The New Quilt: Revised Closing Date 5 October

The closing date for entries in The New Quilt 2008:Contemporary Quilt Textiles has been bought forward to 5 October 2007 (rather than 9 November). Eek - that’s only two months away!

See the Guild website and blog for more information (and the code for The New Quilt button).

Edward & the Violet Crumble Quilt

Following on from James & the Giant Peach and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, I bring you Edward and the Violet Crumble quilt:

Ted looks so tiny (this quilt is only 112cm wide) but I’m sure he and his quilt will have many adventures.

It’s a start

I had intended doing some free-motion, straight-line quilting on Firebrand similar to that in Unplugged! However, as I was sandwiching the quilt, I started to think about a flame motif. Being cautious, I thought I should explore this idea a little further before committing it to this quilt.

First I played with the paintbrush tool in Paint (which comes with Windows on most PCs). Then I made up a single Firebrand unit with other scraps and tried out some stitching. As serendipity would have it, I picked up some variegated orange and yellow YLI quilting thread in the Yorkshire Dales last year which is ideal for this motif. The next step is to work out how to spread flame lines around the larger quilt but it’s a start…
  

A cast iron question

I awoke this morning to the smell of spicy, slow-roasted pork. This wonderful recipe results in caramelised, melt-in-your mouth meat that I usually serve with red cabbage and roasted potato chunks. But I digress.

One of the amazing things is that the recipe calls for a 4-6 kilogram (9-13 pound) rolled shoulder of pork. That’s one big chunk of meat. It may be OK if, like my dad, you can head out into the bush and shoot yourself a wild pig. My meat source is more pedestrian and pork shoulders at my butcher come in at around 1.5 kilograms. Besides, this size is all that we can fit in our cast iron casserole dish. One day I may splash out and get a Le Creuset French Blue Big Momma French Oven to go with the smaller Le Creuset pieces we already have but, at close to A$500, that day is a way off.

I’ve heard that Kmart offers a very functional, budget-priced cast iron French oven. Can anyone give me a report?

3.35pm update: After a little more surfing, I’ve found this link to a Martha Stewart raw cast iron dutch oven - does anyone know if it is available in Australia? Also, www.cooksillustrated.com did a review of cast iron dutch ovens and rated the Chefmate product from Target very highly but it is no longer available in the US. I wonder about Australia. (Both these products only have a 5 quart capacity so the Big Momma still beckons!)

Inner Piece

I’ve finished piecing Firebrand. I have some misgivings with how the miscellaneous purple sashing turned out. That casual wonkiness that is characteristic of so many of the Gees Bend quilts is surprisingly difficult to achieve from a technical perspective, especially when you are working with scraps. Still I am happy with the overall proportions (the piece is around a square metre) and I’m looking forward to experimenting with some quilting.
  

Simply Charming

On one of the quilting lists that I belong to, some one asked “What does one do with 5″ (or other sized) charm squares, that come along with various fabric club memberships, fabric packs and the like?” Here is my response:

First of all, I would sort the fabric squares into broadly compatible “families” such as oriental fabrics; soft florals; novelties and so on. (I love scrap quilts but in my view not all fabrics belong together in the same quilt. For example, I would not put a bright lime green square with a madder red reproduction print.) Then sort each family into “darker” and “lighter” piles.

I don’t like to fuss too much with further cutting of 5″ charm squares. Here are two minimum-fuss approaches:

• HALF SQUARE TRIANGLES - take one dark square and one light square. Draw a diagonal line from one corner to another on the back of one of the squares and put right sides together. Stitch a 1/4in seam along either side of the drawn diagonal line. Using a rotary cutter, cut along the drawn line and open out to form two half square triangles.

  Because fabric clubs seem to have a very flexible! definition of 5″, don’t worry too much about measuring the squares precisely to start off with. Instead,I just stack them up in pairs; sew the half-square triangles and trim them all to be a uniform size. This can be very therapeutic.

  According to Judy Hooworth and Margaret Rolfe in their excellent book Spectacular Scraps, there are no less than 256 ways that four HST units can be arranged to make different four-patch blocks. This gives you plenty of options!

• SIMPLE RECTANGLES - another Margaret Rolfe book (this time with Judy Turner), Successful Scrap Quilts shows all sorts of fantastic design possibilities using simple rectangles. A five inch square will yield two 2 1/2in x 4 1/2in rectangles. My quilt Technicolour Dreaming shows a scrap quilt made from some 5″ bright charm squares:

Reflections on Nancy

A year ago, my July posts were dominated by first impressions from my five-day improvisational piecing workshop with Nancy Crow. Memories of the energy and excitement came rushing back to me as I read the article “One [Nancy Crow] Workshop: Two Responses” in the August 2007 issue of British Patchwork& Quilting:

Both students highlighted the commitment that Nancy demands of her students and the intensity of the workshop program but both emerged with strongly positive reports of the experience. If you are considering doing a workshop with Nancy, then I recommend that you read this article and explore the blogs of others who have attended similar workshops (see, for example: Lisa, Robin and Cynthia).

For my part, I consider myself fortunate to have been able to attend the workshop last year especially because it was held at the Crow barn where Nancy is surrounded by an environment and family that clearly provide essential sustenance for this driven artist. Her style of teaching will not suit everyone but those five days have given me insights into the creative process that I am still exploring and, for that, I am grateful.

Cleaning up

I have two visitors coming to see me and my quilts this afternoon so a wee studio tidy up seemed the polite thing to do. Counter tops have been cleared; books tidied; rogue thread reels boxed and put away; and so on. Foolishly I also decided to tackle the two rugs that my desk chair and sewing chair rest on. My last encounter with canned carpet cleaner foam was 20 odd years ago and I thought the product might have improved in that time. I was wrong. Just as Caity laments the performance of basting sprays, I can only conclude that the purpose of carpet foams is to provide an alternative means of vacuuming cash.

My can barely covered my two small rugs (a mere 20% of the purported capacity of the can) but then the foam came out in narrow lines several centimetres deep rather than an even spray. Thus, with guests due to arrive in 90 minutes, I find myself with two foamed rugs that refuse to dry. Grr. I’ll let you know how the rugs turn out but I don’t expect them to be much cleaner for this little consumer adventure.

Postscript: After all that, my guests (for whom I don’t have a telephone number) never showed up. That means they either forgot/got waylaid or I got the day wrong. (I don’t discount the latter as the meeting was rescheduled when I was banished from my studio and I did not write it down straight away. Maybe it was tomorrow?) Either way, it’s an anti-climax and I wondering if I should mess up my studio again.

Post-postscript: My guests got lost! but turned up an hour later with a handpicked posy of lavender and daisies. How nice is that?! We looked through some of my quilts and they bought a couple of patterns. A very satisfactory way to end the afternoon. Even better, now I can be untidycreative again.

Naming Rites

A while ago, I mentioned how some friends and I are participating in a challenge drawing inspiration from the improvisational piecing of the quiltmakers of Gees Bend. I cannot find an online image of my inspiration quilt but, if you have a copy of The Quilts of Gees Bend book, you will see the simple motif that features in the quilt of Mary L Bennett on page 116. And here is my interpretation using hand dyed and batik fabrics from my scrapbag:

I don’t like to let my quilts go too far without being named. I’m I calling this one Firebrand. My own name, Brenda, happens to mean flaming sword or firebrand but I’m happy to share my name with a quilt. Do you like to name your quilts?

Stars in my eyes

I’m allowed back in my studio and have now completed the centres of the two children’s quilts:
Note the contrasting “warm” and “cool” palettes which were specifically requested by my client in those words (she did a bronze sculpture major at university so is clearly comfortable with design terminology). Each block is six inches finished and the fused shapes are secured with a machine blanket stitch.