All the Ants

I am pretty pleased with this set of six 'coasters' - they're not really coasters I don't think. They're really for sitting your knick knacks upon, to save the carefully waxed and polished surface of your sideboard, or what-not, or tall-boy. Definitely in anti-macassar territory here, with just the very tiniest touch of 'vanitas'.

They're (sort of) a commission, and therefore have someone's name firmly attached. Not quite SOLD, but near as. 

More ants

Ants

Some more insect embroidery:

I like the back.

Thinking about how to 'present' these...perhaps in a double-sided glass 'sandwich'...

Experiments

So this is an idea I was messing around with and put aside for a while.

It's a cushion - obviously! But I wonder how many people will know where I got inspiration for the quilting from?

Let me give you a clue:

Any guesses? OK, I'll tell you.

That little bit of embroidery there...that's supposed to be a flapping bird origami model. More precisely it is an illustration, rendered in hand embroidery, of a flapping bird origami model.

And the quilting pattern is the 'fold map' of a flapping bird origami model. A 'fold map' is what you will see if you make an origami model, and then 'unfold' it back to a flat piece of paper.

Here is a full size pic of the pink (and original) version:

This was a cushion, but I took it apart as I had a few 'engineering issues' with binding and inserting zips and making it all look nice and neat and professional.

I actually had a particular person in mind when I did this, but felt that it wasn't quite up to snuff. 

It's not an entirely bad idea, so I think it's time to re-visit this and do some more. Plus, apart from the little illustration, it's a machine sewing job: I've been doing a lot of hand-quilting lately and while I love the result - as I have so recently waxed lyrical about - there is no getting away from the fact that it is slow and time consuming. So, the idea of whipping up a pile of cushion covers double-quick definitely has a certain appeal. 

(And that person I'd originally intended to make it for might just find themselves in possession of a nice squooshy cushion before too long)

Nothing new under the sun

Way back in the day before there were babies and life in general and all those other things that sweep one up and away and on through life, I started a degree in Textiles at Goldsmith's. It was a strange time for me - I'd been informed in no uncertain terms by various tutors (I was at the time studying at Gt Yarmouth College of Art and Design) that I was unlikely to land a place at such a prestigious school. Well, I did land a place - but one way and another, I ended up not staying. 

Anyway, back then, I had started to experiment with using text in my work. Given that I have always had a decidedly literary leaning, this makes sense to me - but I haven't found a way to make it make sense to anyone else. 

But now somehow a whole bunch of things have come together and I feel moved to find a way to roll my compulsion/attraction to re-use/re-purposing (or re-cycling, or up-cycling, or make-do-and-mending...you decide) and the impulse to 'say' with actual words, to make some kind of statement perhaps, or simply pass comment, or (with luck) deliver some of that special thing that great prose or a poem can deliver - that ineffable thing/movement/moment of recognition/realisation/release that can happen in the body when the mind engages with the words.

So, without trying to pick all of that apart (not right now at least), I have all this table-linen from my mum. I won't use it as table-linen, but I don't want to just 'let it go'. I want to 'mark' it's existence somehow, the importance of it: all those family meals, just the normal everyday stuff that families do every day - the basic stuff of mothering, parenting, being-in-a-family-ing, that we all do. 

So I'm just writing it down on the tablecloth - unedited and spontaneously - and then sewing it into the fabric. I'm not totally sure if it works or is even a good idea (there are many precedents: samplers in general, Elizabeth Parker's sampler and the extraordinary Lorina Bulwer) but I'm going to go with it for a while and just see if it starts to make sense.

This is the back - I'm holding off on showing the front yet, and the back is actually (to my eyes) more 'lyrical' and interesting. Of course, you can't actually read it presented like this, but the words are still 'there'. 

Anyway - it's a big tablecloth, so it's likely to take a good long while to cover the whole thing with text. 

Next up: more inherited table-linen. I have tons of little linen 'coasters'. I want to embellish them, to touch on that tradition of embroidered embellishment. So I'm playing around - very early days - with 'drawing' on the fabric with thread.

Here is a dead fly. It's a close up - 'he' is about 5 cm long. 

And again...I rather prefer the reverse. He looks more 'dead' somehow, don't you think?

I know I'm not the first to light upon the notion of choosing non-traditional - or even 'anti-decorative' subjects to use in an embroidery/embellishment context, but hey ho...nothing new under the sun and all that.

Anyway - that's where I'm at right now. Making a few tentative 'new' moves, while clearly thoroughly re-visiting my past.

Two new quilts: Wonky Stars and Maureen's Linen.

Here are my latest quilts.

Wonky Stars turned out rather christmas-y. I didn't plan it that way. I just happened to have stash/up-cycled fabrics that perfectly matched the colours in the owl patterned fabric. Its the green/red thing which screams christmas no matter what you do with it. But, because the 'red' here is a deep maroon rather than post-box vermillion, and therefore not too brash, I think I've just about avoided it being crassly christmas-y and hit a slightly more retro note (that's what I'm telling myself anyway).

In fact, the colours are more saturated than the photo suggests, but it all seems to work nicely enough. I like the bold effect of the strong plains agains the fairly low-noise, mostly neutral pattern.

And, I LOVE this wonky star pattern. Some patchwork requires really accurate piecing otherwise it won't 'work' very well. The traditional version of this kind of star, done with even points all round, is one of those patterns. The wonky version, by contrast, is wonderfully forgiving. Plus it's great fun to make, and gives really pleasing results, even for beginners or for people (like me) who struggle with accuracy in cutting and sewing. I'm working on it...but I think I may always have a weakness for a wonky star.

Anyway - this measures 34" x 46" (87cm x 117cm). Machine pieced, a mix of new (top) and up-cycled cotton and poly-cotton (back and binding). Hand quilted. Machine washable.

Here is a look at the back. It's a bit puckered, but you can see how the quilting shadows the piecework of the top, with the homey but nonetheless 'wholecloth'* effect - both sides look nice.

And a close up.

It turned out ok.

Next up - another Jane Brocket style quilt made from up-cycled embroidered table linen. 29" x 36" (74cm x 92cm).

These are very satisfying to do. This is made - mostly - from a haul of napkins I picked up from the Melton Constable Jumble Trail - it was a quirky trip out with a friend to a very under-advertised village event which was meant to raise money for a local amenity (a park or something, to my shame I can't quite remember).

I am pretty sure that my friend and I were the only non-villagers who turned up to the jumble trail. This made it very nice for us, but probably rather disappointing for the trail participants and their improve-the-park fund. By the way, a jumble trail is simply a day of door-step-sales for whoever wants to join in I think.

I was going to say 'yard sales' but that's so American, and anyway in Melton everyone was using their front garden or the nearest thing to it, such as the pavement. Besides, us brits don't really have yards. We have gardens into which a surprising amount of planting can be achieved by the determined householder even if they are literally the size of a postage stamp.

I wish I'd bought up more. Maureen's stall was brilliant - she had piles and piles of this kind of table linen, and lots of other oldie-fashioned-y, very nice things. I was far too picky**.

Ah well. This then is the result of a brief and exhilarating flirt with lovely oldie fashioned things. And, slightly wavy edges aside, I'm jolly pleased with the result. It's definitely a baby quilt I think.

Here are a couple of close ups. The border material was from my stash, and the binding is made from pure cotton sheeting.

The quilting thread is also 'vintage': from my mum's sewing stash, so possibly even something my nan would have used... maybe for making her best undies or something else equally delicious.

Here's the back. This is made from a length of fabric also purchased on the Melton Jumble Trail, (from the lovely Saffron of the Bluejacket Workshop in Morston).

And this is the label that was still pinned on the fabric...

Gordon Thoday's used to be on St Stephen's Street in Norwich. I remember it though can't find much trace on the internet about the Norwich branch, or when it closed down. Long gone anyway. 

It is rather nice though, to have some local (probably) history in one of my quilts. It is this very thing that makes handmade and hand-making quilts so very appealing to me***. So with that in mind, I'm going to start 'signing' my quilts, probably with hand-stitched labels. Even if the only people who read those labels are family descendants****, it still feels like a 'right' thing to do.

I'm going to sell these at some point - if I can that is. So...if you're interested, make me an offer!

* Wholecloth quilts are usually pretty special things. I may try making one. May.

** Actually I'm a hoarder in waiting. I can feel this 'crazy-old-lady' version of me lurking perilously close on the side-lines, just waiting for a chance to leap in takeover. So I ruthlessly curb the impulse to snap up every single lovely oldie fashioned-y thing I come across. Occasionally it means missing out. Generally it means I - and my partner - can live a reasonably normal and uncluttered life. If it isn't swings it's roundabouts ain't it?

*** In a somewhat fraudulent use of the footnote, it should be said that quilt making was not necessarily a thing of necessity or make-do-and-mend, and has a very interesting and varied history... about which I know very little. Sorry.

**** This somewhat pre-supposes that my family descendants will want to keep the quilts, which is clearly not actually a given. But there will always be people like me and my friend Julie, those lone out-of-village visitors to the Melton Constable Jumble Trail and its like, and they'll be delighted to find handmade, homely quilts like these. It's enough for me.