It's lovely in the sunshine

It's a lovely sunny day here in Westward Ho! once again. I'm keeping an eye on the shingles to make sure it's not coming back with a vengeance, and this involves getting up early in the morning. That's not entirely true, I get up early to make the most of the coolness in the flat before the sun comes into the flat. I love having the sunshine and the blue sky, and the heat, but the heat is not comfortable for quilting - well, it wouldn't be, would it; sitting under a quilt with the sun blazing down into a room that is effectively a greenhouse.

Anyway - the next installment of my endeavours. Today I'm going to show you a competition entry.

This is a bag I made for the Patchworks competition back in 2004. Patchworks is a shop in Scotland, and you paid about £6 for some fabrics that you made into whatever you wanted. You could add other fabrics as well. I can't remember which charity the competition was raising money for - it may have been breast cancer. I used one of my favourite fabrics - the chocolate one - twice; once on the outside, and then again on the inside for the pocket. I used and adapted a pattern from Barbara Randle's book - Crazy Quilting with Attitude, the bag also appeared in Popular Patchwork several years ago. I adapted it by adding a single shoulder strap on the gusset, and by creating a flap so that the bag could be closed over the top, rather than in the middle - I thought this made it a bit more secure. I used the stitch and flip method to piece the bag, and added ribbons and couched decorative threads for embellishments. The use of ribbon served two purposes; one was to use the means of tying the fabrics together for posting, and the second was to hide an unsightly join in the fabric. I couched the threads using invisible thread to add some movement to the piece, and used the colours of the fabric pack. I used some of the embroidery stitches on the machine along the ribbon, and along the gusset.

The bag didn't win any prizes, but it was fun to do, and I stretched the limits of my skills to achieve something that was attractive, practical and useful. It made me think carefully about what was required, and how to achieve the finished product - it was an exercise in creative thinking and problem solving.

That's all there is for now - check again soon for the next installment.

The Start

This is the start of my patchwork blog. I shall be adding things as they occur to me, and as I'm doing the work. I won't be posting my ideas here; I'm going to be selfish with my ideas and keep them with me only, until I have realised them in patchwork - I don't want others pinching my ideas - although I doubt that any of them are totolly original. Still, I like to think that they are. And besides which, the work that I produce may not live up to your expectations of it if I tell you my ideas first.
The first item I'm going to show you is the piece that I produced at the weekend, during a workshop called 'Stitched Herbaceous Borders'. It's a piece that uses the technique of free machine quilting, and is embroidery really. I haven't really done any machine embroidery before, and I have a large variety of quilting threads, but have very few machine embroidery threads - only a few rayon threads, and all of them are in storage at the moment.

I shall have to post the photo later, as I seem to be unable to post any pictures at the moment. Watch this spot!

And here it is with the picture added! I decided on the flowers and plants I wanted - fuchsias, sweetpeas, tulips, Wedding Day rambling rose, antirrhinums (excuse the spelling), lavender and peonies. The crayon like background was done by using some oil type fabric paints - maybe in future if I try again, I will try using Markal Shiva paintsticks, or even some of the setacolour fabric paints I have. It may work using Angelina fabric - that would add a very different effect. The person leading the course said that watercolour pencils could be used - so that would give me a chance to use the Caran D'ache pencils - if only I knew where they were!

Watch out for the next post!