Flying Free

I've been knocking around some ideas for my first ever Art Quilt for a while now and, since the deadline is looking a lot closer than it did when I decided to do-this-thing I thought it was about time I actually started doing something concrete about it!

I was thinking about spring and all the things that that brings to mind and one of my favourite things about spring is that the sun starts coming out and blows away all the wintery blues - I am definately affected by the weather and when the sun starts shining down and the rain becomes light and sparkly rather than heavy and dreary that's when my new year begins.

So, what am i choosing as my theme for the quilt? Flying Birds. I have a wonderful postcard which show a white bird flying over a vast blue ocean and to me that symbolises freedom more than any other image I've seen, but it doesn't seem to want to become a quilt! Too much bare space to fill in.

Instead I'm going with something I've been wanting to do for a while which is playing with curved flying geese. In a (hopefully not too groan-groan) twist I'm going to try and make a piece which shows traditional patchwork 'flying geese' metamorphising into actual flying geese.

I was going to piece it but that's obviously not going to work with actual gooses so instead I'm going with applique. I haven't quite decided on the background yet but I have drafted out my geese pattern.

I started out by drafting patchwork geese as though I was going to foundation piece them. I searched the internet for instructions on how to do this but failed miserably so made it up! In short:

1. Draw freehand curves marking out the area where the geese will fly; for the quilt I'm doing these diverged away from each other as the curve progressed.
2. Start at the base of the first goose; draw a straight line which averages out as a perpendicular to the tangent of the curves at its ends (by eye)
3. Now the math - I wanted 'proper' flying geese so the horizontal base should be twice the height of the goose. Measure the base line, find the middle and project a vertical line from the centre point which is exactly half the width of the base.
4. Draw the next base line, again averaging the perpendicular of tangent of the curves on either end.
5. Mark the slopes of the triangle of the first goose (connect the dots)
6. Repeat steps 2-5 for each goose. It's actually suprisingly easy to do!

Next I drafted out the geese gradually emerging from the triangles and finally I removed the triangles altogether to leave the birds breaking free on the constraints of the pattern.

Geese In Triangles

And Finally, Free Geese!

Now all I need to do is decide what colours the geese will be and what background they're flying on - for the geese I'm thinking some sort of chromatic colour progession and the backing will either be something pieced to get a bit of the traditional in there or something plain so I can do some quilting on it, not quite sure which would work better yet.

The geese will need to be redrafted so they're symetrical (the ones in the picture are somewhat wonky) and then I need to figure out the best way to applique them on. I'm thinking that reverse applique makes the most sense but I don't really want them 'sunk' so maybe something using bondaweb instead. Just need to make sure the edges are properly seamed down I think, would spoil the effect a bit if they frayed.... or maybe they should get gradually more frayed to show the feathers...

Harder than it looks

Yesterday we went down to town to look at houses and, as we were there, I stopped by the fabric shop and finally bought the wadding for my Denim Lone Star. The top and back have been ready for months but I 'stole' the original wadding for Aimee's Quilt and the Baby Bargello and never quite got round to replacing it. Because of the weight of the denim I was a touch worried that normal cotton batting would struggle to make any difference so I chanced it and bought some polyester wadding instead - at £2.40/m this could prove to be a very cheap way to finish any future demin quilts too! Shall have to see how the machine copes with it tho as the quilt is somewhat bulky to say the least.

Today I pushed all the furniture aside and just managed to get the quilt out flat in the 'dining room' so a couple of hours later and it's all basted with safety pins - I usually prefer spray baste but this thing weighs a ton and I'm just not sure if it could hold under the weight.

Now all I have to do is find the rest of my heavy-weight thread and quilt this monster!

A Fond Farewell

Today Aimee's Quilt was delivered to it's new owner and, if the immediate attempt to fall asleep under it was any indication, I think she likes it... phew! Mum seemed very impressed and particularly admired the stars I quilted in the border so I'm glad I decided to go for it and put them in. All in all, I think it will be very happy in its new home.

Baby Bargello was also delivered to the (absolutely adorable) new born and I think we're on the same wavelength because the first question was "how do I wash it"; no fears about this one getting stuck in a cupboard then!

To finish off my blogging about these quilts I thought I'd put in some links to the patterns for them:

Baby Bargello was started at a course at the Quilt Room but is based on this wonderful free pattern by Bonnie Hunter - I made the smallest sized quilt but cut it from 5 steps to 4 to make it a rectangle rather than a square.

Aimee's quilt was pretty much made up as I went along so I was careful to keep a note of what I did and have written up full instructions on how to make it just in case I want to make another one some day!

Against the Odds

Just a quick update today - been too busy filling my head with revision to manage much in the way of creativity recently but here's something I did manage to get done. This is my very first ATC. There was a 'Recycle Spring' themed swap on the FAT group recently and I contemplated joining (but didn't manage to make anything in time!) I did however eventually make this little one as a result.

The swap had brought the theme of 'Spring' to the front of my mind and whilst we were away up North I saw some beautiful Cherry Blossoms (which I have a soft spot for) but, in typical english style it was rather too chilly to properly enjoy them. Thus this piece - a Cherry Blossom tree fighting the cold... I've called it "Against the Odds"!

It's a machine sewn background (just layered material with oversewn edges rather than pieced) with a hand emroidered Cherry Blossom. The trunk is done with a sort of stem stitch and the blossoms are french knots in various shades of pink, the tree may not be anatomically correct - I made it up as I went along.

I quite like it but in retrospect I would have used a calmer background; the tree gets rather lost amid the changing prints so I think a simple mottled blue would have worked better. The binding looks a little less clunky in reality but I think I need to work on my straight lines a bit before I do it again!



Note: Explanation of ATC as requested by mum: "Artist Trading Card" measuring 3 1/2" x 2 1/2" in this case made from fabric but can be made in any medium provided the result is not overly thick.

A pretty little something that made me happy!

I haven't done any more crafty things lately as we spent the bank holiday weekend up in Leeds at Rob's cousins' wedding but I did get a rather nice craft-related pressie while we were up there so I thought I'd share that instead!

We went out for breakfast to a little farm shop on Sunday morning (the tastiest bacon ever!) and in the shop they had these pretty little tins which caught my eye; I was going to buy one to put my crafty bits in but on closer inspection it turned out they were actually packs of cookies and it seemed a bit silly to buy the biscuits for their packaging so I left it. When we got in the car to leave Angela (Rob's mum) presented me with the very tin I had been admiring; she'd seen how much I liked it and just decided to get it for me! It made me very happy :D

So here it is - my new crafty-sewing tin; I've put all of my embelishment bits and other non-traditional sewing bits in here so I have them in one place, soooo much easier when I get the urge to be creative and just look at how pretty that tin is!

I particularly like the Daffodils

See how much more organised it is now!