Workshop & Talk tour of the South East, November 2009

My workshop & talk tour of the South East is starting to take shape. Here's the info I've just posted on BQSwap -

Following on from sucessfully linking together workshops and talks in other areas (saving on petrol costs to groups/shops, my time spent on motorways and my carbon footprint!), I am arranging another mini tour for November 2009, this time for the south east of England.

I will be teaching in Bedfordshire on Monday 9th and Tuesday 10th November 2009, while on Saturday 14th and Sunday 15th, I will be teaching two separate day workshops at Puddleducks, Sevenoaks, Kent.

Please contact me off list if you are interested in dates either between those above or after Sunday 15th November. A list of my talks and workshops is available on my website.

St George's Day in England & Wealden Quilt Show

InWales, it was Thursday, but in England, April 23rd is St George's Day. What could be better than to celebrate by spending the evening out at a good pub, watching some morris dancing?

Hartley Morris Men and Kettle Bridge Clogs danced at the Queen's Head, Mereworth.

Four of the local scouts had learned a stick dance for their Heritage Badge and they performed it with some of Hartley's dancers. Afterwards, the Squire of the Morris Ring presented them with certificates.

There were plenty of St George's flags and red and white to be seen, not only on the dancers' kit, though Hartley's Fool leaves you in no doubt where they're from with his Union Jack tailcoat & hat. One of his coat badges is "You can always tell a Brit.... but you can't tell him much!" LOL



There's always some good singing in the bar after Hartley have danced out, with lots of choruses to join in with. I was trying to look after my voice for two days of sashiko demos at the Wealden Quilt Show at Crowborough, so I tried to keep quieter than usual. After three days' demoing & talking at Quilts in the Garden earlier this month, I could only croak on the Monday morning!


The Denman Kannon central panel is nearly finished and I'll be able to add the borders soon.

It was a lovely show with many excellent quilts, and a good proportion of larger bed quilts - often there aren't so many bed quilts at shows these days. Thank you very much to Lynette (the "Stitch Witch") and Jan for inviting me at short notice!

There were several large "Round the World" theme sampler quilts done to Lynette's designs, with blocks for different countries. It is always refreshing to see a new take on a sampler quilt. She also had her lovely new pansies panel on display - you can see it on her website.

Jan was demoing with one of the top of the range Bernina sewing machines, with programmable embroidery designs. I was too busy during the show to see it working, but it looked really interesting.

May Feature Book in British Patchwork & Quilting magazine

"Compendium of Quilting Techniques" has been featured by "British Patchwork & Quilting" in their May 2009 book reviews section. Here's what they wrote -

An invaluable guide to all aspects of quilt making, from chosing the basic equipment to entering a competitive quilt show. There is equal emphasis on hand and machine stitching, patchwork and quilting. It is set out well, with numbered panels and colourful diagrams and photos.

The comprehensive patchwork techniques teach how to work logically and avoid mistakes, from easy triangles to curved stitching, applique and much more.

The pages on hand quilting are a good example of the style. They cover the techniques, the correct needles and thread and the pros and cons of using a hoop, a frame (with measurements to make one) and lap quilting.

I cannot possibly cover the wide range of subects in this book. I recommend it strongly to all quilters, new and experiences, as my choice this month.

I'll have copies for sale at the Wealden Quilt Show of course!

The May issue also includes a review of our World Textile Day at Llanidloes last month and a review of Quiltfest, plus plenty more. Don't miss it!

More retro bits and pieces on eBay

Getting things ready for the Wealden Quilt Show on Friday meant going to the storage unit, so
I took some photos of this fab seventies wallpaper roll for my eBay auction! So if you are after the retro look, check it out.

"Landscape on Kimono" summer exhibition

Today I went to the Royal International Pavilion at Llangollen to check details for my next kimono exhibition, in August. I am going to focus on kimono, obi and haori with landscape designs, showing how different landscape themes are depicted on kimono. As well as the various kimono themselves, I am planning to include some Japanese prints and drawings for yuzen dyeing.

Trees & forests
Townscapes & buildings
The garden view
Landscape on tomesode
Famous views
Bingata & abstraction
Mountains & "above the clouds"

The houmongi shown above will be included. Here are some photos of some of the potential exhibits - I still have to whittle them down to a shortlist.




The exhibition opens on Monday 10th August and runs until Tuesday 25th August. It will be open weekdays 10 a.m. - 4p.m. It won't be open at weekends, unless there is a weekend event which coincides with the exhibition.

From 10th - 18th and again for the 24th and 25th, I will be stewarding the exhibition. While I am away at Festival of Quilts, I'll hand over to Guy & friends.

During the first week, I am planning a few workshops in the gallery. It looks like these will include a sashiko workshop and a hinagata (50cm long small size/miniature) kimono. Both will be handsewing only. I'll publish details of these here, once I have finalised all the information.

This time, I am going to have a preview day on Friday 7th August. If you would like to join us for the preview, please let me know. it will be a daytime event as the building isn't open that evening and it works out easier for me to do it that way, but I'll see if we can stay open till 5p.m. I'll try to organise some press coverage for that day too.

The wooded hills around Llangollen remind me of some of the landscapes depicted on kimono, hence deciding this would be the theme for my second exhibition. If you would like to see photos of the first, please go back to January 2008 blog posts for photos and slideshows.

There's a steam festival on at the railway this week, so we watched various trains coming in and out of the station before coming home.

Sakata sashiko kit for Euro Japan Links Limited

Over the Easter weekend, I revamped and remade my Sakata sashiko design. It combines five old sashiko designs from Sakata, in the Shonai region of Yamagatga Prefecture, Japan, with patchwork effect "cheater" fabrics, all set out in a nine patch arrangement. Euro Japan Links Limited brought it out as a kit a few years ago, but the original cheater fabric was discontinued and we replaced it with a very pretty print with camelias on a patchwork background for the new version. If you order it now, this is the fabric combination you will receive.

The original kit was made as a wallhanging, but when my mum saw it, she thought it would make a great table centre, so here it is! Do I get the feeling I'm going to be making it again? It looks just right on her dining table. The Japanese dish with the maple leaf design and the glass decanters are her props, not mine.

If you are interested in the kit, click the Euro Japan Links website link to find it (the website photo probably still shows the original version, so the cheater fabric will be different). They are doing a show in France this weekend but will have the new kit out at Quilts UK, Malvern, in mid May too.

A surprise visit to the Wealden Quilt Show next weekend

A surprise date for your diary - I'll be demoing sashiko on the Denman Kannon panel at the Wealden Quilt Show in Crowborough next weekend, on both days - Friday and Saturday.

The following info is edited from Jan Allston's post on Yahoo! BQL group -

This year's show will take place on Friday 24th and Saturday 25th April. 10 - 5 pm on Friday and 10 - 4 on Saturday. All Saint's New Church Hall, Chapel Green, Church Road, Crowborough. East sussex. TN6 2LB.

As you would expect there are lots of lovely quilts to drool over and we have three traders in attendance. Sleeping Bear Crafts, Puddleducks and Stitch-Witch, so plenty of variety.

There is also the Wealden Challenge. the theme this year is "Stars", smaller quilts with dimensions between 30 and 39 inches square.

With cakes, drinks and ploughman's lunches it should be a really good day out.

If anyone wants raffle tickets, (remember that last year's first and second prizes were won by BQL tickets), please contact me off list.

Prizes this year are amazing bed-sized quilts for first and second winners. Lots of other prizes too.

******

She also mentioned -

"There are demonstrations all day both days - Friday - I'm on all day Friday with my Bernina Artista 630 doing machine embroidery/appliqué from design to stitchout; Dorothy Thompson will be demonstrating mitred bindings and her exquisite hand quilting, Christine Cooper will be doing Colour Design and Lynette Harris will be showing us how to do Shadow Appliqué. On Saturday, we have Anne Weald - Fabric Painting, Sue Rhodes - Machine Trapunto, Sara Cook -
Drunkard's Path, Corinne Simpson - Machine foundation Piecing and Lynette again with Shadow Appliqué."

If anyone is wondering how the Denman Kannon is coming on, it looked like this last week in Linlithgow, but I've added some juujizashi (cross or ten stitch) to the robe hem. I decided to keep the name, as "denman" sounds like the Japanese for "10,000 legend".


The halo is complete and I'm quite pleased with the glow effect made by the variations in stitch patterns plus various shades of cream and white thread. After next weekend I'll need to add the borders. I had put aside a length of tsumugi cotton with a narrow stripe in several shades of blue but there is another bolt on its way which might be even better (slightly more regular width stripes, about half a centimetre wide), so I'll hold out for that arriving before I decide.


The Kamon Sampler is back from its trip to Prague (see my earlier post), so I'll have that on display too.

Morris dancing update - Hartley Morris Men & Kettle Bridge Clogs are dancing at the Queen's Head at Mereworth. Hartley have been teaching six members of a scout troop to dance and they will also be dancing to complete the requirements for their heritage badge. There are five girls and one boy - as Brian wrote "a sign of the times".

Planning a workshop tour of Scotland & Borders, 2010

I've cut and pasted the following info from my posting to the BQSwap group, as it's difficult to type when Takenoko the cat is determined to give you a hug for coming home - he's on my lap and hanging onto my shoulder as I type!

I'm trying to sort out a "Scotland and Borders" workshop tour for April 2010. Teaching workshops to several groups in one area is a good way to keep travel costs down and makes better use of my time - less driving around, more teaching! It also makes visiting some far flung places more realistic re travel costs, as I'll share these out among the groups.

The time slot I've allocated runs from Thursday 15th to Saturday 24th April 2010. So far the following dates/places are prpvionally booked -

Saturday 17th & Sunday 18th - Linlithgow

Friday 23rd & Saturday 24th - Lancaster

To help with your calculations, I live near Wrexham, Wales.

You can view my talks & workshop page http://www.susanbriscoe.co.uk/workshops.htm - scroll down for the sashiko & bag workshops. I also have a non sashiko version of the Sashiko Kinchaku bag, where we make the bags in other fabrics.

Scottish Handcraft Circle's residential workshop

I was invited to teach my sashiko course over three days with the Scottish Handcraft Circle in Linlithgow last week. After hard work but with a lot of fun, the group had made some lovely sashiko samples and we had an informal exhibition of their panels at lunchtime on the last day.

This is the same kind of mini course that I teach at Denman College and devised as a residential course several years ago, trying it out in Llangollen as part of Quiltfest first time round. It incorporates a version of my "Sashiko and Japanese Country Textiles" talk as an introduction, before moving on to cover parts of my three sashiko workshops. By the end of the course, everyone has made some hitomezashi (one stitch sashiko) samples, some panels with curved moyouzashi patterns (including shippo and nowaki), a small asanoha (hemp leaf) panel, a corner fan and a kamon (family crest). Everyone learns how to mark the patterns as well as stitch them, so afterwards they can mark sashiko on any suitable fabric for their own projects.

The sashiko course is ideal for a weekend of stitching!

Chester wildlife & miniature ideas - random Easter photos

I don't consider myself to be any good as a wildlife photographer - I don't have the patience to wait for the right shot and, by the time I've got the camera out, the bird or animal has usually got away! Today, the city walls in Chester were a good vantage point to snap this squirrel. It came back to get a good look at us!

There were two ducks sunbathing and napping in a minimalist modern garden next to the wall. The contrast between their plumage and the slate chippings was interesting.


The cherry blossom around Chester Cathedral is already starting to fall.


We'd gone to Chester to look at Roman remains but ended up walking almost the full length of the wall. There are more contrasts in this photo of the Bluecoat School and the canal.


The Bluecoat School also gave me an idea for the decoration of my dollshouse pub frontage, which reminds me of some of Chester's eighteenth century buildings.

The wall provided the perfect point to photograph sections of brick from the side wall of an eighteenth century house. Why? I want to print my own brick paper for the miniature pub, as I haven't found any commercially available paper that is quite what I am looking for (and stencilling the front isn't going to work, as it is very three dimensional and I won't be able to get the stencil to lie flat over a large area).

Easter Gathering at the Boat Museum, Ellesmere Port

The Easter Gathering is probably one of the best times to visit the Boat Museum, as many vintage working boats visit and the lock system is working, plus several engines from the collection.
Guy & my cousin Richard having a look at the steam boilers at the Pump House.

It is also an interesting source of designs for patchwork & quilting, in the industrial architecture, technology and the "roses and castles" traditional boat decoration.

Jane Moss was one of the artists demonstrating how to paint the latter - you can see more of her work here. Her technique for painting the roses was beautiful and the brushwork reminded me of many of the antique panels at the museum, rather than the somewhat solid style of painting often seen.
"Potters Row" is a group of four restored cottages, built in the 1830s and showing homes from the 1840s, c1900, 1930s and 1950s. In the 1900 house, we got chatting to the museum volunteers who told me their vintage treadle sewing machine was locked and they couldn't find the key. With a bit of help from Guy's leatherman knife, I managed to unfasten the lock. I checked the serial number online to find the date of manufacture and it was made in 1891, when numbers 9.810.000 to 10.629.999 were manufactured - its number is 10596706. I'm still trying to work out the model number - it has a fiddle base and the later kind of boat shuttle rather than the one on the 12k. I suspect it could be a V.S.2 - have a look at the photo and info here (first photo on the page) and see what you think. The decals are slightly different, but they often seem to vary on the same model. The information about how the V.S.2 developed into the model 27 and then the 128K is interesting to note. I have examples of both these machines and the one at the Boat Museum certainly shares many features. Interestingly, it doesn't have the shuttle eject feature found on the 128K and has the low bobbin winder found on the 27. The case and base are almost identical to the Singer model 27 halfway down this page.

3rd Prague Patchwork Meeting

My "Kasuri Sampler" quilt is on its way back from Prague after the big patchwork meeting last weekend. The photo shows it hanging with "Irori" at the Great Northern Quilt Show at Harrogate last year. I didn't expect it back so early, as I thought it was coming back when Jana visits Festival of Quilts in August, so it is a nice surprise and it can go straight back in with my talk & workshop quilts. I've missed having it around! My friend Jana Lalova won seventh place in the themed category "Emotion" with this quilt - I've just had a look at the quilts online and noticed the prizes in that category were very impressive, with the first three prizes being Brother, Janome and Bernina sewing machines!

You can see more of the quilts on the Bohemia Patchwork Klub site - click the thumbnails to see much larger images, as usual.

Photography secrets from "Japanese Sashiko Inspirations"

After exhibiting so many pieces from "Japanese Sashiko Inspirations" at Quilts in the Garden, I remembered I hadn't blogged some of the original photography session photos. When you see the wider scene, it makes Kim's superb photography even more skilful.

The studio "styled" shots were all taken at Kim Sayer's wonderful daylight studio in Totnes. The interior of this seventeenth century house is full of interesting details in the panelling and plasterwork. A lot of the painted panelling reminded me of Japanese Meiji era interiors, so we decided to go with that kind of look for the book. The only problem of course is that old English timber framed buildings are usually lacking in many true verticals, horizontals and right angled corners! With a bit of ingenuity and lots of wedging things up with old telephone directories and bits of card, we created the look we were after. You might be interested to compare the studio shots with the finished photos in the book!

Many people think this photo shows a real tatami floor - one friend even said, "Wow! You got to take the photos in Japan this time" . We used goza mats to fake the look. These are the thin top coverings for tatami, sold separately so you can revamp worn tatami at home, without having to go to the full expense of new mats. Unfortunately I only have two goza, so we used an old sashiko rug to fill in the front area. Next time I'm in Japan, I must buy a new set, and make sure I get a few more, so I can do a convincing tatami room with them. The huge sheets of polystyrene insulation reflect the light. Even the way the light falls through the window panes looks like it is coming through a shoji screen.

The "tatami" floor also appeared in the Mihon sampler shot. The "table" is made from two seventeenth century floor planks, salvaged when the building was restored. Kim uses these as his desk top, but he was OK about temporarily taking it to pieces. The wood looks just like an ancient, worn table.

The antique table holding the fan and miniature farmhouse is the top of an an old wooden storage box. I bought it with the 1930s scrapbooks we used to accessorise the sofa in the next set of pictures (you can see them in more detail in the first blog photo, along with my Meiji era shimacho or "stripe book", a weaver's scrapbook). This shot was used as the opening for the Projects section in the book.

We had to adjust the angles on the wallhanging and props, so the dado rail appeared level. Note the stack of Yellow Pages (phone directories) under the "table top"!

The massive bay window is at the front of the building. We arranged the panel for the Tansu pocket hanging so it was lit from the front and side. I forgot to take my real inkstone, so we improvised with a lacquer dish. I wish I could do calligraphy as well as in the pilgrim's souvenir book. In the second photo, Kim and Martin (the art editor) are adding tiny dabs of blutak to make things stay in place!

The studio is on the first floor (there is a fudge shop on the ground floor) and the cantelievered staircase was used as the set for two of the photos. There were even fewer horizontals on the stairs than in the studio! The stairs lean inwards as they go up through the middle of the building. This is the setup for the photo that opens the Techniques section in the book.

The other half of the studio...