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.

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.

Time Waits for No Man

My piece for this month's challenge is "Time Waits for No Man".


For the background fabric I had an image of a clock-tower from Graz, Austria. The piece was an experiment on transferring a photocopy using oil paints and gum arabic which I made about 3-4 years ago, and has been left bundled up in a scrap bin every since. It just shows that you should never throw away any samples or textile experiments, they'll come in handy some day!!

I then tried to find some clock or time-related fabric in my stash. Turned out that I nothing that I could use, so instead I gathered some watches from around the house (had to take some of people's wrists) and then just copied them onto fabric.

I didnt even scan the image into the computer - just copied it straight onto the fabric and paper. As another experiment, I didn't pretreat the fabric, just sellotaped a piece of white fabric onto the copy paper and sent it through the printer. I don't think the image would stand up to washing, but it worked fairly well for this purpose.

 I then bondawebbed this piece of fabric and cut out the watches. These were then appliqued to the quilt top and edge stitched in white thread, to further outline the watch shapes.

Alphabet stamps were then used to add the letter "time" all over the quilt top. The phrase "time waits for no man" was also stamped on to the piece.

After doing this, the piece was looking a bit bare and lacking something, so I decided some painted bondaweb was needed. The bondaweb was painted with acrylic paints using colours used in the quilt top e.g. brown, blue, red etc. 


Strips of the painted bondaweb were then added to the piece.

Pocket watch printed onto Extraorganza

I also collected some images of old pocket watches off the internet and printed them onto a sheet of "Extra-organza". I bought a pack of it at Festival of Quilts a few years ago and finally got around to using it!

The piece was then machine quilted using a variegated brown thread and two fabrics were used to make the binding.

Archi-texture (Hundertwasser style)

This piece was started in a Sandra Meech workshop a few years ago. It was inspired by Hundertwasser and its a mixed-media piece.
The background is made up of painted papers, which I then free machine quilted. The binding is made of purple fabric, with blanket stitch used to add beading around the edges. I didn't manage to get an A3-sized piece done this time, instead it's A4-sized.

Through the Window (in the Burren)

Through the Window (Burren inspired)

I got the binding put on this piece last night, but by then it was a bit dark to get a good photograph of my piece, so had to wait for daylight this morning to get the photo.

A contemporary quilting group I'm involved with (Genesis Patchwork) are currently working on a group project about the Burren. The Burren in Co. Clare is famous for it's limestone rock, rare plants, archaeological ruins etc.

So I decided to use my "Through the Window" piece as a sample piece for my Burren project. I have a number of photographs of old church windows and ruins so I took 2 of this photo's and turned them into a thermofax screen. Then I screen-printed the windows onto hand-dyed fabric.

I then used my embellisher machine to add scrim, sari ribbon etc. to add a bit more texture and interest.  I got a pack of Derwent Inktense pencils in the post this week so decided to experiment with them on this piece as well. A stencil was used with the pencils to add the lettering.

This photo of a window in Carron Church was used to make one of the thermofax screens.

Carron Church

Greetings from Clare

Hi everybody,
I'm Claire - based in County Clare, in the Mid-West of Ireland.

I work full-time as an Environmental Scientist/Engineer at an aircraft maintenance firm.

In my spare time, I love nothing better than to mess around with fabric and paper. Really like dyeing and printing fabric.
Have a blog: Millypenny

At the moment, I'm Editor and Webmaster for the Irish Patchwork Society (IPS). I only have 1 more newsletter to do, and then I can hand over to my new sub-editor, so should have a lot more time on my hands.
I'm also the Editorial Rep. for the Mid-West Branch of the IPS and look after their blog as well.

I have an idea for the "lights and shadows" theme in mind. Based on a photograph from a holiday in Spain that I've always wanted to do something with, and now's my chance. Just have to get my thinking cap on and figure how to turn it into a textile piece though...

Looking forward to seeing what everyone is going to make for the challenge - it's going to be very interesting!