Quilt experiments 3

This post follows on from QE2 which you can see here and QE1 here

Having got the first sample out of the way I decided that I’d try for something less busy, especially as my client is a businessman, (for my self set brief) I thought he might find the first sample a bit too fussy.

I had in mind to add some printed pieces too and as I had a nice selection of hand printed Indian cotton 4” squares, I selected 4 and made a composition with the original hand dyed fabrics.



Having decided that this was what I wanted I made a diagram to size.



I then cut all the relevant pieces, making sure to add the seam allowances, and stitched them together, making quite sure that this time I stitched them together correctly.
I also found it very helpful to mark the size of the pieces on the diagram, and use a photo of the mock up to guide me.

I put the three layers together as described in Quilting Experiments 2 and worked a selection of hand and machine stitches, keeping in mind a definite masculine feel this time.



Having got 2 ‘safe’ samples ‘in the bag’ I decided I could now afford to experiment.

My starting point was an exercise that I’d done on a workshop with Julia Caprara. Our first design task was to tear up strips of magazine papers in a colour scheme of our choice and glue them together. We then had to tear the strips and join them back the other way with stitches and coloured tissue paper wrapped around thin wire to make it bendy. Lastly we had to stitch in running stitches that echoed the shapes in the magazine papers. This was a very good freeing up exercise, although at the time I felt very out of my comfort zone.



If I thought I was out of my comfort zone with this exercise there was much more scary stuff to come. The next thing we had to do was pick fabrics that may/ may not represent the magazine strips in colour, and putting one piece over another do exactly as Julia said. Quickly!! She called out things like ‘do three rows of running stitch down the cloth holding the pieces together, then do stars with anther piece of fabric', etc. So it was a combination of speed sewing and colour experiments. We were then invited to add embellishments from her enormous collection.



So it was a modified version of this technique that got me fired up to do sample 3. I had all the off cuts of the dyed samples and the print experiments, plus the small leftovers of the Indian samples. This gave me the confidence to experiment, as I knew I didn’t need to conserve these pieces as I already had 2 completed samples.
I used Julia’s method to join the various pieces together with hand stitches, making good use of my hand dyed threads. Once I’d got a rectangle the size of the other 2 samples I sandwiched the batting and calico together and started to consolidate the piece with machine stitches, still thinking masculine straight lines.

As I’d been using my daughter’s computerised embroidery machine for work recently, I thought I’d have a go at the quilting stitches and also some wording. I tried to maintain some rhythm to what I was putting onto the cloth and followed some of the print lines and the shapes of the cut fabric. All together it was a very exciting and enjoyable experiment, and I do feel really pleased that I had a go at something looser than my normal way of working.

As I don’t have any pictures of this sample at an earlier stage (too excited with the progress to stop!) I’ll go straight on to the next part of the construction, which was to choose a fabric for the sashing and the binding. After talking to my fiend and quilter Carrol (who sadly can't be persuaded to start blogging) we decided that dark colours would be the best bet, so I went for a lovely chocolate brown and chocolate polka dot. Both acquired from a seller on eBay, (courtesy of DD2) and here’s the results for all 3 samples.



As you can see on this sample my very clever friend came to the rescue once again and suggested that I make this panel removable as I was worried that it wouldn’t wash well. So I put in 4 buttonholes and found these perfect matching buttons in my stash.
The backing piece to this one has a polka dot centre and is sandwiched with very fine Vilene type wadding and is bagged out with the same backing fabric.



On the other 2 samples I had to add batting to the original block in order to incorporate the sashing and the border. If I was making this up as a full sized throw, I would work each piece with enough batting for the sashing and then add the border batting at the end, when all the blocks had been sewn together, but I need to learn more of this process before I could do that.



This sample has been finished off with the traditional narrow binding, mitred at the corners. It’s not my favourite finish as I think it’s too heavy, but DD3 liked it so I suppose it would be down to the client’s choice at the end of the day. The backing for this one is the plain brown.



I decided to stick with the simple option for this sample and just put in a wide border of brown, which would surround the blocks and also be used as the border fabric. The backing is the polka dot fabric and the block has been bagged out. I really like the simplicity of this sample and could see it being used in the setting.

That will be the next challenge, to create the presentation for this brief.

Quilting experiments 2

Following on from the previous post, I decided that I wasn’t that happy with anything yet, so I went back to the computer and tried floating a few of the ideas so far on the back of the sofa and here’s the result.



To get the area on the sofa back I selected it in PS and then copied it to a new document, this then allowed me to paint in the stripes and also try some filters, and when I was happy I just pasted them back onto the sofa to see what they looked like.

Artistic- palette knife


Artistic-rough pastels


Artistic-coloured pencil


I didn’t really like any of these ideas so I went back to the original squares that I created when I did my colour study exercise (Sandra Meech) and selected an area I liked. As I wanted to soften the line I put the squares into PS and put the Liquefy filter on them to bend the shape a bit. I also went back to the idea of the composite and floated an image and some text over the top, and drew in some simulated stitch marks.



At last I was beginning to feel I was getting somewhere. I decided to go for graduated blocks of colour which would give me a cross between squares and stripes, and I had a quick go on in PS to see if the idea was viable.



Getting there! But too much purple and the design process on the computer felt too restrictive.



I now went back to the sketchbook and using this book as a guide I started to create ideas for stripes and lattices.



I worked to a size of 12x12 cm with the intention of scaling up to 12x12 inches, but due to a mistake later on this ended up as 12x10.5 inches.
The design on the bottom right is a WIP and the top left is the one I chose to work with, using my dyed fabrics.



As you will see from the picture above I got so carried away that I cut the bottom section the same as the top, hence the discrepancy in the sizing. I also managed to join everything back to front so the design didn’t match the sketch.
Still it’s all part of the learning curve.



As I didn’t like the new arrangement I changed the format to portrait.



I could now see that these bold colours needed knocking back, so I set about overlaying them with images printed on to ExtravOrganza and printing straight on to the fabric with the little printing blocks I made from Funky Foam. The bottom left fungus has been printed onto ExtravOrganza and painted over with Procion, (Koh-I-Noor) it worked very well. The other prints have been done with a permanent stamping ink.
I sandwiched this top layer with a layer of lightweight Warm Bond, a thermally bonded cotton batting, and a layer of soft pre washed calico. Lots of quilting stitches to finish off.



This is the first of 3 samples, the other 2 are still WIP’s which I will blog about, together with the throw binding and the sashing, next time.

Mood board

Continuing the Colour Studies theme, in the next exercise we have been asked to design a mood board, which should 'capture and convey the essence or mood of the subject or theme.'

After much deliberation, usually as I'm trying to get to sleep, I managed to pin down the subject matter for this exercise to 7 possibilities.

Whitby, because we had a great holiday there last year and I've fallen in love with it!
Family, for obvious reasons.
Childhood, for no apparent reason.
The seaside, because I just love to be near the sea, it's so infinite and always puts everything in perspective.
Freindship, I suppose because all this blogging has really brought it home to me just how wonderful friendship is.
Provence, beacause I've had some of my most favourite holidays there both as a child and with my OH and our children.
Happiness, beacuse it feels so great when you are happy.

I finally decided that out of this seven the choice had to be Provence, because at the end of the day this is a colour exercise and of all the things that make it special, I think it has always been the beautiful colours that are everywhere you look in the region. From the rich brown earth to the 'unreal' blue sky.









Also, by way of a decider I have the 'Tricia Guild on Colour' book and a lot of her colour schemes are based around the Mediterranean colours. It is a superb colour reference for any kind of creative project, the photos are brilliant.
I really enjoyed making this colour board and hope it will inspire me for future projects.