Festival Of Quilts

This year I decided to bite the bullet and submit a quilt........

It was lovely to see it hanging there but also terrifying! Even more terrifying was opening the judges comments.....'.lovely interpretation of the subject matter with beautiful background quilting'. Big sigh of relief.

Am I doing another one for next year?......

The final piece of the puzzle....

To finish off the main pieces, each piece had threads, ribbons and beads couched onto it.

The inside pieces had net stitched onto them before being bondawebbed onto another piece of pelment vilene. The front and back pieces were then bonded to each other before being satin stitched together along the edges. A thin wire was stitched into the top section.

The vessel was then assembled by first stitching the sides to the base and then stitching up the sides leaving the top white area un-stitched.








The inside net had glitter paint applied to give light reflection before being beaded.
Finally the top section that had been wired was curled over and twisted.




Finished!

The Story Continues......

So having finished stamping my designs all over it was time to cut out the shapes, leaving an extra 1/4 inch all round to be trimmed back later.

Next, each piece needed to be embellished with various sea themed designs.
(Bet you hadn't guessed that one, lol!!)

The first piece has seaweed appliqued onto it in silk.


The hand stitching was done after appliqueing the design.


Next the second and fourth pieces were hand stitched.



Finally the third piece had more seaweed reverse appliqued on it, again in silk. Then another piece of seaweed free machined onto soluble fabric was stitched on.

The Ammonites were made from felt, machine stitched and burnt back with a soldering iron, and also from tin foil bonda-webbed onto black net and coloured with alcohol inks before being stitched and cut out. A little bit of glitter paint was added to give them a bit of a sparkle.


Finally pieces of shell, sea glass and stone were stitched onto the final piece.

The four almost finished pieces.

Long way to go yet but it's getting there.

Assessment Date is Looming-The Story So Far!

I have loved this module of my course. It has been all about the things I love making...book covers, vessels, dyeing etc. My assessment piece for this module has to be 3D and I'm having such fun making it.

So far I have...........

Torn strips of fabric, cotton, lace, sheer, silks etc and bondawebbed them to pelmet vilene.


Then.......




I stitched heavily onto the surface to hold all the pieces of fabric down........





Then to finish, I created another surface layer by stamping all over with various home made stamps, spirals, dots, waves and swirls using Jacquard Textile Paints and Jacquard Lumiere Textile Paints



I'm sure you've guessed what the theme is!
You'll have to wait for the next installment to see what it turns into!

Triangle Dyeing

I finally had a whole morning to myself in the lull between one lot of visitors leaving and the next lot arriving so decided to do a little bit more dyeing using procion dyes. I have use this method to do a couple of dye batches but I am especially pleased with the colours achieved in this batch.





Each colour is achieved by using 3 different colours of dye, in varying amounts in each dye bath, 15 pieces of fabric in total.

The Mighty Oak

Once again my sister and I have been playing with 'Silver Clay'. There was a little bit of clay left over from the last time we 'played', not enough to make anything too large so we turned the clay into paste so we could paint leaves with it.

I love Oak Trees, they are the quintessential 'English' tree and not far from to us there is a tree that is reputed to be upwards of 600 years old. It is very gnarled and the massive trunk has had to have a metal brace placed round it to preserve it as the trunk has split. With true British spirit it comes to life every year and is beautiful.



So we decided to use oak leaves, not I hasten to add taken from the 600 yr old tree! They were taken from my sisters tree. The leaf needs to be washed gently before starting, once that was done we could paint to our hearts content. Not a fast process as each layer has to be painted on thinly and dried before the next one can be painted on. In all it took 10 layers of silver clay paste for it to become strong enough to withstand use. Once totally dry they were fired and polished up. The veining was highlighted by adding 'liver of sulphur' to hot water and immersing them for a couple of minutes before re polishing to remove it from unwanted areas. A 'bail' has been added to the back of each one so I can hang them from a chain etc. We've both ended up with 2 beautiful silver (925) leaves.

Play Time!

This year my sister & I have decided to set each other a challenge for Christmas. The rules are very simple, we both have to have the same basic present with a price limit of £10. Once we have found something we both like we then have free reign to fill it with any manor of things, but whatever we fill it with has to be made from anything we have to hand in the house. No extra expenditure is allowed!

So now we've found some lovely wicker Trugs for the garden........

the fun can really begin.................

My first 'make' to go in the trug is an apron made from a t-towel. I have a bit of a t-towel fetish and buy lovely ones then hide them in the back of the drawer as I don't want to get them stained!! Virtually all my t-towels have dye stains on them!! At the beginning of the year I bought some lovely mint coloured ones from Asda and duly hid them! I came across them whilst tidying out the drawer and decided it was time to put one of them to a good use.

To the basic t-towel I added three pockets made from my stash of fabric and an extra long tie so it can be wrapped round the waist and tied at the front. I folded the two top edges of the t-towel round to the back just to add a little shape to the top of it. Eh Viola!

Now....what can I make next.............................?