Month: January 2012

Strathmore Workshop 1 on Fabric

| Chrisse Seager

I have had another go at the first workshop doodles on fabric.  This time I used Boots travel spray bottles with Procion dye to put down the first layer with much better success.  It still bleeds a little under the resist objects but gives a soft edge to the shapes which is rather nice.  I then worked into the pieces using my collection of textile paints and permanent markers.  Interesting to see which ones work and which don’t. I have a number of Posca pens and the pink and turquiose are great.  The white disappears into the fabric and only really works on top of the textiles paints.  The green is pathetic!  The Sharpies have a tendency to bleed and need to be be used rapidly to get a fine line.

The first trial – the pearlised paints were not necessarily a good idea. I added Inktense pencil to the flower shapes as they were too stark.

The next piece – I deliberately, against Strathmore tutor advice, mixed the primary colours to see what a more subdued version would look like. I think it works on fabric.

And another, to which I added stencils applied with Markal sticks and a toothbrush to get the graduation of colour. This one is still on the board waiting for me to decide if it needs more doodling or if I leave it and do the rest with stitch.

The second piece now has some stitch, complete with hanging threads.

THIS DOODLING IS ADDICTIVE – do I play or sew??

Bletchley Park Quilt

| Chrisse Seager

Finally finished my  quilt for Bletchley Park.  It is based on my mother’s service record in the WRENS during the Second World War. She worked at Eastcote in London which was an outstation of Bletchley Park.  Her job was to either feed code into a bombe or take the results and see if they made any sense.

Her service record has been paper laminated as the main part of the quilt. Her photos have been transferred using TAP onto fabric rusted and immersed into soda ash which gives an organic design. The quilt has been pieced, machine quilted and free motion stitched.

The quilt goes to Bletchley today and will eventually have pride of place at home.

Strathmore workshop 1

| Chrisse Seager

I loved doing this.  I had planned to do this on fabric but the spray bottles I had were squirt bottles and made a mess of my first attempt. I ended up tray dyeing the fabric.

So I bought some new spray bottle – travel ones from Boots and started again on paper.  Really pleased with this one and enjoyed doing it – difficult to decide when to stop.

Here is the link if you want to try out the workshops:

http://www.strathmoreartiststudio.com/

Last two Journal Quilts for 2011

| Chrisse Seager

Finally finished my last two quilts for December and January.  Getting my head round doing them proved difficult.  Part of the problem was starting my piece for Bletchley Park’s exhibition at the end of February.  The rest was sheer procrastination!

So here they are – first the December one which used provisional piecing which proved quite difficult on a small quilt.

And the final one for January this year – a single button with buttonhole quilting.

Now the burning question – do I do the challenge again this year?  It is colour based this time, 4 months of red, 4 of yellow and 4 of blue.  Also A4 which is a new format for me and won’t fit in my box of JQ’s.

Finished and improvisional quilt

| Chrisse Seager

I have had this small trial quilt sitting on a board for 2 months. It needed edging – it was too thick to face nicely and I wasn’t happy about binding it.  I tried a Leslie Morgan suggestion to run 4 lines of stitching around the edge.  It wasn’t working so it now has a zig zag edge which works.  It needs to be mounted on a black canvas next.

The quilt has been made using Marie Roper’s improvisional piecing method – I love this technique.  The centre has some of my art work that has been laminated. I did learn on this quilt which was meant to be bigger that laminated fabric should only have very gentle curves. There is no give in the laminated fabric so tight corners are unnecessarily difficult!