Lockdown Day 30

Three little dickey birds. I'm wondering what to do with these? Should I turn them into applique designs? Or what about embroidery designs?

I'm considering putting together some sort of embroidery kit with my own drawings, my hand-dyed threads and hand-dyed background linen. It'll include simple instructions, a hoop and a needle. And maybe I'll put it all in a little bag made from my own hand-dyed thread.

What do you think?

Lockdown Day 23

I think I should draw more often. Because when I do, I find those drawings have a place somewhere in my art. 

Like these thorns. I drew them on the back of scrap paper at work one night. And here they are, almost catching that bird in my quilt (that is ready for basting, finally).

So maybe I should revisit the idea of a regular sketchbook habit?

I'll sleep on it.

Sewing Machine Sketching

A friend was recently writing about keeping a sketchbook and it got me thinking.  I do keep sketchbooks, and I have a few for different purposes - utilitarian working out of ideas, decorated journal pages and true sketchbooks for drawing what I see.  But I don't use any of them on a schedule, and I probably should.  We all know that regular practice improves a skill.

My free-motion quilting skills have been languishing a little and I need to quilt some work that I don't want to stuff up.  I also want to improve my skills of drawing with the machine, not just doing pretty patterns.  Practice is needed.  So I've made up some fabric sketchbook pages, just 8 inch x 11 inch spray basted sandwiches, and I intend to use one every day to draw something.

I don't have one of those teflon slider mats (they are rather pricey and I'm trying to give the credit card a little rest) so I cut a tiny hole in one of my silicone pressing sheets and taped it down over the bed of my machine table. It made it noticeably easier to move my work, so a proper slider sheet is now on my 'when I'm feeling rich' list.

It's not bad for a first effort.  My teapot is not quite the right shape, but it least it's recognisable!  It's tricky when the picture disappears behind your presser foot and I'm not sure if I can turn the work and sketch upside down like you can when you are just making patterns.

I'll try and be regular about this practice and hopefully I'll see an improvement as I go.

Are there any skills you are using regularly to try and gain an improvement with?

By Candlelight.

I found this picture on my camera and wanted to share.  It's from the other day when we had a 24 hour power cut thanks to Cyclone Ita.  After dinner we lit candles and coloured in.  Actually, the kids request me to draw pictures and then they colour them.  That night it was a flying unicorn, a winged snake breathing fire, a crown and a water dragon......no problems, right?  Mum's can do anything!

Art on Sunday

I followed on from last weeks success with sketching for the kids and introduced them to my water-soluble coloured pencils and pastels.

It gave me at least half and hour of peaceful piecing in my studio.  They drew monsters - a squid for my girl and an evil starfish monster for the lad.  They found the transformation of colour and the blending magical when they applied the water.

In fact, I might have to pick up those pencils later and have a go myself!

Sunday Mumblings

It was frosty this morning.  Only our second frost this winter (and the first was yesterday).

But frosty mornings usually mean sunny days and, sure enough, today was lovely.

Everyone was out enjoying the sunshine.  The boss of the world thought he might herd the ducks.  They were having none of it, and fair enough, they're about twice his size.

The chooks have started laying.  They were hatched on New Year's Day, so bang on six months old.

Floppy (for obvious reasons) is a North Holland Blue, which looks very similar to Barred Rocks.

This girl is unnamed as yet and she's a mix of Light Sussex and Golden Laced Wyandotte.

We put the cows on the lawn to mow the grass.  Grass converting itself to beef, yum, yum.

I tried to work on my swallow quilt but the kids kept annoying me and each other so I got them outside for some sketching.  It worked a treat to get them settled down.

Mine's in the middle, but I think I like my daughter's on the left best.  Although my son's, on the right, might make an interesting quilting pattern!

Hope you had a lovely Sunday too.

Journal Quilts

Journal quilts are generally small - often A4 size or 12” x 12”, are made regularly – weekly, monthly etc and are used as a way to experiment and to document.

Artist Rose Rushbrooke explains them well here.  And you can see her journal quilts there as well.

Quilter Jeanne Williamson: “I started making them because I was having trouble finding the time to make quilts and be creative about them. I felt blocked.”
“But then I thought about her little postcard-sized watercolour experiments and thought, “I could do this!”…Why not one quilt per week?”
“I definitely used the weekly quilts to document what was going on in my life…I also used the weekly quilts to try new materials and techniques.”

Quilter Maria Elkins: “I was one of those quilters energized by the Journal Quilt Project. This was exactly was I needed. For years, I have struggled to overcome a fear of failure. Now I was given the opportunity, the permission, even the directive to play.”

So why am I starting to make journal quilts? I love traditional quilts, the repetition of pattern can be both soothing and dynamic, the colours can be stunning, but generally the quilts that make me go, “Wow!” at quilt shows and on blogs are the non-traditional, the art quilts, the ones using interesting methods to convey thoughts and feelings.

But where to start? And how to continue? I have made a few ‘arty’ bits and pieces over the years and I love to experiment, although I don’t nearly do enough of it. So to get me started and to help me continue, I’ve decided to start making journal quilts.

I don’t think I’ll stick to a certain size and I can’t promise I’ll make one every week. But what I am going to do is regularly make a small experimental quilt. I will not get hung up on making something ‘perfect’ and I’m going to do my best to have fun!



"One." 10" x 15" October 2011

 And here is my first one. I layered scraps and fused some of them down. I free-motion appliquéd a shape that I made in a Jane Sassaman class over the top and free-motion quilted the background down. I used some hand embroidery stitches to create variety in the texture of the background and then I fused a binding that I had cut with a decorative cutter.

For me this was just fun, nothing precise, and it made me feel less frustrated that I haven't used any of the things I had done at the Remarkable Symposium. I have never fused a binding or used a decorative rotary cutter either.

 
And, just because it's so sweet it makes my teeth hurt, here is a drawing my four year old daughter did of her riding on her father's shoulders.  Awwwww!

Higgledy Piddledy Post.

Ta muchly to all who commented on my last post (and if you'd still like to give me your thoughts, I'd be most appreciative). 

Congratulations, Faye of fayesplace!  My bemused hubby drew out Number One from the little pile I presented him with.  I will be getting a little something off to you shortly.

And as a point of interest, I happened to be speaking to a friend on the 'phone the other night and she mentioned she had found rabbit in our local supermarket for.......$24.95 (NZ, of course) for one rabbit!  Gulp!!  Maybe I should look into marketing them a little more seriously.

Now, onto some quilting:

Two little bassinet quilts for the maternity unit at our local rural hospital.  I finished them today using my beloved no-snit machine binding.  And I just happened to be travelling past today and was able to drop them off together with the other three I completed a wee while ago.  The gratitude they showed really polished my ego!

These were made with some leftover batik charm squares from Tulis Textiles.  I am forever amazed at how half-square triangles can be put together in so many different ways.  Might just have to try some more.  And the binding is the border I was originally going to put on my MIL's quilt, but decided it looked better without it.  Waste not, want not.

This is the back, I'm attempting to show the quilting, can you see it?  I'm still trying to decide whether this fabric is cute, or a little sinister....?

And then, because I was showing off big brother's drawings the other day, I just have to show this.  The first discernible 'thing' my three-year-old has drawn.  And she named it, not me!

Aren't scanners fantastic machines?!

"Mum! Look what I drew!"

My son will be six in a couple of months.  I have to show his latest drawing, I think it's just awesome.  (In case you can't tell, it's a castle!  There's a fight going on outside, you can see weapons and heads poking up above the dust cloud.  There's a couple of men falling off the top and one little chappy climbing a ladder.)

For a long time he wasn't willing to draw.  As a baby/toddler he would scribble away a bit, but wasn't really interested in paints and crayons like some kids are.  Then when he got big enough to want to draw a 'something', he refused to try - I think because he thought it wouldn't look like the 'something' he wanted it to be.

This one is a volcano, with three little velociraptors running around the trees and bushes at the bottom.

We got him over his perfectionism eventually and now he's keen as a bean to draw.  Sometimes he'll come back over and over to the same drawing adding more.  It's great to see him exercising his creativity like this.  (And it's a damn sight quieter than leaping round on the couch, hissing and roaring, being a Tyrannosaurus Rex).

The ultimate dino any kid wants to be - T Rex!