Sunday 28 February 2016

Definitely Deviating



I definitely deviated from my Plan for the week but I actually ended up getting more done than I expected. I had a few more grand ideas for a potential DWR project which I am trying not to start until I have caught up with everything else. My pupil had to cancel her class so I gained a day, which was handy as I “wasted” quite a lot of time advertising patchwork books for sale on Ebay. I decided not to auction them off for 99p and put Best Offer prices on them all. I sold a few and also one of the surplus typewriters but was disappointed that I had woefully under estimated the postage. 






At least I was in profit enough to splurge out on some more textile paint and marine life stamps from Colouricious. I was surprised that a parcel of blocks from India arrived fairly soon after I placed the order. (I didn’t mean to buy elephants but they were on a special offer!) I intend to plan some classes around a seaside theme for a beach based arts centre that has invited me to teach. I am delighted with the interlocking rubber playmats from Amazon that enable me to have a soft surface for wood-block printing over the entire table.

I spent an evening making crafty things with Nell’s Girl Guides - they enjoyed making pen pots from old jeans, mug mats and simple brooches. One of the leaders was able to take charge of the sewing machine for the jeans project but everything else was hand-sewn, which most found a bit tricky as they never get the opportunity to do anything with a needle and thread. I have a few classes with children coming up so I think I will combine some printing with simple stitching projects. 





Purdah1 was the last quilt in the series to get its faced edging. I have now written myself some scruffy notes on how I like to do this for future reference so I don’t forget. I need to run over this black quilt with a de-fluffing device as it seems to have collected every stray thread from my workshop. I am very impressed by how restrained this quilt is compared with Purdah3 which I think probably now has as much bling as it can withstand. I got my knickers in a twist overlocking the tissue organza that I wanted to overlay on top of each quilt. The overlocking was very neat but the tissue organza was so thin that it shredded if you just looked at it - considering that I need to sew it onto the quilts somehow and want to attach large sequins, I decided that it was useless and ordered some different organza from Ebay. The new, super-shimmery stuff arrived quickly and is far more robust. I printed some motifs onto it which are almost invisible until they are held up to the light. 




Freya needed a “toga” for a party but the costumes on Ebay looked trashy so I bought some cheap white fabric and looked up chitons and peplos on Google Images, remembering something about the attire of Classical ladies from my Latin O-level 30 plus years ago! Freya’s chiton was printed along the bottom hem, had some fancy Greek key embroidery around the cowl and brooches made from fake Roman coins in my button tin. 



My final challenge for the week was to recreate the mystery 1930’s block from my favourite feedbacks quilt. It is a bit of a mash-up of flying geese and Jacob’s ladder but I have not yet found the same block in any reference book. I drafted it onto 12” squared paper after giving up on EQ7 and Touchdraw as my computer drawing skills were not up to the task. I am not entirely sure why I thought the centre square should be a different size to the original which meant working out what size all of the components should be and my patchwork maths is not very good. I got a wonky block together in the end, figuring out the setting triangles by trial and error. The flying geese were bigger than they should have been and trimming them down chopped off their points. At least it allowed me to see how it went together. I decided to mess around with the centre square to see if I could get it to finish at a better size for calculating the size of the connecting geese and I decided to start with a 4-patch. So far it looks promising - I just need to finish it, write it all down, repeat to see if it works twice, then give it a name!









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