Making Progress: Quilt Design and Life

Over the last few months things have changed dramatically in the Quilting Along the Grain household!

Over the Easter break we were told we needed to leave our much loved home in Tetbury. Our landlord had decided to sell the house. Unfortunately the  rental rates in Tetbury had risen beyond my income so we had to make the heart breaking decision to leave Tetbury and start again somewhere...

After looking at our options we decided as a family that Stroud would be the best place for us - midi and mini attend groups here and maxi needs to the train line to get his new College in Swindon. As in most places rental properties appear on the internet and then disappear in hours so we were very fortunate to find a four bed Victorian terrace in our budget.

So four months on we are semi settled into our new home and life in Stroud. New schools and finding new friends has been a journey with lots of tears, but we are slowly putting down roots.

In the move I lost my beloved studio.... it really did make a weep! Now I have a very small space in my bedroom with lots of fabric in bags and equipment everywhere.

I have been focusing on the Medallion Quilt to get me through the settling in process. Sewing has always been my refuge when things around me are changing. It helps me to anchor myself when all around me is swirling.

Here is the progress I have made:

This is my new sewing area. I have managed to carve out a little space with some wall space to hang small design work. 

To the tulips I have added a round of Flying Geese and Economy Blocks in the corner.

I wanted to break up the ridged shapes with some colour so I added a layer of strips of colour.

The next layer is a round of different coloured foundation pieced stars.

I love the way that the quilt is growing and the fabrics by Blueberry Park are simply beautiful.

I think this is last layer of design and I am really excited to be entering the final phase of the patchwork design. Next to write the instructions for the quilt so I can start teaching the design in three weeks.

I hope you like it too!

Year 1 done!

Phew, I have been gone a long time!

It has been a long 8/9 weeks of work, children and trying to get module 4 handed in..... that and 2 nasty injuries finished me off!

So as the title suggests I managed to get module 4 handed in and my first year of the 3 year course is done! Yay!

Here are some of the things I made for my portfolio...

Mono Printing

Raised pebbles

Collage

Mark Making with tracing paper.

Lulworth Cove.... It is honestly!

More collage.

Mini book with designs.

Larger handmade design book.

Stitch sample.

Ruffled, gathered fabrics.

Mixture of textures.

My first attempt at cords with beads - love these!

A year seems to have gone by so fast - although sometimes it has felt very slow!

I have moved so far from my starting point that when I look back I am slightly shocked! When I started last August I was in a panic, it all seemed so hard and my dream seemed impossible. One year on, and 4 modules completed, I feel ore confident of my skills and that my dream is almost on the horizon...

It has not been easy though. Teaching lots of classes, looking after 3 boys, being a Scout leader and working through the course has left me very little time to think! It feels worth it though!

So to year 2... well, there is one more design module looking at Form and then I get to work through my designs to create 3D pieces of work. They look scary when I look at them in my student booklets.... but oh so exciting!

I am also turning towards the new teaching year and I have been working hard to pull together a fun and versatile teaching schedule. I will be sending out the details of classes and workshops in a newsletter tomorrow, so if you want to receive the newsletter just drop me an email: quiltingthegrain@btinternet.com.

Being Too Much of a Mathematician!

On Friday I had the privilege of visiting the studio of local textile artist Sue Green.

Sue has a studio called The Cowshed Studio in South Cerney. It is an amazing space! It is huge and crammed with so much yummy fabric, painting supplies and examples of her amazing work.

We agreed to do a skill swap: I helped Sue understand all of the icons on Facebook and connected her new tablet to her phone, she talked me through my portfolio and taught me a new technique using tea bag paper - who knew right?

It was an amazing experience and one I hope to repeat regularly...

I learnt a lot, in fact so much that it has kinda blown my creative mind a little bit!

You see my portfolios are really neat and follow my process in a methodical way, they are so tidy... my work is really methodical.... I need things to be neat...

The thing is everywhere I look on the Internet textile artists are layered! They have portfolios and sketchbooks filled with content that is wonderful to look at, but is crammed in and all over the place to my eye... this is just isn't me at the moment....

So I have been worrying and worrying that I will never make it as a textile artist because I like things to be neat and structured.... it is the mathematician in me... I knew that the Astrophysics degree side of my brain would take time to wither, but what if it never leaves me?

What if the only way I can work is in a neat, methodical way?

I am still going to be able to work as a textile artist?

Can I follow my own processes of creation and still be a valid artist?

Having a little bit of a crisis....

My lovely friend Liz pointed out that I have passed both of my modules so far with no need to change my work, so I must be doing something right.... but still...

FMQ Design Part 2

Last week I blogged in the FMQ series about design, and it was a fun blog to write, but I was left feeling like I had listed resources and placed for inspiration and not much about my actual process - basically how do I do I go from blank canvas to finished quilt...

My usual blog style is to explain things from my perspective, last week was hopefully useful to you, but I feel like it needs more..

So how do I take a blank canvas and change it?

Well I am a huge fan of Angela Walters and her attitude that quilting should be fun - if your not having fun then what's the point right?

To begin with I have only been machine quilting since January 2012. Before that I was a firm hand quilter having attempted machine quilting and failed at every turn. The books seemed impossibly hard to decipher and everything I found said that I had to be accurate - something I just can't do!

A short deadline on a quilt for mini changed that I completed my first machine quilter quilt in less then 2 weeks - a single bed quilt that he drags around everywhere!

Now I love machine quilting, I turn to it first, but how do I decide on how to quilt?

For me is it about looking at the space. Take this quilt that is mid quilting:

This quilt is made up of triangles left over from the Tula Pink Quilt. They have been sewn onto the white top using the quilt as you go method with the edges still raw - I kinda like the way they are unravelling!

According to mini, who has claimed it as his, it looks like a snake of kites! 

There is loads of space to play in as you can see - Negative Space. I wanted to continue the idea of swirls so I have fanned out from the main line of triangles and the used tight swirls, pebble and waves in the spaces.

The blank canvas could be scary, but I see it as a place to play, a space to have fun in trying out new ideas. It reminds me of waves crashing onto pebbles! 

The back shows the intensity of the stitching, all of the shapes formed as well as the travel stitching which is the areas I have travelled back along the design to get together point - they are the heavily sewn sections.

This quilt is going to crammed full of stitches and designs - maybe along the same theme, maybe not. I am just letting the design play out at the moment.

This small baby quilt I made last week has been quilted very differently. I didn't want to detract from the fabrics. They are Sweetwater, which are my favourite so I wanted them to play centre stage. So only the negative space, in this case cream, is quilted in matching thread with a meandering hearts and swirls pattern. Very pretty, but not heavy. The quilt has a light weight feel to it, which suits a baby quilt ad the visual impact of the fabric isn't imposed on by the quilting, added to in a delicate way.

Maxi's city quilt is another example of quilting on the quilting table. The quilt has huge, lush curves and hard rectangles built into the patchwork.So far I have decided on this mixture of swirls and pebbles, but I am letting the rest of the design sink in before I move onto more sections. I want to add to the design created by the patchwork...

In each case I am going for a different feel, adding more texture either in buckets or very gently. But in all cases I have fun!

Are my designs perfect?

NO. They most definitely are not, but they will be gorgeous and much loved quilts when they are finished, and I will have learnt something new....

If you want to catch the rest in the series you can here:

• Needles
• Threads
• Feet
• Design Part 1