Scary moment!

Well it couldn't be put off any longer - I just had to take a deep breath and put scissors to quilt! I'm not usually a nervous type about such things, it's only fabric after all, but this is THE quilt we have chosen for a special repurposing.

It was a pretty nervewracking few minutes but the deed is done and there's no turning back. When you think that this is a large quilt that took many hours to piece and was quilted entirely by hand before Laura over quilted it by machine with a free motion feather design. We have invested untold hours already and that's before taking the original fabric dyeing and final discharge process into account! I can only hope the jacket turns out OK. I sampled the pattern first in calico. Laura tried it on and we marked all the changes we wanted in black pen. I took the whole thing apart and redrafted the pattern to the revised shape. Of course to make sure the new version would work I had to put the jacket together again. I should be able to make this up with my eyes closed by now!

Some of the little offcuts are really precious. I can't bear to bin them and after all the effort invested I shall have to think of some imaginative way to make good use of them!

Talk to you again soon - Linda

Shopping for a few essentials

We escaped the office today and braved the rain to go into Birmingham City centre. Now that we know what we're making for the fashion show we needed all kinds of stuff. There are fewer and fewer shops selling haberdashery these days so we're lucky that we can travel into the city and take advantage of the Rag Market.

We don't get there very often so it's a real buzz to enjoy the old fashioned atmosphere of the market with the traders all doing their best to get our attention. These organzas were hard to resist at £1 a metre!

There are no fancy displays, just an abundance of everything you could possibly want. After a good rummage I did manage to find the perfect colour zip amongst this heap.

With so many fabric stalls it's easy to be distracted but we were on a mission. We knew exactly what we wanted and left the market behind to go across the road to the Fancy Silk Store. They live up to their name and have an amazing choice of gorgeous silk fabrics as well as floor to ceiling displays of every other kind of fabric you can think of. We came away with so many carrier bags weighing us down our fingers turned blue! Absolutely no excuses not to be sewing now - we just have to get on with it!

Can you tell what it is yet?

I thought I'd start this post with a bit of glorious colour because the rest of the images are disappointingly lacking in it! The peonies are at their best right now and I never quite know if the pink is too girly or if it's magnificent in its absolute pinkness.

No question marks over this one though. My absolute favourite colour and the shadowy dark green of the old hawthorn hedge makes such a good foil.

I've said before that we've taken a vow of silence over the detail of our designs for Fashion Sans Frontieres but it's difficult not to mention what we're doing at all because it's what is occupying much of our waking hours right now. In fact, not just the waking hours - I find myself dreaming about perfect length of hem and shape of sleeve!  

The studio is strewn with rough sketches, pattern pieces and first try outs of various garments.

It's no good investing many hours of work embroidering something that isn't going to fit so we're making every item in simple calico before we put scissor to precious cloth! Nothing looks very promising at the moment but just imagine the transformation when we use our own quilted, painted, discharged and embroidered fabrics! It's all very exciting!

Satisfying Sunday

It was a beautiful sunny Sunday if a little windy today. Spending most of the time in my studio I had one of those lovely days when lots of projects got finished at last. Very satisfying! Little quilts got their bindings and were mounted onto box canvases, embroidered panels had final detail added with fabric paint and gorgeous shell buttons were sewn onto a patchwork jacket. While all this was happening I had the embroidery machine racing away in the background making more pieces with some of the rayon and metallic threads from our new Madeira collections. Here's a Husqvarna butterfly design worked onto another old quilt I sacrificed in the name of art!

I love the soft gleam of the metallic thread and the fat body that's created with several layers of stitch.

Yet another old quilt bit the dust today but will live again in this panel embroidered with swallows.

The original fabric had a monoprint of a Robinia leaf. I was going to paint the white shapes to make them less obvious but decided at the last minute to leave them as they were. I did however roll a fine veil of white fabric paint over the edges of the quilting once everything was complete.

Compared to Laura I am a novice with the embroidery software but I am learning! It's fun being able to play with the composition of the various elements - changing size, position and direction before stitching them out. I know a lot of people think this kind of embroidery is somehow cheating. I really do not agree! What makes it all so satisfying is the pleasing way the digital techniques combine so well with my favourite free motion quilting.

If every day was as productive as this I might even meet all my deadlines!

If only they knew!

These cheeky fellows called by for a visit today. They seem quite at home nosing around the Ladies Mantle at the edge of the garden pond.

If they knew our latest work involves collecting and dyeing feathers they might have thought it wiser to keep a safer distance. So much temptation!

When I used to do a lot of watercolour painting Mallards were one of my favourite subjects - I just love that viridian on the head! It's nearly always colour that attracts me as a source of inspiration. I guess most of us who paint and stitch are the same - colour is our driving force. When you enjoy something that much it doesn't feel like work! So, although I suppose technically it is work, we had great fun yesterday putting more of our favourite colours together for some new thread collections that Madeira are creating for us. Last year they asked us to choose our favourite 18 threads to be packaged in a lovely rigid box. I can't tell you how long we debated over that! This year we've chosen 2 more collections so there was less arguing about all the gorgeous colours we couldn't fit in!

I've stitched this sample for the photograph that will illustrate one box set using just 2 of the colours - a gorgeous rayon and a lovely soft metallic.

And here I've used a few more colours from the same collection to embroider swallows to make yet more bags. Next time I'll show what lovely things we're making with the other collection.

Bye for now - Linda

New life for old quilts

There's nothing more satisfying than cannibalising an old quilt that's had its day and needs new life. A few years ago I made a log cabin quilt using Laura Ashley fabrics. It was exhibited once at Llanidloes in Wales and never saw the light of day again. Till this week that is. I love to layer techniques and I'd much rather embroider on a quilt than on a flat piece of cloth. There is more texture and the colours of the patchwork always tend to be more interesting. The swallows here are a Husqvarna design that was just tweaked a bit to change their direction and fill the embroidery hoop.

After the embroidery was finished a fine layer of white fabric paint was applied with a foam roller to create a distressed surface. I love the way the paint highlights the wrinkles in the hand quilted fabrics and the edges of the patchwork seams. What was quite a bright quilt suddenly looks like a pair of old faded jeans that have been washed and washed. It's destined to become a bag one day.

This afternoon we set the embroidery machine to work again and stitched some lovely little fabric name tags that will be used to label my garments and accessories for Festival of Quilts in August. Laura digitised a simple design that will make use of all the tiny scraps that are left over when I chop up my old quilts to make something new. Nothing goes to waste - it makes me feel good about the sacrifice!

Thanks for dropping by.

I promise not to go on and on about chickens!

OK,  I appreciate that not everyone reading this is interested in our domestic arrangements! I promise not to keep showing pictures of our new arrivals. BUT how cute is a day old chick? This one has decided the best way to find breakfast is to just jump into the bowl!

The good news is I spied another little pale yellow chick under the mom so we have 2 at least this morning.

Laura has digitised me some new embroidery designs so if I can tear myself away from the henhouse long enough to get into the studio today I'll try them out and post something more work related later!
Bye for now - Linda