A few weeks ago, I received an invite to submit an image of a piece that was maximum 14 by 14 inches. I don’t normally work that small but had just put together a small piece from a lovely bit of cloth with discharged leaves. Nothing ventured, nothing gained. Here it is:

It has been accepted for the book – great. Then I received an email saying they would like a body of work, did I have any more images? Of course, I didn’t. I don’t usually work that small!

I have now. I so enjoyed putting the original canvas together that I decided to make some more. This meant printing more leaf designs on fabric – I had the leaf motifs already, and making up more mini quilts. I now have 7 and here they are in a stack.

I will post them individually when I have cropped the photos that have just been taken.

In the meantime, I hope you have the lovely weather we have here.

Chrisse

It has been a very busy few months, either on our canal boat or getting ready for Festival of Quilts. How was Festival of Quilts – I had a great time this year. I was extremely lucky to have my quilt, Pieces of Crow XL, selected for the Fine Art Quilts Masters.  Only 17 were selected so I feel very privileged. Before Festival, the selected quilts were hung at the British Design Centre in London. We went to see them and it was difficult to wipe the grin off my face!

It is quite a large piece and I was lucky enough at Festival to have it hanging on an end wall as you walked into Hall 9. Here is a detail photo.

The little sharp point in black was not there by design – it just happened and works well.

At the Festival, with Lynne Pretty and both husbands, I set up an exhibition for the Contemporary Quilts Group which is internet based. The challenge was called Horizons and was open to all members – no selection. We received 51 quilts, 50cm wide by 150cm – I have wall to wall packaging in numbered bags in my studio. We were given a very nice shaped stand and it worked a treat for the quilts.  Here is a photo showing the stand:

If you would like to see more photos, they are on the CQ Horizons website. Feedback on the exhibition has been overwhelming – lovely comments from many people. The quilts hung extremely well together and now are going on to be displayed in a gallery in Richmond, London, in February and then onto Prague for their April show.

Back to the grindstone now for me, catching up on jobs I have been ignoring!

I finished Pieces of Crow 2 before I went to Istanbul but completely forgot I had planned to blog all pieces. It isn’t as good as Piece 1, both in design and stitch.

The design isn’t good because I ignored the Rule of Thirds – the lower part of the design is nearer half of the quilt than one third. Interesting, as it really stands out as unbalanced when you stand away from the quilt.

The stitch – I went back to stitching the individual pieces after a friend asked why I had done more integrated stitching on Piece 1. It does NOT work and fortunately she agrees!!!

So I have learnt. Here is a photo of it:

And some of the detail:

I am currently working on a bigger version of Piece 1 for FOQ. I have unstitched it once – I really struggled to get my 1/8inch stitching looking even so have resorted to 1/4inch and it is looking better.

The Project 2013 patches are suffering badly – so much for good resolutions – I am not sure how people keep them.

This is a better picture of the piece. No idea where the thin blue on the left came from.

The stitch quality is not good enough. Did it on the Juki and it is still snatching. I used the walking foot so the quilting isn’t as tight as I like. I don’t seem to be able to get the spacing as tight as I can with the patchwork foot on the Juki.

The lowest white piece doesn’t look so out of place. It might have been better if I had stitched the lower vertical lines in a curve defined by the left black piece.

I am reasonably happy with the design of the top. The size is much better too, 33 by 22 inches. The next piece I will stitch as I have in the past, following each piece, rather than using stitch lines over a number of pieces.

On to the next piece.

Pieces of Crow 1 is a better size.

Here is a picture of work in progress, it looks very waffled and messy:

The design has ended up somewhat different to my usual shard piecing as I have deliberately made the pieces bigger. Is it the direction I want to go in – I am not sure yet. I need to do a heavy critic on the design elements of this piece – is the balance right, does your eye move round the piece and so on. I am not happy about the heavy white piece across the bottom. It probably should have been narrower. However, it does add variety.

Here it is complete, in a very yellow light:

I will be glad to start adding a third colour as it is quite difficult working with only two colours. So the next decision is – one more black and white or start adding colour. I had planned four black and white pieces!

Food for thought.