A 'quilt' in the garden

Only a patchwork as yet. This is my version of the quilt labelled 'SarahWyatt' in the V & A's collection. Mine is made from 5in charm squares for the triangle squares, so the size is smaller than the original, so I compensated with a wider outer border. Most of the fabrics are by Moda, though I'm not sure about the wavy shirting stripe that borders the centre. As the triangle squares in the original are slightly different sizes in each section, I've kept that in my patchwork - while making them all the same size would be the easy option, IMHO it would destroy some of the naive charm of this quilt. Photographed in the arbour (if we get a dry weekend, I'll repaint it, but then I will loose a shabby chic photography location till it has weathered down again!)

The garden is looking very lush, if in need of a little taming.

V & A checkerboard quilt - revisited

This afternoon, I got the corner triangle sections added to this contemporary fabric remake of the V & A checkerboard squares patchwork I did over Christmas (more info on the first version here), as shown above. The fabrics are all from Moda's Sultry range, by Basic Grey. The first version I made over the Christmas holiday is shown below, when I was attempting to capture the mood of the original quilt. The blocks in my version are smaller (4in finished squares rather than 6in), so I ditched the small scale (1/2in squares) mini checkerboard blocks from the design and substituted them with sixteen patches with 1in squares - there's still quite a lot of those.


I found this quilt intriguing because, on the face of it, it looks like the squares were arranged and then the patchwork assembled in strips, at least that's how most quilters would approach it today. As I wrote in earlier blog posts (go back to December 2010), the original quilt clearly wasn't made this way and is really a medallion or 'frame' quilt, even though the border progression is camouflaged by the checkerboard squares. It has a lot of complex rotational and reflective symmetry going on in what, at first glance, looks like very little organisation of the fabrics (there are a few deliberate oddities in there though). I love quilts like this, were there is so much to look at and retain interest in the prints, even in simple matchy matchy fabric games.

The pink version was made the same way, working from the centre outwards. There were fewer fabrics in this, although I used (probably) the whole Sultry range. The dark browns give the central arrangement more weight and drama than in the original, although the darker patches don't extend throughout the piece quite as much.


The pink takes on the role of the red and the lime green, to a certain extent, the yellow. The increasingly busy prints in the patchwork's corners and the low value contrast between the colours merges one patch into another far more than the original maker did. Including some of the lime greens in the checkerboards at random makes the blocks pop.


Why do something like this? It has been a learning curve of a different kind but, as well as the obvious desire to have those museum quilts for myself (remade to look close to the originals), the activity of selecting the fabrics and going through the same stages of construction (even if by machine, not hand) is one way of getting inside the head of the original maker - if that doesn't seem a peculiar thing to say! We have so little infomation about the people who made these quilts in museum collections, this is one way of making a connection, at least for me.

Why choose a very obviously modern range like Sultry for the second patchwork? Largely for a ultilitarian reason - it really was what I had on hand. I used the range for the Log Cabin chapter in '130 Little Quilt Blocks' ('130 Mini Quilt Blocks' in USA & Australia) because I wanted a very bright, contemporary look for the traditional Log Cabin blocks. Starting out with a Layer Cake (10in square stack) and a Honey Bun (1 1/2in strip cut, like a Jelly Roll), I still had most of the cake left over and the strips hadn't been used at all. Being a 2009 range, I couldn't find any more in the shops, but spotted two fat quarter bundles up for grabs on eBay, plus some yardage in the dark brown houndstooth (I will also use that for binding, while the repro version will have the edges turned in and butted, English style). Bringing the patchwork bang up to date in the fabric selection also shows just how timeless many of these antique quilt designs can be.

Here are some of the 'mix & match' computer generated quilts created for '130 Little Quilt Blocks', just the ones done from my reference photos - they look much better in the book.


Quilting ideas - I will use Mountain Mist 100% cotton wadding (batting) for the repro version as it is very thin and excellent for handquilting and 80/20 cotton/poly for the Sultry one for alittle more 3-D to the quilting (I will preshrink the wadding though). The repro to be handquilted, with a grid and concentric squares similar to the original, while the pink will be machine quilted - I acquired a stunning lime green thread shading through to white while at Quilts UK, and will use that. Not quite sure of how I'll quilt it, but it will probably be something similar to the original, just using the harder lines of the machine quilting to make it look different.

Next? Sewing a border onto my repro patchwork based on the Sarah Wyatt quilt (also in the V & A) . Big tacking (basting) session coming up!

Oh yes, and I don't 'do' pink... usually...

'Fabulous Fat Quarter Bags' - last of the hardbacks sale

Today I am awaiting the imminent arrival of 240 hardback copies of 'Fabulous Fat Quarter Bags'... Rachel at D & C found these lurking in the stockroom, even though it is officially out of print in hardback, and gave me a great author's deal. So I'm able to offer them for £12.99, same price as the paperback, rather than the original £19.99 - and a much better deal than on Amazon. Just got to find somewhere for the boxes!

P & P on this one is £3.50 for the UK First Class; £6.00 for Europe and £10 for rest of world, by Airmail Printed Paper (inc. USA & Australia). Order forms are on my website here; with more info here.


You can see the bags displayed all together at the book launch in 2009, along with a lot of my other work. The laptop bag on the back cover has been travelling the world with me.

Time and Again, again

Hilary Jones sent me these photos of her version of my 'Time and Again' quilt. Like me, she used kimono fabrics for the block centres and writes -

I thought you might like to see my version of your super design that appeared in P and Q magazine Jan. 2004. I was given a number of pieces of kimono silk by my daughter in law's family when we went to Tokyo in Feb 2010 for our son's wedding. I looked for a long time for a design to showcase the wonderful gift, and I found your design. It was, as you say ,a perfect design for the amazing gift of kimono silk. I still have quite a bit left, but do feel your design showcases the beautiful fabrics. I hunted for quite a while to get the right 'cherry blossom' to create the 3d effect. So thank you again!


It is a super design for featuring special fabrics and I'm about to start on a few remakes of it myself, as I've adapted the pattern for a jelly roll workshop - since there are several ranges of batiks that are now available as 21/2in strip cuts.

I like the 3-d effect with Hilary's flowers too. Looks like it was the perfect design for her kimono fabric collection! The batik colours are very close to the original, but I like the introduction of the sandy peach colour as a focus.


As this continues to be my most popular pattern (even though it was made in 2001 and the pattern appeared first in 'Patchwork and Quilting' magazine before I published it myself - it's on the pattern page on my website), I am considering having it translated into French for the Quilt Expo in Viville, near Cognac, in July 2012. What do you think?

Medieval wall paintings in Ruedesheim

These beautiful paintings are undergoing restoration at Siegfried's Mechanisches Musikkabinett in Ruedesheim (short clip from the guide's description here).


From the next room (the former chapel) -


There are some nice video clips from the museum here, although the mechnical dolls are a bit creepy - don't click the link if you really don't like the sound of mechanical music! The Bruder Bros. concert organ was the first encounter, a bit overpowering under that vaulted ceiling (click photo for audio link).


Outside the museum. There are bell carillons mounted in the upper window recesses either side of the main entrance (just visible far right), which played on the half hour.


An unusual museum, and worth a visit.

Renaissance costuming

Puis qu'en oubli sui de vous, dous amis.
Vie amoureuse et joie a Dieu commant.
Mar vi le jour que m'amour en vous mis.
Puis qu'en oubli sui de vous, dous amis.

Mais ce tenray que je vous ay promis.
C'est que ja mais n'aray nul autre amant.
Puis qu'en oubli sui de vous, dous amis.
Vie amoureuse et joie a Dieu commant.

Also found with the photos in my last post were a couple of photos of costumes I made for the Middleham Ricardian anniversary festivals in 1983 and 1985. The one above was made for the 1985 festival and is me being Burgundian c. 1480, with a slight Italian influence on the sleeves. The fur collar was real. Naida is wearing my 1983 Italian (Florentine?) c.1490s court costume below. Both photographed in Aberystwyth in 1986. Wiki linkfor late C15th women's clothing. As usual, left click photo for more detail, a bit limited in these images as they are only scans from 6 x 4in prints. I've added a couple of music links, one to suit each costume :-) EDIT - photos now rescanned at 600 dpi, but I think this is the most costume detail I'll be able to extract from these prints.

Ecco la primavera
che 'l cor fa rallegrare;
temp'F da 'nnamorare
e star con lieta cera.

No' vegiam l'aria e 'l tempo
che pur chiama allegreza;
in questo vago tempo
ogni cosa ha vagheza.

L'erbe con gran frescheza
e fiori copron prati
e gli alberi adornati
sono in simil manera.

Why do we look we are both plotting something?

Old photos of old pictures

While hunting around for some other photos last night, I found this lot - some of the images & newspaper cuttings from the May 1990 exhibition in Luxembourg, plus a few of other paintings from the 1980s. So here they are, in lieu of anything newer this weekend (I am adding borders to quilts and other not very interesting things, before having a big sandwiching/tacking/basting session in a few weeks - which does not make for very interesting photos at the moment). Jean-Marc has just had another exhibition in Luxembourg - I think it has finished now, but unfortunately I seem to have lost the invitation he sent, so I don't know. His work has gone off into amazing directions, while I have totally lost touch with Shaun.

I've tried to soften/improve the half tone photo from the Cambrian News a bit, so you can see more of the paintings. I wonder if we ever bought a b/w print of it? Probably not. I had quite a bundle of identical newspaper cuttings, because we used to return only the dated headers from the unsold weekly paper when I worked at Galloways bookshop, so I probably clipped the article out of every return that week :-) I was 25 and Shaun was 24, but we both look about 14!


I know there are more photos floating around somewhere of the actual exhibition, but these were the only two with the cuttings, all my work. The first is one my Jacques Brel series (blue, left, Ne me quitte pas) and the one on the right a portrait of a friend, who is a writer, linguist, actor and director.


Here's the orange portrait on the easel - I used a lot of orange even then. The medium is mostly Rotring Artist Colour, a fantastic liquid acrylic ink developed for airbrushes, which allowed an astonishingly luminous finish, built up in numerous transparent glazes. Unfortunately, with the demise of the airbrush, this ink isn't made any more and I haven't found anything quite like it. I still have some and eke it out when I use it. The pigment particles were almost microscopic, which is how it didn't clog airbrushes but also how it could maintain that intense colour effect without muddying the hues. I applied it with assorted brushes for this portrait, and mixed it with a glaze medium for more transparency. The dense black of the suits were done with regular black acrylic. At the time, I was very fond of using words in paintings (and would use more text in quilts, if it didn't cause problems with international book editions) - I love text on fabric too. In those days, it was Letraset. I must have got through tons of the stuff.


A few slightly earlier pictures follow - the cubist phase - 'And flitted away as far as they could from the castle that lay east of the sun and west of the moon' - oil on canvas. Canvases were so expensive then. We used to stretch our own - buy the frame sections and canvas from the art dept shop, then get to work with the staple gun. The canvas they sold was very rough compared with that on ready made canvases, unprimed, and wore brushes out in no time at all. This hangs in the stairwell here. The photo looks like it was taken in the common room in the old art dept. building on Llanbadarn Road.


From the abtract impressionist phase (I was really into Kadinsky's early work by then and the very vivid colour of both these paintings meant I was only working with primary colours, plus black & white). I am not sure what this painting was about! - other than being vaguely something to do with disguise, carnival etc. I had temporarily given up on paintbrushes and the paint was applied here with offcuts of mounting card and a defunct credit card. Both c1985/86.


The last two are later c. 1990. Interested in aerial photography/mapping/landscape imagery more, a bit influenced by some of my ex tutors' work I think (especially Alastair Crawford's landscapes), mid C20th British landscape artists and contemporary Welsh landscape painting generally (although of course this is an English scene - the white horse at Uffington).


Spot the differences? The one above is the original study on canvas, while the one below is the much larger painting on a black ground on hardboard panel. I marginally prefer the study over the finished painting. Both are acrylic, thickly applied.

Good news on Teesside

BBC link - Redcar steel plant to create 300 new jobs

Link to my earlier blog post.

Very nice to have some good news for a change!

Quilter's Desk Diary 2012 has arrived

D & C's 'Quilter's Desk Diary 2012' has just arrived with me. Like last year's successful desk diary (so successful it had sold out by August) this one features a quilt or quilted project per week spread - obviously, there isn't space for the actual instructions (although instructions for 'Hidden in the Stars', one of the Jelly Roll quilt series is included at the back), but the diary is laden with eye candy to inspire you each week. It is hardback, with 128 pages and full colour throughout.

My 'Shimacho' quilt from 'Japanese Quilt Blocks to Mix and Match' is on the cover (see above) and there are quite a few other pieces of mine from various books -


I can't show photos of the quilts from other D & C authors here, but there are works by Barbara Chainey, Lynne Edwards, Katherine Gurrier, Mary Jenkins, Gail Lawther and Laura Kemshall, among others. The 1718 coverlet from the Quilt Museum, York, also features.

How to order it? I'm offering copies - signed of course, if you like - by mail order, starting now, while stocks last. The cover price is £9.99, and postage & packing in the UK, second class, will be £2.20. By Air Mail Printed Paper, all Europe is £4.70, rest of world is £8.00. UK buyers - please use the contact details and order form on my website to pay by cheque. Overseas (and anyone without a cheque book!) can use Paypal to send a payment - my Paypal e mail address is the same as the one on the contact page on my website.

Mike Waterson, 'a born storyteller'

From Remembering Mike Waterson, a born storyteller - Guardian music blog -

Anybody with even a passing interest in British folk music will be choked by news of the death of Mike Waterson, who passed away on Tuesday.

Not only was he one of the great interpreters of traditional song, throwing himself into a narrative with all the mannerisms and instinctive inflections of a born storyteller, he was a master of wordplay, writing what he would self-effacingly describe as "ditties", whether Rubber Band ("We're the band to catapult to stardom/ We'll never get wound up, we're never slack") from his classic 1972 album Bright Phoebus with sister Lal; or the celebrated A Stitch in Time*, inspired by a newspaper story he'd read that describes, in delicious detail, the highly ingenious revenge of a battered wife who sews her drunken husband into his bed while he's asleep.

* Wish I could find the version of 'A Stitch in Time' recorded by Maddy Prior & the Girls - you'll just have to take my word for it, an excellent song and a great recording (as would be expected). I linked to Lal's 'Fine Horseman' from 'Bright Phoebus' rather than the title track, as it's my favourite song from that album (one I don't have and haven't heard all that often either - it is very scarce - there's a discussion as to why here, but it is just an online discussion ok? I don't think the BBC programme about it is available anywhere now). EDIT - see Rosalind's comment below for a link to 'A Stitch in Time' - highlight and right click the url to open it. EDIT - also found this good youtube clip of Martin Carthy singing it. Love the line,
'Oh isn't it true what small can do
With a thread and a thought and a stitch or two'

Obituary in the Guardian

Hull Daily Mail

The Good Old Way, from 'For Pence and Spicy Ale'.

Heard the news from friends early yesterday morning.

'Unfolding the Quilts' is in the semi finals!

Just heard the news via Facebook - read more here.

Thanks very much to everyone who voted!

Sashiko in Scotland - last workshop photos

The last workshop photos from the Scotland trip were filed in the wrong spot, so I didn't find them till today (my laptop had to be repaired when I got back from that weekend, so there wasn't a chance to post photos before going to Germany). The workshop shown is 'Sashiko for Summer' at Purely Patchwork, Linlithgow.


All the information on my hard drive was, luckily, recovered, including photos taken in a bluebell wood the previous week. It was quite magical. Unfortunately, I also discovered that I am allergic to bluebells, and had a full-blown hayfever reaction within about an hour!