Junk hunting in Scotland

We visited Steptoe's Yard yesterday, a salvage/junk yard not far from Montrose.  Glyn was hoping for more architectural salvage than other stuff, but the sheet amount of things there was pretty overwhelming.  There were several large barns, one with the better quality antique and vintage pieces and the others with varying levels of chaos.  I wondered how it would even be possible to get some of the furniture pieces out of the largest barn, as it was packed so tightly, with just enough space between shelves to squeeze along the aisles.  Given that some of the barns were only semi enclosed, and swallows were nesting among the beams, it will give you some idea of what they were like!

Glyn spotted this Portmeirion mug commemorating the Apollo 11 moon landing in 1969, which fits the bill for the slightly odd kind of commemoratives we seem to collect.

Glyn loves having a good rummage at places like this...

I bought a Chinese figurine and vase.  I don't know how old this is - could be any time from mid to late C20th, and it is likely they were in production for quite a while too.

Not a lot of information on the mark.

The Chinese vase is the kind of thing that used to be in the shops here in the 1980s and 90s, although once again it might be older.  These pieces will be great for photo props.

West Country Quilt Show

We are having a great time at the West Country Quilt Show in Bristol this weekend.  

Sidmouth Revisited is hanging well.

Angel and Ting have brought a great selection of hand embroidered and natural indigo dyed textiles from Guizhou Province in south western China.  From left - Martin Conlan (Slow Loris), Angel and Ting.

Lovely seeing the MaoNan Textile Ladies' group quilt hanging next to a selection of colourful MaoNan hand embroidered pieces.

Natural indigo hand dyed fabrics from Guizhou Province.

Miao embroideries.

More photos soon!

West Country Quilt Show and the MaoNan Textile Ladies

I will be on stand 48 at the West Country Quilt Show in Bristol this weekend, demoing sashiko, and have entered Sidmouth Revisited (above) into the competition.

Angel Yao is coming to the show with some of the MaoNan Textile Ladies.  That's the group who made the blocks for this quilt when I went to China in 2015.  I'm taking the quilt with me so she can take it back with her.  I'm not sure at the moment whose stand it will be displayed on, but I am sure it will be somewhere!

 

These are some of the patchwork things that the MaoNan group have made since my course.  I think they are also going to be demonstrating traditional embroidery, but I won't know exactly what they are going to be showing/demoing until we meet up again on Thursday.

UPDATE - As far as I know, Angel and Ting have arrived safely in the UK.  Bad news re the embroidery demonstrators however.  One of them could not get a visa and, without her, the other embroiderer we had coming didn't want to make the trip (a bit understandable when it is your first big international trip).  So there will be an exhibition of their work, Angel and Ting are going to wear MaoNan costume, but unfortunately neither of them is an embroidery expert!  I am really disappointed as I was looking forward to seeing some of the Textile Ladies over here.  Once we know exactly what the visa problem was, I may suggest trying again in a few years' time - maybe coming to Edinburgh.  We will see.

A Chinese Textile Adventure talk

Tonight I'm giving my new talk for the first time, 'A Chinese Textile Adventure', which is (mainly!) about my trip to China in 2015.  I'm using a new projector which a much higher resolution than the one we have for World Textile Day, so I'm hoping the images will look just as good on a large screen as they do on my wall.

As well as the slideshow, I'm taking the pieces of embroidery and batik I brought back from my trip, and a few other pieces from my collection.  I don't have anything like as much in the way of Chinese textiles as I do Japanese, but I started collecting when I was a student, just things that came my way.  Unfortunately I won't be including these two, as I still haven't unpacked them from the house move and I'm not sure which box they are in (there are still many costume boxes to unpack...)

The talk is in Inverness tonight, with Highland Quilters.

A Chinese Textile Adventure in The Quilter magazine

 

The Quilter, the Quilters' Guild of the British Isles quarterly members' magazine, is featuring this article in the Spring issue, about the amazing trip to China I had in July 2015.  The editor, Anne Williams, kindly sent me the page layouts and allowed me to share them here.  The Quilter is one of the things included in Guild membership and it is an excellent magazine, with lots of reading plus all the latest news and events for members.  You can't buy it in the shops.  I love getting my copy and have every one since I joined the Guild in 1998, as I occasionally like to sift through for things from the back issues! 

If you left click on the first photo, it will open up in a photo stream and if you then right click on each image and select 'view image' from the popup menu, you will be able to zoom in enough to read the text.

Chinese Corner in the Cabin - with quilting

The Corner in the Cabin quilt made by the MaoNan Textile Ladies quilt group has arrived back from being quilted by Fiona Garth at Quilt Sandwich.  The quilting looks wonderful - it really brings the quilt together.  Now to bind it and get the hanging sleeve attached in time for deliver to the Scottish Quilt Championships on Wednesday.

Chinese Corner in the Cabin - quilting

Fiona Garth at Quilt Sandwich longarm quilted the Maonan ladies' Corner in the Cabin quilt yesterday.  Here are some photos and a video link of the quilting in progress.  The design is Oriental Pano from Sweet Dreams Quilt Studio.  I can't wait to see the quilt - it looks great in the photos and video clip.

Fiona has also written about it on her blog.   Thanks very much for doing such a great job so quickly!

Chinese Corner in the Cabin - with borders

Somehow I had miscounted the total number of blocks and when I came to try to fudge a final row with 7 1/2in x 8in blocks, I was one whole block short!  Even piecing together all the remainders of the block trimmings would not have made a block big enough to add the final piece.  So I had a design change and used the four best remaining blocks to make cornerstones in the pink border.

The patchwork was finished and posted to Quilt Sandwich yesterday afternoon, but not without a few glitches.  First of all, the ends of some of the patchwork seams on the outside of the central area had started to unravel, just through the quilt being held up for the photo!  These all appeared to be seams done on the industrial machines at the college.  I repaired as many of these as I could find.  Then I looked for the pink border fabric and I couldn't find where I had put it... Not in my workroom, and I hadn't left it in the suitcase when I came home from my trip.  Eventually I found it, folded up underneath one of the quilts I'd taken to China.  I felt very relieved.  The colours are so outside of my usual palette, I didn't have anything that would have made a reasonable substitute.  Adding the border and sewing across the ends of the seams in the cornerstones will hopefully have sorted out any further unravelling.

Chinese Corner in the Cabin

The Chinese Corner in the Cabin quilt top by the Maonan quilt class is going off for longarm quilting today, to Fiona Garth at Quilt Sandwich.  It has a wide pink border added, partly to help stop the stitching unravelling at the edge when it is on the quilt frame (not all the machine stitches are quite as small as I would do).  There is also an extra row of blocks on the bottom edge now - the ones I had to 'fudge' to fit.  All the blocks had to be trimmed down but there were a few that weren't big enough. These are not really my kind of colours and I had no extra fabric to make those blocks bigger, so I have widened but not lengthened them with the trimmings from the biggest blocks.

Arranging the blocks using the bed as an improvised design wall yesterday.   This is the second quilt made from the group's blocks - the first one, a quilt as you go, was assembled while I was in China, and is still there.  The finished size, with border, will be approx. 75 x 67in.  Fingers crossed, it will be at the Scottish Quilt Championships, which starts on 25th September.

China - part 18 - Miao and other textiles

 
Mrs Zhang and Mrs Wu brought some textile pieces to Pintang for sale, including these batik panels.  The indigo was is the permanent design on these, rather than being the dye resist.

Miss Gao bought this fabulous Geija festival coat.  The Geija people around Kaili city are noted for their batik work.  I nearly bought it, but they had another shorter jacket which was a perfect fit for me, plus I didn't know how I could have packed this coat without crushing the white feather tassels around the bottom.

More Miao embroidery pieces.

I bought this runner.

Not a good photo, but this shows a piece of Geija embroidery, with geometric motifs outlined in tiny chain stitches.

Some of Mrs Zhang's embroidery.  I bought a small panel of this, so I had a souvenir of her own work.