new look and say what worked, what didn't and what you would do differently next time.  All in a constructive, non-critical way of course - I have been known to be so 'out of love' with a piece that I've critiqued it as "horrible, grossly flat and uninspiring, with such a twee theme that it deserves it's own special spot in the rubbish bin"!  Not particularly helpful ;-)

The piece above is the first quilt I was going to enter.  

My critique of it was: "The transparency and colours of the herons work well, but three on such a small piece is a bit overwhelming and confuses them a bit too much.  I like the shapes of the water, they have a nice flow, but I want to get the edges of them neater.  The overall theme of the herons and moon sits well with me, but I need things neater, tidier and more symmetrical to be entirely happy.  I experimented with adding hand stitching to the moon, but I don't think it adds anything and I think the border treatment needs to be less bold - it is overwhelming.

So with that in mind, and very thankful for a deadline extension, I started a second quilt.

It's so gratifying when you plan and scheme and it all works out!  This quilt is exactly what I wanted.  Cleaner, clearer, more finished and more polished.  I used one of my favourite techniques, which comprises of a complete overlay of organza over the whole quilt and that meant I didn't have to stitch to attach, I could just stitch to enhance.

You'll see from the closeup that the herons were printed on, not added as pieces of fabric.  Some of the blue water pieces are printed, some are fabric pieces below the organza overlay.  The moon is a piece of silk underneath the organza and I finished the quilt with a facing.

So - does this mean I should remake every quilt I finish?  No.  But it does push me further along the path of working in a series.  And it does make me think about taking out some of my older quilts and doing a proper critique of them.  You never know where it might lead!

I like herons, but...

I'm not sure I like them on my boat!

Anyone who knows me, knows that herons are one of my things.  Graceful yet slightly awkward.  This is one of my favourite quotes about them:

"The queen was settling on the edge of the bed, ungainly with hesitation and at the same time exquisite in her grace, like a heron landing in a treetop" - Megan Whalen Turner

So it was neat to see a white-faced heron taking his ease on the back bulwark of my boat when I came home the other day.  He let me get pretty close too.  Then I started to think about where the remains of his last meal was sure to end up and I regretfully scared him away.  There are plenty of wharf posts he can rest on.

Here are some of the quilts I've made with herons as my muse.

'With Little Sound'   30cm x 46cm   SOLD

'Memories of Flight'   62.5cm x 120.5cm    $850

*Edited: This quilt is now SOLD.  Thank you for your interest.

'Morning Waters at Opua'    52cm x 89cm    SOLD

'One Grey Heron'    30cm x 46cm    $125

I don't think my quilting love affair with herons is over yet.

A pose of herons

(the best collective noun for herons that I could find - better than a siege, a hedge or a colony)

Continuing with the heron theme from my last blog post, I wanted to show you the rust and tea-dyed heron that I've been working with more since he last featured on my blog.

For some reason I struggled with it for quite a while.  I think the problem was that I didn't have a clear idea of the feeling I wanted to convey.

I had begun thinking that I wanted to work toward using this quilt as an entry into the Taiwan International Exhibition 2016, where the theme is 'protect the earth's environment'.  My statement was going to be about how the white faced heron used the man-made environment of wharf lights to prolong his fishing.  But it didn't sit right and work well, so I went back to trying to convey that feeling of peace, of dark and quiet and when you can't tell where the water ends and the night-sky begins.

Here is how it has evolved so far:

Have I succeeded?  Your thoughts and comments are welcome.

Egretta novaehollandiae (white faced heron)

At night time, there is a white faced heron (or maybe more than one) who hangs out on the teeny beach that is squeezed between the Opua General Store and the wharf.  He or she (they aren't easy to tell apart) fishes in the light cast from the street lamps that line the wharf.

I spot him sitting on the poles that were historically used to careen boats, or stalking silently and measured through the shallows, or hear him croak as he flaps slowly off when we have surprised him as we walk the dog.

And so, herons are influencing my work more than a little lately.  They are making their graceful, watchful way onto my design wall.

This smaller work is 12" x 24" and is titled 'With Little Noise'.  It's named so because the time of night I usually see my fishing friend is that quiet time when the car ferry has stopped, the streets are dark and everybody else is in the warm and light inside.

I've tried to convey that dark, restful aesthetic with this piece.  The simplicity of it reminds me a little of Japanese work.

The grey ombre fabric, the stems and the binding are my hand-dyed fabric, the rest are commercial batiks and a commercial solid.

And as always, I'd love to hear your feedback and what the quilt makes you think and feel.