Two new things to share

Christmas is not a time when I generally make a lot of progress on things. Time is usually spent with family and friends, and making necessary recovery afterwards. It's also a time when I tend to tidy my workroom, clear my pin boards and generally make ready for the coming year.

But in between, I have done these two things.
This one has been shown here before. It actually dates from 2005, when I was making journal quilts. At A3, they were a little larger than other journal quilts, because I found A4 size too small, and I wanted to experiment with different techniques. This journal quilt was for a challenge I set several friends, called Weather Report. The idea was to choose a month of the year and express that month in an A3-sized work. I chose August, the end of winter and a month that is often wet here in Sydney. I envisaged leaves floating in a puddle, overlaying a map of the Sydney coastline showing Sydney Harbour and Botany Bay. I painted the background fabric, stitched the coastline and made lacy dead leaves by stitching onto Romeo. Once they were stitched on, I quilted water ripples. But it was so hard to get the balance right and I really wasn't happy with it. The coastline didn't show up clearly. So I accentuated it with paint, but then the ripples got lost.

This week, I used my new Prismacolor pencils to accentualte the water ripples a little with yellow shading. I'm much happier with it now and I think it might actually be finished now! Maybe.

My second thing is brand new. Last winter, I saw a jacket in a shop that I really liked. It was made from fabric that had black and bright blue alternating warps and a blue-grey weft. (In retrospect, this might have been a black and grey warp and a blue weft...) I wondered how these colours would look in a scarf. I warped it up this week and thought it looked quite boring! So I added a little ladder yarn in blue with silver bits, and a strand of two-ply bright purple (magenta, maybe?) yarn in some of the blue warps. I actually like how it's turned out, quite classy I think!

I do like scarves - they are so quick to whip up on the loom! My last three projects have been larger, the full width of the loom, and in fine yarn, so it was really good to use something a bit chunkier!

Weather Report

While I was flinging paint around today, I decided to add some paint to Weather Report. I talked about this one back in September, when it was on my design wall. It was one of my journal quilts from 2006, that wasn't quite as successful as I'd have liked. It looked a bit too much the same, so I decided ages ago to add paint to emphasise the coastline. I did that today, and it looks much better: I like it better now, but I think the overlay of a rainy puddle is getting a little lost now, so the leaves look like they are hanging in space. I thought this might happen, but now I need to find a way to balance it back the other way. Maybe some beading?

Journal quilts

Isn't it interesting to revisit where you were a few years ago? You look at your work and see different things you could have done, that would make it a better piece. Well, that's what happens to me anyway! But most of my pieces are here with me, so there isn't a sense of novelty to revisit them.

I made this little journal quilt in 2004 but it has been visiting my daughter, on its way to its new owner. But I realised I hadn't put a hanging sleeve on it, so it came home again a couple of weeks ago. I still like it and find it fun, though I might do some bits differently if I were making it today.

It's called Hell in a Handbasket in honour of Kas's friend Helen, who will eventually own it, once I put that hanging sleeve on it. I've found the rest of the backing fabric so that's a start, anyway!

The lull after the storm

I've just finished a period of frenetic activity and gee, it's so nice to do nothing for a bit! Well, nothing with a deadline, anyway. My design wall is empty - well, as close to empty as it ever gets!

You can see Mistrise is still being considered (I had some new ideas about where to take that, just this week), and it's partly obscuring a woven piece with added applique that is being contemplated upon before more action happens. The flock of butterflies is still flying south, though sometimes they move to other places on the wall. Some have been made into brooches for myself (they live on a gorgeous evening bag made for me by Rhonda a few years ago) and friends. And the quilt block designed for me by my clever daughter Kas is still on display.

You can also see a piece I made in August 2005, as part of my personal Journal Quilts project. It was for a challenge with friends called "I Get the News I Need on the Weather Report". Each of us chose a month of the year to represent in journal quilt format. Mine was August in Sydney, which is often wet. It's based on a photo of mine of leaves in a puddle, overlaid by a map of the coastline of Sydney. It's rather dark so it's not a really successful piece but fun to do. Here's a better view of it:

It needs overpainting to give a value difference between land and sea, to emphasise the coastline aspect a little more. One day when I have the paints out..

Almost hidden is an anti-Iraq war piece I started in 2004 on the theme of Purple Prose, which required a combination of text and a purple fabric, for my quilt group. The rhetoric about the war was very purple at the time, so it seemed appropriate! So far it looks like this...

It's based on many news images on Arab woman with their children and the woman's pose is based on a photo I saw of Palestinian refugees just after World War II. Some things don't seem to change. It still needs to have its painted background, which I envisage as a wall, in some disrepair, perhaps with bullet marks or other damage, against which the mother is leaning so wearily. And of course, the detail will be added with stitch, my favourite activity! It will be quite small, 23cm x 30cm (9in x 12in), including a border, which will incorporate purple and probably black, and probably the text. The words I want to use are a quote from Sir Horace Walpole in 1772, "It was easier to conquer the East than to know what to do with it." This pithy remark seems to sum up most attempts by western powers to influence Middle Eastern and Far Eastern politics, and yet it's a lesson they have signally failed to learn in the subsequent 235 years. Don't get excited though, it may still be some time before this piece rises to the top of the pile!

I'm also thinking idly about May Gibbs because ATASDA has been asked by the May Gibbs Foundation to mount one of a rolling series of exhibitions called "Inspired by May", in honour of the sesquicentenary of May Gibbs' birth. It's a little tricky because her artwork is still under copyright. I'm reading her biography and learning about her passion for the Australian bush, at a time when children's books in Australia were generally derived from English sources and images. I have an idea of what I want to do, and it will be small, as the display space is not large. But I'm not sure I will go ahead with it, as it's so nice not to have a deadline!

I wonder how long my wall will stay empty like this?