Roll call

Well, going by the responses to last post it seems we have 6 potential members: Sue, Luitgard, Jenny, Mimi, Susanne and myself (Kathryn). Unless some of you are going by aliases, this doesn't seem to bear much resemblance to the members list on the sidebar of the blog. We all seem to agree a fresh start is needed with some differences about how we go about that, prinipally about what platform we use. I am happy to take an active role in moderating once we have set up a renewed and revitalised website/blog/whatever, but honestly don't have the technical skills to get us started. It would also seem we should increase our membership - perhaps by invitation to our readership(such as it is) or through our personal connections. I am at the Australasian Quilt Convention next week, and could use that to network. I am also wondering if regular challenges suits our needs, as most of us seem to have difficulty completing them. I wonder if this is the inspiration we need at this stage of our collective creative lives. Maybe we should realistically look at less challenges, and more sharing and comments about whatever else we are working on and finding inspirational. More like a community of artists encouraging and spurring each other on. For example, perhaps every two months we respond to a prompt such as: What technique / medium currently excites you? Where do you do your creative work? How do you track down the muse when she has gone into hiding? Just some thoughts. Please respond, whether or not you are an official member. Cheers Kathryn p.s I still can't seem to load any photos!

THE STATE WE'RE IN - CONT.

I feel that we are no further forward.  Have we got a group or not?  I suggest a roll call of everyone who is still reading.  Answer the simple question - are you in or not?  I suggest 7 April as a cut-off date for this.

If we have enough people still interested I suggest that the current blog is shut down & strongly recommend a Yahoo group in its place.  I said this before because it is flexible & easy to use.  It is also much easier for anyone interested to join.  All we need is someone to volunteer to set it up.  I understand that it is simple to do but I cannot organise it as I am running a couple of groups already in addition to my work.

Any volunteers & please can we have a roll call so the position is clearer?

No longer drowning, just waving!

I will put my hand up as a member who has not fulfilled my committment to the group since I joined last year. However, I am keen for the group to continue, perhaps restructured, but certainly revitalised and refreshed. To demonstrate my committment, I would like to post a photo of my contribution to the latest challenge: Reflections... but for some reason I can't load the photo, so I am putting the link to my blog instead, where hopefully you will be able to see it. http://contextilequilting,blogspot.com.au I don't know if a change in format will revitalise the group, but it certainly can only help to present our work in an up-to-date way that reflects our enthusiasm for textile art. Life became very busy for me last year, and I have two unfinished challenge pieces - once I felt the group had moved on, I guess I sort of lost interest. But I find the concept of "the group" very nebulous, and I wasn't quite sure who else was potentially posting or viewing. I am keen to continue, to engage with the creative community in this quite personalised way, and to be pushed in my artistic endeavours. Kathryn p.s. if someone has a hint as to why I can't post the photo, please let me know!

THE STATE WE'RE IN

I was wondering what was happening to the group as well.  No-one knows whose in & whose out. People seemed to be leaving withough saying so & it appears to me that the ship is rudderless & without a captain.  Who is in charge?

MY OBSERVATIONS
1)  I have found from the start that the blog is organised in a confusing & unnecessarily complex way.  There is no e-mail contact given so what do prospective members do if they are interested in joining?  The profiles are unnecessary in this form (mine was never put on the site properly anyway).  The Challenge Gallery does not exist (at least, the pictures are crossed out on my computer).

2)  I think the idea of getting each member in turn to set a Challenge was a good one but thw timescale was too short to  finish new piece on a regular basis  Three months or so per Challenge would have been better & work in progress should be acceptable.  I take a long time to formulate my ideas & design my work before even starting to make it in fabric.

3)  I believe that if if we are to stay in play then the whole project has to be reformed & that a Yahoo group is the easiest to set up & manage - inded, I don't know why this wasn't the format from the start  We could talk to each other through it & others could join by application.  I don't think that I have the skills to do this but if someone else were to take it on they would have my full support.

4)  Perhaps we could start with a 'roll call' of whose in?

Over now to whoever else is paying attention!

Jenny

Hello..?!

Hello, is anybody out there?! I'm just wondering who is still participating? I'm really sorry so many members left the group, even if I understand your reasons.
So, can we do a new start? As far as I know it's Jenny, Luitgard and me who are still members of the group. Maybe Frauke is going to join us again? Some new members waiting? Some "silent" members, only waiting for a new challenge?
I would like to continue this challenge, to stay in contact with you all and although to meet new people.
And I would like to hear what you think about it. 
Btw, there have been the first signs of spring in my garden  lately

RULES OF SYMMETRY

I apologise for not explaining these in the course of my post for 'Reflections'.  I am afraid that I did not give thought to whether members were acquainted with these so I shall try to put matters right.

Very briefly, these rules form the basis of all pattern repeats & apparently the building blocks for crystallography & some of Escher's work as well.  They include arrangements such as mirror, flip, drop, half-drop, glide etc.  I can point you to some books which should help.  The best one for quilters is probably Ruth McDowell's 'Symmetry' as she uses a hand symbol to illustrate the various orientations.  Also useful is Jinny Beyer's 'Discovering Tessellations' & Peter Phillips's 'Handbook of Regular Patterns'.  An Internet search will reveal 'Wallpaper Groups' on a Clark University site.  These amount to the same thing but are a bit complicated if you are unfamiliar with the principles.

I hope this helps.  If you still cannot find anything e-mail me.

Is there going to be a new challenge soon?

GOING FOR GOLD - FOR REFLECTIONS

I finished this piece ages ago and it has stayed motionless on the computer.  I am a terrible blogger but have got round to it at last.  It is an experiment with Symmetry and uses some of the 17 Rules.  The swimmers are mirrored and the background is based on selections from the central piece.  It was part of a series on the 2012 Olympic Games - unfortunately, swimming was not one of our success stories!

Most of this piece was computer designed and printed onto TP.  It was then free machine quilted.

(The previous two pieces are to come.  Again, they have been stuck for some time)

Sorry to be saying goodbye

I have been thinking long and hard about continuing with this group and feel that I have to call it a day.  I have enjoyed making the challenge pieces that I've made since we started, but I want to concentrate on other aspects of my work and have also elected to join the monthly Journal Quilt challenge with the Contemporary Quilt Group of the Quilters Guild UK. 

I hope the group continues to grow and wish all of you happy times creating in the future.
Best wishes and I'm sure I'll see you around the internet or even in real life :-)
Julie Mackinder

Reflections - Julie

I have to confess that I have stretched my interpretation of 'Reflection' as I needed to make a quilt for another challenge and I wanted this piece to serve both purposes.  I have lots of images on my computer of reflections both in water and in other surfaces like glass and metal and intend to explore ways of interpreting them in fabric.  As the subject of my other challenge is 'My World Is Green' I decided to 'reflect' on an image of an area of the UK that is special to me.

For the last several years my husband and I have spent 2 weeks every year in Cornwall in St Ives. A typical part of Cornish scenery is the fields surrounded by Cornish hedges, which are in fact walls planted up with herbage and flowers so that they appear grassy.

My photograph of the fields near St Ives was manipulated in Photoshop and provided the basis for my quilt.

Above is the finished quilt and below is a detail.

The quilt has been made using curved piecing and uses my own hand dyes and some commercial fabrics. You can read more about my process on my blog  here and here. 

I enjoyed this challenge and I'm looking forward to seeing the other reveals.

Reflection#1

When I hear "reflections" I immediately think colours, reflected by water, fractured shapes, movement. I've collected lots of images matching the theme and it was really a challenge to choose one and make a quilt out of it!
Here it is, Reflection #1 (100x60cm)

I'm quiet pleased how it turned out and  that it lies totally flat despite of all those curved seams makes me happy!

I'm going to tell you more about the process on my blog soon.

Reflection by Luitgard

When I go for my morning run I'm always fascinated by the birds living at a small lake. The first rays of daylight touch the water which is still covered with morning fog. And the birds are already busy, cleaning their plumage and getting ready for a new day.

Technique: Thermofax screenprin,t painted, quilted by machine. Size: 30" by 18"
Thermofax birds by Ineke Berlyn

Next Challenge

Hi everyone

It's my turn to choose the next challenge and I haven't even started the last one! I'm afraid I'm having a major creative block, at least for quilting, at the moment.

Anyway, the next challenge theme is Reflections (or reflection or reflecting, or however you want to interpret it).  Shall we say 30 January for the deadline, since Christmas is getting scarily close?

Memories of Bumpsteads

Following on from the little note I put up on 1 October I can now show you what I have been working on for this theme and what inspired me to choose 'Memory' for this challenge. 

This is the not-quite finished memory piece which I have titled 'Bumpsteads'.  I do not normally make pictorial quilts but I have had this piece in my head for a long time so it was good to get it out of there and explore the process.  The fabrics are a combination of commercial fabrics and my sun printed fabric and all the pieces have been bonded.  I have so far added some hand stitching to describe the grass edges to the garden and field.

From the age of 9 to about 17/18 I spent as many of my holidays as I could manage staying with a family friend on their pig farm.  In the garden was a huge pear tree with a tree swing in it and a rather rusty metal seat encircling it.  I spent many happy hours swinging, feeding the pigs, playing with the farm cats and helping to look after and play with the children of the family as they came along.  I have a very strong visual memory of making a picnic in the garden with the daughters of the family to be shared with their dolls and teddies with the sound and smell of pigs happily grubbing about in the field across the road.  The scene in my mind is flooded with sunlight and my 'Aunt' heavy with her next child.  The children, as with all children, had lost interest in the tea party and gone in search of other entertainment.

The piece comes from a naive style painting that I made of the remembered scene several years ago when I was painting.

Memory Fragments

Hi everyone, sorry for the delay in posting my entry for the Memory Challenge. Everything conspired against me to get this quilt posted on time.

Have to say that the theme "Memory" threw me a bit, was racking my brain for a good bit to come up with a satisfactory entry. But that's the good thing about themes, they really make you think sometimes....

So my piece is time is a bit free-form.

No-one really knows how the brain works and how memories are formed. So my piece is about memory fragments, the little snippets of colour and events that make us who we are.

The piece is made from hand-dyed fabric, net, organza, snippet of net curtain etc. which has been machine quilted.

Memory by Luitgard Moeschle

It seems we have a new member - without a own blog, so I have the pleasure to post in her name ;-))

Please say hello to Luitgard Moeschle, a well-known quilter from Germany! She says hello to the group and is very happy to become an active member. Her first quilt for our challenge group is "Deiva Marina 2012, Italy":

It's 50 x 50 cm, painted and printed, hand-quilted, machine-embroidered. It is a memory about a recent holiday at Cinque Terre / Italy.

TO REMEMBER & TO FORGET!

The opposite of remembering is forgetting & I completely forgot about posting the 'Landmarks' Challenge after doing the work!  Sounds daft but that's me!
Pictures & details of that Challenge & the current one will appear in the course of the week.
Apologies.

"Memory"

When the theme "Memory" came up, an older quilt came to my mind. It was done in 2009, and it is FULL of memories of my childhood and my mother (who passed away in 2005). The finished quilt never made me happy, it was done, but ... well, I was just not happy with it. The fabrics are scraps from the clothes of my mother and my own hand-dyed fabrics; the bigger rectangles and squares were cut from a picture I took with my very first camera on a walk with my mom and our dog.
Here's a picture of that quilt before I took it apart:

It was not quilted, just tied with buttons from the button-box of my mother. I got rid of all the buttons and separated the layers. Added a border (from a fabric I inherited from my mother in law) and enlarged the back.
Than, I quilted it - finally I had an idea how to quilt this one (and the ability to fulfill that idea!):

Next came an overlay ... done on organza, with help of a tear-away-stabilizer on the back. I got a scan from the verse my mother had written into my poetry album when I was a child, enlarged it and stitched it by machine onto the organza.
Now the organza is mounted on top of the quilt. And I have finally a quilt that I love and that puts a smile on my face.
The verse is German ... and it speaks about what my mother wanted for me and my life. She wanted laughter (that word appears three times in that verse!), she wanted happiness and sunshine for me. I'm pretty sure that most mothers want these things for their kids, of course - but when I read that verse again after she passed away, it meant the world to me. And it helped me to get along with my sadness.

Here's a detail shot:

Thanks for the opportunity and the nagging to made this quilt finally into a piece I love ! It will live on the wall in our bedroom ;-))

Proudly presenting

Finally finished, here is Memory #1, The Game :

From the beginning I  had in mind to use the idea of this game. In germany it is very popular (mostly amongst children) and known as MEMORY. The cards are lying upside down in the beginning, and one has to find the pairs of the same pictures.
First i collected pictures and fabrics wich said "memory" to me to use them for the cards.

Do you find the pairs? :-)
For the first time i used photoprint on fabric, it worked very well, but i think, it's not my medium. But here it was really usefull. My "memory"-items are
- a recipe from my grandma, written down by my mother for me (she still uses this sütterlin-font)
- some heritaged laces and cross-stitched fabric
- pictures from a wonderful day at the Rhine 
- a handmade print showing leaves from my garden
- a fragment of one of my to-do-lists (very helpful memory tool...)
The pairs are not exatly same, because even memories are never two exactly the same. 

The cards are loosely pinned to this background:

The background is more about loosing memory, memories are fading, get lost or mixed up. There are leftovers from the fabrics I used for the cards, parts of loved and wornout batic pants and grey woolfelt where memories are lost forever due to Alzheimer and others.
 At the moment it's hanging in my sewingroom without the cards pinned to it, and I really love it this way. I could imagine to produce more cards and play with them, changing the design from time to time.
If you visit my blog, flicKwerk , you'll find more posts about the process, labeled  "memory"

More Apologies...

Oh dear, I'm late too.  We just got back from creating memories on holiday in Cornwall and my piece for this challenge is started but not finished.  I will make a proper post about my progress to date as soon as I can.  The image above is the manipulated photo of a painting I made of a memory from childhood that I have been working from.  More soon!

Sorry, me too...

I have to confess, i'm not finished with my memory piece. Actually i've got some days off and hope i can show it to you on wendnesday. In the meantime hop over to my blog, where i've recently posted some thoughts and pictures about the progress. (here, here an here)
And i'm anxious to see what you all will show us!

Challenge Memory

Hello everybody, I'm almost done with my piece - but it might take me a few days longer. I should be done no later than the 3rd of October !! can't wait to see what you're all up to ;-))

Sneek peek/also, tardy to the party

When the "memory" challenge was announced I knew exactly what I wanted to do.

Ever since my mother passed away in March, I had this piece in mind.  Thirty-five years ago, I wrote a play called "The Chair By The Window", the titular chair representing the complex mix of love, loss, and betrayal that comprised my relationship with my mother.  The play won an award, and was mounted by the Sears Festival, [does the Sears Festival even exist anymore or was it a local thing?]).

Twenty years ago, I found myself writing the piece again - oddly, and against my will - from my mother's perspective in the form of an unpublished novel, also called The Chair By The Window.

After the intial weeks of shock and numbness wore off, I felt a strong need talk about my mother's and my relationship again, through cloth.  I had intended to make a physical representation of that chair, and since the call was announced, have made sketches, written notes, gathered inspirational images, and created it in my mind again and again. 

But it seems, I don't yet have the emotional distance from her death that I need to bring it to life at the moment.

I have had in mind another piece, which wasn't meant for this challenge, but will serve just as well.  This one has been percolating for at least a year and it's about an aspect of my relationship with my father. 

It involves a man's dress shirt - and really - that's the image I've been carrying in my head for this last year or so - just that image of a man's dress shirt - the kind your kindergarten teacher asks your mother for, so that you can wear it in art class to protect you your clothes.

The other night, it all came together for me and I'll be starting construction this weekend.  But it will take me a couple of weeks to make it, I think, so I won't have my "memory" piece ready until the middle of the month.

Hope that's okay - and I look forward to seeing what the rest of you create.

Thanks,

Kit

Landmarks - Ravages of Time

  

This is my piece for the Landmarks challenge.  I was thinking of the various marks left on the landscape by centuries of ploughing furrows, terracing or marks left by erosion.  The different colours of rocks and soil...

I used a selection of my dyed, printed or painted fabric, this time mostly using natural dyes or rusting.  The strip on the right is rusted silk dupion that had tannin added, which turned the marks black; the mid brown strips  are silk habotai rust printed;  The pieces with purple and brown marks were painted with ochres and natural dye extracts mixed with soy milk as a binder (I think the purple was logwood).  The ochres came from Clearwell Caves in the Forest of Dean.  I wrote about it on my blog here.

The purple cotton strips are just dyed with procion MX dyes.

This is a close up of the piece.  The top photo is more faithful to the actual colours - I took them with my phone which hasn't got a very good camera but is convenient!

I backed the strips of fabric with strips of loosely woven hessian and handstitched them to leave the seams exposed, then I loosely hand quilted the whole thing on to a piece of brown linen.  Not sure how I'm going to finish it (will either fray it more or singe the edges, I think) but as I am late with this piece I thought I'd better post it immediately.

Landmarks - Burren Roads

Late again, so here it is Burren Roads:

First I made a silkscreen of a large map of the Burren which I printed onto dyed cotton.

I took some of the lovely images from headstone and old ruins around the Burren area and quilted them and attached them by hand using really large stitches.

Added some more heads and then quilted the map and background.

Here;s the other head.

This was from an archway decorated with numerous heads, wonderful piece of carving.











Kviste

Hi, here is another new member of the group. My name is Susanne  and i'm pleased to join you. I live in germany  and my blog is  "flicKwerk" .
The theme "landmarks"brought lots of ideas, but after looking up for a definition at wikipedia, i decided to interpret it in this meaning: Originally, a landmark meant a geographic feature used by explorers and others to find
their way back or through an area.
Every other year or so i'm in Norway for cross-country skitours, and when you are there out in the white nowhere, you're happy that some people did their job and marked the track with "kviste". This are big branches or very small trees, stuck into the ground to guide you to the next cabin. Man-made landmarks, and for me "kviste" is also a synonym for wonderful days in the norwegian mountains.

 

I never made such a pictorial quilt before, and i had some ideas to make it more abstract, but first it wanted to be made this way. Maybe there's another version following...
On the left is a piece i found in my stash, a leftover from another project, representing the tracks in the snow, on the right the snow-covered landscape, with the tracks along the waymarked route. Between both parts is a buttonholes placket of a old bedsheet, this stands for the cozy cabin and the good sleep that waits for you at the end of a long and cold day.

America Now - Written On The Body

Hi all, new member here (in case you didn't see on the FB page). I'm Kit Lang, I blog at Kit Lang Fiber Art and I'm glad to be here!

When I read "land/marks" what immediately popped into my head was "I claim this land in the name of..." 

As I tried to suss out that meaning over the next couple of weeks, concurrently, I thought about how men are dictating women's rights in the United States - how they've claimed women's bodies and legislated them, and how women's rights are being eroded as a result. 

I thought about all the ways that popular culture and media stereotypes enforce and contribute to the apparent apathy regarding that erosion. (We Canadians are similarly apathetic unfortunately.)

And I thought about how the words used to describe us, the institutionalized enforcement of gender stereotypes, the laws, and societal "rules" that are impressed upon us like markings, like tattoos - like they're written on these bodies that are claimed by men and legislated against by men. 

I thought of these nameless legislators standing on a pile of naked bodies of women with their flag, claiming them as their property to do with what they will  - and that is how this 'land/marks" piece came about.

This piece is part of my Whitewashed series, and so the background is constructed of pieced bricks in "girly" fabrics, quilted and then whitewashed with acrylic paint.  

The cross is made of needle felted roving on a poly cotton background...

which I then stitched to death with several different coloured threads

and the woman - an iconic "woman" with large breasts and exaggerated curves, was made from painted lutradur with stitched tattoos on her body - the names we are called, that turn us into objects, or animalize or otherwise reduce us - 

...along with the names of women who have most recently been egregiously, publicly reduced in the defence of our bodies, as well as some of the items that are on those bills in various states

America Now - Written On The Body, is 55 x 31" (140 cm x 79 cm). 

Thanks, Felicity for an inspiring theme! And thanks for having me in your group. 

Kit

Landmarks Challenge - Burren Walls

My landmarks challenge is based on the stone walls in the Burren.

I've recently finished making a quilt which is part of a group entry for this year's Festival of Quilts. After cutting my FoQ quilt to size I had a good few pieces of quilted fabric left-over, so I decided to incorporate them into my landmarks challenge (waste not, want not!)

The left-over strips were satin-stitched together and I added a very thin binding to finish off the quilt.

6th Challenge - Memory

It falls to me to set the sixth challenge and as I will not have computer access for a while I thought I should post it now so everyone has time to think about it and get started.

I was looking through a workbook this morning and found a photograph of a painting I did about a happy time in my childhood and the word 'Memory' came to mind so that is the theme for the next challenge. (I should say that my childhood was generally happy).

As we have not yet all revealed for 'Landmarks' can I suggest a reveal date for 'Memory' of 1st October?   

Landmarks

Or in my case, land marks.  I have to admit for this challenge that, while I have had various ideas buzzing about in my brain, time has obliged me to combine my Festival of Quilts piece with this challenge. 

I so enjoyed making the piece for the Archi-texture challenge that I felt I wanted to continue to work with some of the techniques I had used there for my Festival quilt and thus for this challenge.

I called the quilt 'Change' and it is about the changes wrought by the elements and the environment and looks at the marks and textures of stone walls and their attendant growths of lichen and moss.

The colours are actually nearer to a warm ochre than the white-ish colour showing in the image.

 

The quilt was made by gessoing the surface and adding newspaper cuttings, lace, scrim and other fabrics and the surface was then soaked and sprayed with silk and fabric paints.  Some of the crocheted lace was a bit too heavy and I was pleased to find that when I peeled it off it left a good ghost image that I could develop with stitch.  I used free machining and hand stitching to describe the stone and lichen.  Some printing was also done with found objects, notably a piece of polystyrene that seagulls had pecked into a lovely texture and which made some wonderful marks.

As usual with these challenges I have a whole raft of ideas that could be developed along the theme of Landmarks.  I just need the time to use them all!  

 

land(marks) earth pleiades

this is my piece for the latest International Art Quilt Challenge:  it was my turn to choose the theme - land(marks).


this reflects two recurring themes in my work:  the landscape of Central Australia with it's red dirt and dry riverbeds and the Pleiades, or Seven Sisters constellation. 

i needlefelted alpaca fleece from local breeders, Melrose Alpacas (thanks Fiona!) onto silk chiffon and then machine stitched with silk thread. It was eucalypt dyed and handstitched onto the black linen background with silk, perle 8 and stranded cotton.

it's 41x33cm

Time Challenge "One Tiny Speck"

Late again, apologies, but yee should be used to me by now.

I was pondering this one for several weeks playing with ideas while doing all the other stuff that occupies my time.

I feel really small and humble when I think of the age of this large rock we call home.

And I'm beginning to feel time slipping away so fast.

I'm still waiting to grow up and become one of those adults and I was most upset last week to find out I was still at college when one of my students was born!!

I thought I cann't be that old, then did the math, and realised yes you are.

So here it is, been playing in Photoshop again.

Used the last piece of the A3 transfer paper I found and transfered onto white cotton.

Made my sandwich and started quilting.

Here's the original image:

The quilting didn't go very well as the transfer paper started disintregrating. I put it onto fine cotton this time, bad mistake !!

Here's a close up you can just about see some of the background layers peeping through.

Final closeup and time to move on to the next challenge.

It's about time!

Well, better late than never, I hope.  Oh my, but I struggled with time with this challenge.  The idea developed quite organically but the realisation of my idea presented me with a lot of technical challenges to solve, and it's quite a relief to have completed it, albeit tardily.

So, my time piece is - a time piece!

It is a quilt (or two) and it works!  For more about the inspiration, the process and the problems, please follow this link.  Now to get thinking about Felicity's challenge, Land/marks....  Hopefully my time prompt will help me with this.

next challenge - landmarks

the next challenge theme is landmarks or land/marks or land marks or land(marks) - however you want to characterise it.

due on 15 july...

my time piece

here is my piece for the latest international quilt challenge.

 i wanted to demonstrate a process rather than explore an idea or a feeling so it is about the effects of time and weathering cloth and stitch.

i machine stitched strips of vintage linen, silk and cotton; then hand stitched lines of running stitch in silk and cotton thread. there are also a few loose clusters of french knots as a vague reference to the pleiades - my favourite constellation.

 i then stitched a labyrinth of copper wire which i hoped would weather and verdigris and colour then colour but quite early in the weathering process it became clear that this wasn't going to happened so i intervened with a stout piece of rusty iron. once the piece was rinsed of potential nasties and left to dry in the sun for a day or two i outlined the rust marks with red thread and burnished the centre with some copper and pale gold paintstick.


this piece took much longer than i anticipated:  it needed much more macerating in the garden that i thought and we have had remarkably fine weather for most of the time it was out under the feijoa tree.... here it is before rinsing and gussying up....