Denman College pictorial sashiko course

At the beginning of last week, I taught a three night residential sashiko course at Denman College.  This course focused on using pictorial design sources for sashiko, so it benefitted from having more time for developing designs at the start of the course. It is the second time Denman have run this course - click here for photos of the first one.  This time we were in the Textile Studio, so there was plenty of wall space to display pieces at the end.

We used various sources for design inspirations. This bamboo panel was marked using a template for the leaves and the bamboo stems drawn freehand, starting with a small illustration from a Japanese embroidery book but developing the design. It is stitched in hand dyed perle threads.  I'm hoping to have the finished piece to display at Quiltfest in February.

 

There were several pieces on a pine tree theme, with the pine boughs filled in with various hitomezashi stitch patterns.  It isn't easy filling in irregular shapes like these.

 

I started a new panel myself (far left, with triple comma crest and cherry blossom), which I might develop into a kit or a magazine project.

 

This is the small hitomezashi sampler at the bottom of the photo above - lovely!

 

There were several fan panels and two kimono designs.  The chrysanthemums on the second one were made with a template, the same way as the fan motifs, with the petal details filled in by hand.

 

 

The circular crab motif (lower panel) is adapted from a sword hilt.

 

This butterfly panel is based on a design by Eiko Yoshida, with moifications to make the most of the size of the fabric.

 

 

The main house at Denman has some interesting design details that could make good sashiko designs - I wonder if anyone is up for a challenge?  ;-)

 

 

  

 My next residential course will be at The Royal, Bridlington, at the end of October - click here for details.

Sashiko for Summer in Lancashire

I had a great workshop with Phoenix Quilters in Astley, near Leigh, Lancashire today, doing 'Sashiko for Summer'.  Unfortunately, I totally forgot to take any photos!  I've asked the group to send me some pics of their finished pieces so, for now, here are two photos of the workshop samples.  We used Indian shot cottons from Fabric Freedom for the sashiko fabrics, so there was a rainbow of different colours used, and quite a few quilters used the coloured or varigated sashiko threads too.

Fabulous Fat Quarter Bags - requirements lists

I had an e mail last week about the requirements lists in 'Fabulous Fat Quarter Bags'.  A quilter couldn't work out how much fabric was needed for the backing, wadding and lining fabrics.  At first, I thought she meant there were no amounts given at all, which was a bit puzzling (how could that have escaped the eagle eye of my technical editor?).  I had another e mail today, so what she meant was a bit clearer -

We have decided to try making the Stripping Handbag which starts on page24.

But we’ve got a bit stuck over the You Will Need section, in particular with the amounts of material needed for the backing, wadding and lining. Is it possible to use a ‘fat quarter’ for each of the backing, wadding and lining? We’ve found it quite difficult to figure out exactly how much of each we will need in total. I’ve attached a copy of the You Will Need section I’m referring to so that you can see what we mean. 

Now I could understand what she meant, I sent this reply -

The reason we give each piece separately for the wadding, backing, lining etc. is because a lot of quilters use up scraps and remainders to make the insides of their bags, particularly the wadding - a lot of quilters use up the long, thin pieces trimmed off when layering their quilts for example.  If I said that quilters needed a 20 x 20in square of wadding, which they might not have, only to tell them to chop it up into smaller pieces which they did have, I'd be getting a lot of complaints!  Also, they might be able to get all the pieces out of a 20 x 20in, but also a 10in x 40in, or a 12 x 8in piece, so it would start to get very confusing indeed.

In the case of this one, you'd easily get the two bag side panels from a fat quarter (each part of the cutting instructions tell you which part of the bag that piece will be), but the longer piece for the bag gusset would be too large to cut from a fat quarter at 24in long.  You could cut them all from a thin quarter.  Or you could piece the 24in long length from two shorter pieces.  If you lined the bag in plain calico as well as using it for the backing fabric, you could do the whole lot from a half metre.  These are all standard width patchwork fabrics by the way.

Some of the larger bags I made for that book actually have different fabrics used for the lining pieces - they don't all have to be from the same fabric, so you can continue your patchwork theme inside the bag as well as outside.

So here it is, just in case anyone else has got stuck on this point.

Dancing Colours - perhaps a new version?

'Dancing Colours' was commissioned by my cousin, Brian, and his wife Carol as a retirement treat and designed to reflect their passion for British Morris dance, as well as rapper sword and longsword.  It was finished for the 21st Plough Tour (a sword dance event on the first weekend in January) in 2007, so I never blogged about making it as it predates the blog.  Here's some photos from the 2009 Plough tour, in case you are wondering what it's about. You can see Brian in front of the quilt here, which gives you an idea of scale.  The centre is a life-sized longsword lock - the strips for the swords are one inch wide.

It was a complicated piece to make, including English paper piecing (centre), twisted Log Cabin foundation pieced onto paper (the triangle point infills), foundation piecing onto wadding (batting) & calico (colour strip background corners) and the whole thing was put together as quilt-as-you-go, with the swords being part of the joining strips.  The colours are the colours of all the different dance sides or teams.  The border is made from Harris Tweed, too thick to have wadding.

 

  

I didn't think anyone else would want to attempt this design, but I had an e mail last week from Marieke who would like to make it, and asked if I have a pattern - I'm sorry, I don't.  But I have photos of the quilt in progress, so I will be posting a series of blog posts next week showing how it was done.  Keep checking the blog for progress!

Great Northern Quilt Show, Harrogate

 

The photos from Great Northern Quilt Show at the beginning of September are a bit late I know!  Glyn took the photos for me and I didn't get a chance to download them to the computer until yesterday.  Here's a small selection of quilts we liked, plus my quilts in the competition.

I won second in Bed Quilts with my Japanese Taupe Sampler (above), made with blocks from 'Japanese Taupe Quilt Blocks'.  As this was the largest section in the show (about half the show) with a high standard of entries, I was very pleased to win second. I am teaching many of the special techniques used in this book and 'Japanese Quilt Blocks to Mix and Match' in a series of workshops at The Royal, Bridlington, at the end of October, which can be done individually or as a residential course (residential participants will get a special extra sashiko workshop on one of the evenings!) - click here for more info.

I also chose my 'Judge's Choice' award from this section, 'Japanese Garden' by Pamela Reynolds.  Although I helped out with the judging this time, of course I wasn't judging the quilts in this part of the show, but the judges can choose their Judge's Choice from any quilt in the show.  I loved the twirly leaf border on this quilt.  The pattern is from the book of the same name by Karen Kay Buckley, an American designer, but I thought Pamela's varied choice of fabrics really made this quilt.  You can see Karen's original quilt here.  Pamela's meticulous machine applique on the leaves and floral marumon circle designs was impressive.

 

'We are the Champions', my entry for 'Going for Gold with Fire and Circles' at Quilts UK earlier this year, won a Judge's Merit award in the Small Wallhanging category.  I wanted it to have another show outing this year, since it is about the Olympics.

 

'Garden Party' was in Large Wallhanging.  I want to add some more quilting to this one, but it doesn't hang too badly for a quilt that spent most of the last decade unfinished and squashed at the bottom of the pile in my quilt cupboard.

 

Sandra Wyman's small wallhanging had beautiful quilted leaves all over the background - just gorgeous.

 

Hilary Beattie's floral quilt was another favourite.  She also won the theme category, ' In a Spin', with a pictorial view of a windfarm, but for some reason I don't have a photo of it.

Dilys Fronks had a pair of positive/negative applique quilts that I liked very much.  The camera lens has distorted them a bit - they hung much straighter than the photo suggests!

In the Wholecloth section, the quilt that won second was my favourite.  I felt the design of this one was much more integrated than the one which one first prize, and the fabric and thread (Oakshott cotton and a varigated thread) was a good choice to show up the quilting.  It also had a very neat piped edging. I guess the one which got first won because the stitching was better (smaller and more even), but it was 'quilt at you go', which I don't feel is really a wholecloth - especially when the quilt as you go sashing cuts across and interrupts the border design.  The marks were probably very close in this section, as the third prize winner was also a very good quilt.  Unfortunately I didn't make a note of the maker's name - if anyone recognises her work, please let me know!  I can't read it in the photo.

Justhands-on TV came and Valerie Nesbitt did a little interview with me about 'Time and Again' and also about the new piece of sashiko I was stitching as a demo - using hand dyed fabric and perle threads, with the Shonai sashiko stitches in circles.  I am planning to develop this into a new workshop for next year's show, but we will be stitching on the dark blue Olympus sashiko thread for that, as it is difficult to see the marks on the hand dyed background.  I'm not sure when the interview will be on, but I'll post a link once I know.  It felt a bit weird as Valerie wanted me not to work to the camera, but did it as an informal chat.

 

We had another lovely show at Harrogate.  I much prefer this show to Festival of Quilts - it is much more relaxed and feels like a holiday by comparison!  The showground is a very easy venue from the point of view of access.  The show seems to be growing significantly, as many visitors prefer the more manageable scale of things at Harrogate than at Birmingham and there is always a lot of support from quilters in the North.  Of course, Harrogate is easy as a day trip from many places that are just too far away from Birmingham to make a visit to FoQ easy, so we meet a lot of quilters who can't come to FoQ.  I'm looking forward to next year!