getting ready for the new year

Fabric bits

New Ideas - Looking ahead

As I was thinking about things and doing sums yesterday, this jungle fabric suddenly decided to be a project.

So, here is your first glimpse. And if it goes like it seems to want to, you will hear more about it very soon.

Ramshackle with Escher Influences

Today was the first day for sometime that I felt I could get on with things without excessive weariness or a headache.
Okay...weariness, but tolerable! I have been just sitting in here thinking and planning things for next year, not doing much. Kind of recovering from too many weeks doing far more than way too much.

So. Suddenly I thought, I could finish the Ramshackle piece for the Contemporary Quilt Suitcase Collection: My Favourite Artist. They had extended the deadline which was a Very Good Thing.
And of course, it took much less time than I thought. Hurrah!

“Ramshackle with Escher Influences”

Here is the blurb I am sending with the quilt.

My Favourite Artist: “Ramshackle with Escher Influences”

One of the Artists whose work I love is M.C. Escher. I especially like his work that plays with perspective. However, I realised that is quite beyond me! So, I have focussed on his work using tessellating shapes.
In my own work, I have a series with wonky houses I call Ramshackle Houses. So, I decided to see if I could develop a house shape that tessellates.

The first little houses were too similar - ‘ticky-tacky boxes’, if you like. And then I realised that my own houses, though a bit higgledy-piggledy, have slanting roofs. Once they got their slanting roof, these houses happily became a little like Ramshackle Houses but with Escher Influences. And to get them a bit more ramshackle, I placed them on a slant, also leaving a bit of a gap between them so they could be a bit more individual than if they were snugged up as tessellating shapes are meant to.

I used fused cotton with a raw edge appliqué technique using the machine. Felt is used for the middle layer. The edge of the quilt was covered with a satin stitch.
The tessellating house shape was developed with a technique where one removes a section from the bottom and adds it to the top. Thus, the chimney and door use the same shape. The same concept is used to develop the sides; remove from one side and position on the other side.

Warm gift

From a Certain Young Man

A piece of warm fleece for making a jumper, to rotate with the few I have, for being warm over the winter.

And the bead keeps going on and on...18-24 December

Week 51 - Dec 2016 (delayed)

no.353

no.354

no.355

no.356

no.357

no.358

no.359

Something on Saturday

Secret door


Who goes in it? The wee train elf, I think.

Have a Happy Christmas Day tomorrow.

Ramshackle Villages - one

This was part of my entry for the 6th European Triennial in 2015...they needed a sample for the jurying. So, besides making it for the jury to see, I made it so I could use it for a present for family.

Yesterday this became a gift for my sister-in-law.

Ramshackle Villages - One

I want to make a selection of pieces with the different houses that are part of the villages. So, this is one.

December weatherish?

The other week we had a severe frost. I had to capture the frost on a few things.

fuchsia

lavender

magnolia

And this is what I saw this week in my neighbourhood!

forsythia

daffodils poking their heads up

Oh I do love living in England! Okay, the daffs may not blossom for a few more months. BUT it is the hope and the promise of Spring for me!!

(Where I am from, Daffodils come sometime in April or even May!)

With family today

Remembering a very special lady who we all miss very much.

Mum and family at her 95th birthday.

At the shops - mince pies

Saturday we had our yearly time at the shops to say Happy Christmas and invite people to the Candlelight Carol Service.

New weather conditions...we haven't done it in the fog before. 😉

And the bead keeps going on and on...11-17 December

Week 50 - Dec 2016

no.346

no.347

no.348

no.349

no.350

no.351

no.352

Weeping Woman - 3

Since working on this piece, I feel as if I should also make a weeping woman for Syria, for Yemen, for Iraq, or ..... India, Burma, North Korea and so on...
or even for mothers of children who never came home from school - gunned down in 'safer' countries.

I came across these words recorded by Jeremiah the Prophet and was amazed that this is the same type of weeping and wailing coming from women of these places of trauma and disaster here in our day.

“Consider now! Call for the wailing women to come;
send for the most skillful of them.
Let them come quickly and wail over us
till our eyes overflow with tears
and water streams from our eyelids.

The sound of wailing is heard from Zion:
‘How ruined we are!
How great is our shame!
We must leave our land
because our houses are in ruins.’”

Now, you women, hear the word of the LORD;
open your ears to the words of His mouth.
Teach your daughters how to wail;
teach one another a lament.

Death has climbed in through our windows
and has entered our fortresses;
it has removed the children from the streets
and the young men from the public squares.

Is it true that we are nearly in 2017 and houses are in ruins so that people must leave their lands? And is it true still that death climbs in through our windows, removing children from the streets and young men from public squares?

This is my Weeping Woman. The colour or place doesn't matter...
But why are we not weeping with her? That should matter!


***********
By the way, it took me around 2 hours to get all that statement down to the 300 allowed characters!

Weeping Woman - 2

I have done a lot of sewing and unpicking on this. I quilted the headdress, but the quilting I did on the face was wrong.

I put beads on for tears, which looked fine when I did it, but when I went to post it here...it was just not right.
So consider this photo another stage while I work out just how many tears it does want! Or, maybe the colour? I picked the beads to go with the sky, but I probably need to go with clear beads because the blue makes too much contrast.

Weeping Woman

A few weeks ago, I sat on the settee next to the dog for a little break. I looked across out of the patio window to the outdoors and this caught my eye...

The reflection in the window of the house opposite across the back seemed to show a weeping woman.

So, this has stuck in my mind, especially as I still cannot get the weeping mothers and women of Nigeria out of my mind. (The story behind Tears for the Daughters of my People.)

So, when SAQA extended the deadline for the Trunk show submissions, I decided this would be my piece if I could get it made through the travelling and so on we have been doing while my mother-in-law was ill.

Here are a few photos of the steps involved with developing the piece. Most of this was done on Friday when I was still processing the news of my mother-in-law's death.

Little changes here and there. The first was too peaceful of a face and as I went on, then concentrating on the folds of her headdress.

A few more changes have been done, but mostly this is how it looks before the quilting.

Rough and Tumble

A Certain Young Man and Holly. Enjoying Christmas holiday from Uni.

Holly had got wet outdoors and they were playing so mad dashing round that she bashed her nose real hard on his shin.

Normally doesn't phase her, but this time she wasn't too sure and needed some TLC.
She loves having someone here to play rough. (And who goes into the kitchen about every 2 hours to eat!)

Farewell Gill

Our friend Gill from Offcuts sewing left us near the end of October. Today we said final goodbyes.

always puzzling out a complicated pattern...

always sewing with a bare foot on the pedal!

There is already a big gap where she used to sit.

Along with the gap from missing Juliet.

I am glad we have had more friends come along in the past couple of years! Looking forward to sewing with the rest again in the new year.

70,273 project x's 51-60

More red x's for the 70,273 project.

x51

x52

x53

x54

x55

x56

x57

x58

x59

x60

And the bead keeps going on and on...4-10 December

Week 49 - Dec 2016

no.339

no.340

no.341

no.342

no.343

no.344

no.345