New website

My new website went live a couple of days ahead of schedule.  The site addresses www.susanbriscoe.co.uk and www.susanbriscoe.com are still the same, and I have added the .org.uk domain name as well.

I will be including all the talk and workshop booking information from my old site, but for the time being there isn't any online pattern ordering - I'm looking at getting my patterns into downloadable pdf formats, probably using an online pattern website to sell the patterns, but staying with printed patterns for quilt shows etc.  That way, you won't have to wait to order a pattern if I'm unable to send one out because I'm away at a show etc.

Kits - I'm redirecting to my kits on the Euro Japan Links website rather than selling the show kits online.  When I make kits, they are often in very limited quantities as I rarely buy more than 11 - 12 metres of any fabric.  I am designing some new kits combining recycled and vintage kimono fabrics, so those will be listed once I've got them done, but they will be limited editions of around 20 - 30 kits, depending on the fabric cuts included (a recycled kimono only gives certain repeatable lengths and widths).

There will be more photos, more quilts in the galleries and I am planning to add a proper biography once I've gone through my records re dates of shows etc. :-)  This blog will be staying exactly where it is.

Any other suggestions?

Quiltfest and Spring Quilt Festival

The Spring Quilt Festival at Edinburgh was fun, as usual, meeting lots of quilting friends and making a few new ones too.  The workshop, 'Sashiko in Circles', was a sell out!  I think I'll develop this one hour workshop into a full day class.  It's a great way to try out some of the Yuza sashiko patterns in an innovative style.  I forgot to take any photos of the stand, we were so busy.

Of course, the Japanese quilts by Reiko Domon and members of Yuza Sashiko Guild are on display at Llangollen Museum until March 5th, as the final Quiltfest exhibition for 2013.  If you don't get a chance to see them there, we are planning to show some of them at World Textile Day in Llanidloes on March 16th, but I don't think we'll have enough room to show them all.  Please note that World Textile Day in Stirling will be on Saturday June 22nd - a typo in the Guild newsletter gives 23rd as the date, but it it definitely on the Saturday.

Blackpool Quilters and Tebay Services

On my way back to Kettins I stopped at Blackpool on Monday evening, for a talk at Blackpool Quilters (who meet, rather appropriately, at the Molyneux Community Centre).  I saw this leafy green Super Strips quilt, started at the workshop with Garstang Quilters in October 2011.  The red borders and binding set off the greens beautifully - they are very natural greens, so the quilt makes me think of the Green Man just a bit.

More greens on the drive back yesterday.  I stopped at Tebay services (Westmorland services) on the M6, the one with the farm shop.  Beautiful blue sky crisscrossed by vapour trails, perfect for a panorama.  Click the photo to see it full size.

Forthcoming events in February and March

I will continue to post focusing on various parts of my Quiltfest exhibition, but here are some updates for the next few weeks.

I'll be at the Spring Quilt Festival at Edinburgh next Friday, Saturday and Sunday - 22nd - 24th Feb.  My workshop this year shows you how to make some of the classic Shonai and Yuza sashiko patterns curve around in circles for a contemporary look.  Click the link for more info. Remember, the workshops are booked on the day and are strictly first come, first served, so you need to be prompt!

On Friday 1st and Saturday 2nd March, I'm teaching at Seattle Quilt Company in Aberdeen (they're in the Berryden Retail Park, next to Sainsburys - so easy to find!)  The workshops are 'Introduction to Shonai Sashiko' and 'Sashiko Kinchaku Bag' - click here for their workshop list.

Saturday 9th March sees me a bit closer to home, with Region 16 of the Quilters' Guild of the British Isles, who are having their Regional Day at Glenear Community Campus in Perth.  Details are here.  It looks like the whole day will be very much on a travelling theme, as the other speaker is Gillian Travis with 'Journeys in Stitch'.  My talk will be 'My Japanese Quilt Inspirations'.

The following weekend I am back in Wales for World Textile Day at Llanidloes on  Saturday 16th March.  I'm planning to exhibit some of the Japanese sashiko quilts that will be displayed at Quiltfest at Llangollen Museum from next Thursday.  This year's theme is 'The People Behind the Cloth', and I think the 'Dream of Shonai' quilts fit the bill perfectly.  So if you can't get over to Llangollen to see them, why not catch up at World Textile Day?  This will be the final time these quilts are shown before they are sent back to Japan.

Tuesday 19th March I'm in Glasgow for an evening talk with the Glasgow Gathering of Quilters.  Once again, the talk will be 'My Japanese Quilt Inspirations', although I'll give it a slightly different twist so it won't be quite the same for anyone who has already seen it in Perth :-)

The following Saturday, 23rd March, I will be with Poppydown Quilters for the Quilt Day in Royal Wooton Bassett.  I can't find a website for them but there are contact details on the Quilter's Guild's site here.  Again, the talk will be 'My Japanese Quilt Inspirations'.

The Quilters' Guild of the British Isles are just about to go live with their new website shortly, so you may find links to their site pages are broken in the near future.  However, you should be able to search the new site for the same information.

Two early quilts at Quiltfest

As my exhibition at Quiltfest was intended as a retrospective, perhaps even more appropriate now as life has changed a lot since we first planned it :-), I included some of my earliest quilts.  My very first quilt wasn't there (it's here on the bed, doing what it was made for!), but the second quilt I started - the third I finished - was doing duty as the cover for the stewards' table and two others made in the early 1990s and first shown at the Clwyd Open Art exhibitions in 1993 and 1995 were included.  These are 'The Fabled Hare' (1995) and 'Dream - Mt Chokai and the Shonai Plain' (1993).

Val Shields said the hare quilt was the first time she saw a quilt in that mainstream art exhibition.  Maybe she missed the 1993 show, because 'Dream' was the first one I entered. Anyway, I'll write about them here in reverse order!  At that time, I hadn't seen many modern UK quilts, apart from some of Deirdre Amsden's 'Colourwash' series that toured to Aberystwyth Arts Centre c1987 as part of a contemporary British Textiles show.  My main influences then were Japanese and Australian quilts.  I had two books by Dianne Finnegan and a stack of Japanese books and magazines.  My sewing machine didn't have a quarter inch or walking foot and I didn't know about quilt shops. That was it. 

Because I didn't drive, my fabric buying opportunities were limited mainly to Mold market and Chester, where I used to check out Liberty's sale section every few weeks.  On the market, I could get Liberty and Laura Ashley seconds, which is mostly what I used in this quilt, and Just Sew in Mold also had cotton dressmaking (and a few patchwork) fabrics too.  I wanted to use a lot of blues and purples in this, but didn't have many in my small stash, so I tie dyed and overdyed other fabrics with blue and purple.  The moon fabric was also a tie dye.  Perhaps having to eke out and alter fabrics with dyes and paints in those days has influenced me later - while dyeing is fun, I love hunting out just the right fabric for a project from commercial ranges and other people's hand dyes.

 

The subject for 'The Fabled Hare' is from a song sequence written by Maddy Prior, included in her album 'Year'.  I heard it for the first time when Maddy performed at Theatr Clwyd.  The opening words are painted in gold to make the circle for the hare - click the lyrics for a song link -

I sall goe untill a hare

Wi sorrow an such mickle care

I sall goe in the devil's name

An while I come home again

I just drew two circles and started painting the words with a signwriter's lettering pencil (brush), reducing them in size gradually so I could fit them all in.  It is a Scottish borders witch's spell for transformation, and I imagined the hare coming out of the other side of the spell circle under a harvest moon.  The hare, while similar to some of the leaping hare images in Kit William's 'Masquerade', was actually based on a pewter brooch.  Its body and the moon are filled with Celtic spirals, and the hare has an extra layer of wadding.  The applique isn't great because I didn't know how to needleturn then.  As well as over dyeing many fabrics in the border, I also tie dyed the Liberty 'second' I used for the night sky - it is the same print as the floral pattern in the bottom third, but with only the navy background printed.  It was hand quilted and the edges are turned inwards and butted over the wadding, like traditional British quilts, rather than having a binding. 

The earlier quilt included a lot of fabric bought when I was working in Japan.  The main part of the kimono is bingo kasuri, a machine woven double ikat used for traditional mompe work trousers.  I bought a whole roll of it, enough for one pair, from Yuza Kasuriya, round the corner from my house in Yamagata Prefecture.  The mountain fabric, the background to the red yama (mountain) kanji, the Utamaro print handkerchief and the seigaiha wave pattern on the side borders were all bought either there or in Sakata, while the metallic brocade across the top of the kimono came from a Kyoto goods sale at Shimizuya department store in Sakata.  The floral background and the wide red raw silk strip across the bottom (to suggest an obi) were purchased on my trip to Singapore.  When I first came back from Japan, life in the UK seemed rather alien and I really missed my life in Yuza, so the quilt is really about that.

 

The top border was my first attempt at Seminole patchwork, which I'd seen in Japan.  I don't think I had a rotary cutter and quilter's ruler when I made this, so I used the long bamboo ruler I had for marking kimono instead, marked the lines and cut them with scissors.  I think the width of the strips in that top section are probably the width of a Helix plastic ruler!

 

My neighbours had the ukiyo-e print handkerchiefs in their drapery shop (the same shop where I learned how to sew kimono).  I thought these would make lovely panels in quilts, although they were very fine and I think I backed it with thin interfacing.  I still haven't used the others!  Although I managed to turn under a small hem on the mountain applique, more tricky shapes like the kanji character and the rice bowl were beyond me, so I bonded them and zigzagged the edge.  I did the same thing with the red flowers in the side borders.  There's a five yen coin next to the rice bowl, for good luck.

The narrow red strips for the 'screen' next to the woman were pieced.  The effect is not dissimilar to the shoji screen section in 'Kyoto Dreams' (below).  I wasn't going to write about that quilt here - I'll save that for another post - but the similarity just caught my eye.  'Kyoto Dreams' was made much later (2007 I think - all the dates were on the quilt labels) and I got the effect with Clover 'quick bias' tape.  And there isn't even anything in the background to match up, unlike the original 'Dream'.  The pose of the Utamaro bijin (beauty) is very close to the first one but this time I could needleturn well enough to be able to cut around features like her hairpins, just an eighth of an inch wide.

 

More featured quilts soon!

Quiltfest continues at the Museum

Quiltfest continues until Tuesday at the Museum, with selected quilts by the Cwilt Cymru group, including their part of the 'Spirit of the Celts' set, with Japanese quilts by Reiko Domon and Yuza Sashiko Guild opening on Thursday for a fortnight.  By special arrangement, the Museum WILL be open on Wednesdays all through Quiltfest!!

 

  

  

 

 

 

Stone quilt II

I finished piecing the stone patchwork on Friday.  In the end, I moved the alternate rows across by half a block by adding extra 3 1/2in strips at the sides.  This got the extra random effect I wanted from what is a series of identical blocks.  If I had realised that I needed these extra pieces before I cut out the circle appliques, I could have got one extra piece from each of the eight fabrics, but I'd gone ahead and cut as many as three circles from some of them, so there wasn't enough left.  I ended up cutting six pieces from the brown stone print I had planned to use as a 'sill' and 'lintel' at the bottom and top, with one yellow piece and one 'marble' piece too.  With the extra side pieces, the quilt had got too wide for those long strips anyway.  I have some Stonehenge yardage, so I might see how it looks with that. Here it is with all the blocks arranged ready for sewing - here's my earlier post.

  

I think it looks much more interesting than the usual grid layout (below).  In addtion to the seams at the edge of neighbouring blocks alternating between sides and top/bottom, so the seams never need to match up exactly, the seams between one row of blocks and the next don't match up either. I'm going to hand quilt in the ditch, as there are few long seams lines to follow if I machine quilted. I did mark the centre of each block at the edge, so I could match it up with the seam on the next row, because I didn't want the rows creeping out of alignment.  I think the layout below, the grid, could work with busier fabrics.

 

November quilt

This is a quilt I haven't shown on my blog before, because I didn't have a photo of it to hand.  I finished it in 2000 and it was my dad's 70th birthday present.  Along with mum and dad's golden wedding anniversary quilt, I borrowed this to show at Quiltfest this year.  It hasn't been seen much 'in person' as it spent a lot of time on their bed!  You might recognise it from 'Compendium of Quilting Techniques' ('200 Quilting Tips, Techniques and Trade Secrets' in some countries), where both the whole quilt and detail photos were featured.

When I worked for the local council in Wrexham and lived in Treuddyn, driving to work every morning in late autumn meant driving almost due east.  The sunlight coming through the woods along the road was dazzling and especially stunning on frosty mornings.  I wanted to capture the colours of November and the early morning sunlight through the trees.

The basic layout of the quilt was influenced by one in Dianne Finnegan's book, 'The Quilter's Kaleidoscope - How to Design and Create Individual Interpretations of Favourite Quilts'.  This was one of the first quilt books I owned (along with 'Piece by Piece, another of Dianne's books).  In my version, the horizontal and vertical sashing was replaced with bias cut strips raw edge appliqued over the squares on point.  The squares were made by piecing squares, cutting this patchwork into more squares on a random angle, and repeating the process several times, to create an improvisational patchwork effect.  The small cornerstones are the same twig patterned fabric throughout the quilt, while the diagonal sashing strips change colour and value across the quilt, with stronger contrasts in the centre to suggest the sunrise.

 

The leaf blocks bordering the centre section were made with freezer paper applique.  Because I was worried I wouldn't be able to get the freezer paper out of the back of the applique shapes too easily, especially on the horse chestnut leaf blocks, I ironed it onto the front of the applique leaves instead, using it as a guide for turning the edges.  I made the leaf templates by pressing real leaves collected outside Wrexham library.

I wanted a really earthy brown for the outer border and couldn't find what I wanted - all the brown quilting fabrics then seemed to be too warm in colour.  Instead, I dyed a length of indigo fabric with brown dye, getting the colour I needed.  The abstract quilting design in the border is based on contour lines from local Ordnance Survey maps (I worked in Rights of Way at the time).  The random blocks were quilted to suggest compass points and the leaves veins were embroidered in stem stitch.  All the quilting is 'big stitch' using hand dyed threads.

Last week, I found a box with the leftover fabrics.  Perhaps I'll make something to go with the quilt!

Quiltfest today

Today was the penultimate day for Quiltfest at the Pavilion gallery. We had far more visitors than yesterday and lots of interest in patchwork and quilting.  The photo above is me with some of today's stewards - Sue Horder (Quiltfest's webmaster & Chester Ps & Qs), Maureen Poole(Wrexham Quilting Circle) and Gill Young (Chester Ps & Qs). Maureen is wearing her Owl waistcoat that featured in 'Compendium of Quilting Techniques', while Gill & Maureen between them provided the inspirational finished projects for the Japanese folded patchwork section in that book.  Angela Jefferies (far right above), from Llangollen Quilters who exhibited in the foyer on Sunday, came to see us again - it looks like their group will have a few new members soon.  It's great to meet a lot of people who want to get into quilting and are enthused by seeing our work.

Here's a few general views of the gallery.  I will post photos of individual quilts later - need to get photos of all the quilts in the gallery tomorrow.  The Cwilt Cymru exhibition in the Museum continues until Tuesday afternoon, and the exhibition of Japanese sashiko quilts will open there on Thursday.

Stone patchwork

 

Two different settings for the same blocks, variations on the Japanese Circles and Squares block set, with eight fabrics instead of seven and seven pieces of each size rather than six. The photo below shows the blocks set out on the usual grid, the one above with every other row moved across by half a block.  Various options - cut the block at the end of the alternate rows in half and sew to the start of the row (trimming the other rows by 1/2in to fit) or add an extra 3/12in strip to alternate ends of each row. Perhaps the second option would be the best one?  The fabrics are 'Stonehenge' by Northcott.

Quiltfest - workshops, trading day etc.

 

The last few days at Quiltfest have been busy.  We opened on Saturday for the first time in many years, and had two workshops at the Pavilion - 'Sashiko for Summer' and 'African Jazz'. These were not well attended, so we are unlikely to hold similar day workshops at Quiltfest in the near future. Those that did go to the workshops enjoyed them and produced some good work during the day.

 

  

Glyn got ahead before 'African Jazz', piecing some random strips from hand dyed plain cottons on Friday afternoon, which he then cut up and included in the two panels above. EDIT - I forgot to mention that those panels are going to become front seat covers for the recycled Range Rover seats that are going into the Landrover rebuild.

 

I have been working on a new Japanese Circles and Squares patchwork as a demo all week.

 

Trading Day today was busier than yesterday.  I didn't have time to take many photos.  Here's one of me with the Fanoe quilt we raffled to raise funds for the Quilt Museum, with the raffle winner.  I'm delighted the quilt has gone to a good home.

  

Probably the busiest day at the Pavilion for other things rather than Quiltfest was Thursday, when Sky TV had an engineers' conference - never seen so many Sky vans parked in one place!  There are sometimes other events on during Quiltfest, but there is always plenty of space to park on the other side of the building.

 

Quiltfest - Pavilion gallery now open!

From this to this -

 

Quiltfest is now open at the Royal International Pavilion and the second gallery at Llangollen Museum will open tomorrow afternoon at 2p.m.

Many thanks to our hanging team - Debbie Gordon, Maureen Poole, Elaine Humphreys (fresh from organising a one day quilt show a couple of weekends ago) and Glyn - who got the exhibition up and looking good in just a few hours.

 

I finished 'Maru' in time - it looks different now it's densely machine quilted - here it is without the quilting.

  

The final quilt, 'Bamboo' by Kate Fenney, arrived this morning, just in time. She started it the last time I taught at Denman, and it looks great.  There's some work in progress photos here.

 

Looking forward to a busy week and hoping to see lots of visitors.

Getting things ready for Quiltfest

Getting the final selection of quilts sorted out for Quiltfest - hanging them at the Pavilion on Monday, opening on Tuesday, with the Museum exhibition hanging and opening on Wednesday - see www.quiltfest.org.uk.

'Butterfly Dance' will be one of my quilts - more about it here. 'Maru' (circle), started last December, is just about finished and I'm also planning to show it.