Anne’s Creative Threads

Last Sunday I went on a boat trip up the local river with some friends. We set off mid afternoon, the sun still blazing  but the speed of the boat cooling us down. We slowed down to look for crocodiles lurking on the river bank in a couple of places, but no luck in spotting them this time. We motored on until we reached a big open point in the river where it then started to narrow down,and this is where we stopped and then turned round to come back, for a while drifting with the current so that we could appreciate all the sounds of the jungle.

I haven’t done the trip for a while so it was good to see that there is still plenty of vegetation, although in some areas it was noticeable that many of the tall trees were no longer there. Some, victims of the terrible forest fires we had a number of years ago and others that have been logged.

These bright orange leaves caught my eye amongst the vegetation, from a distance they looked like flowers. In my last post I wrote about the wall hanging I’d just made, inspired by the birds nest ferns which we have growing in the garden, and whilst drifting down the river I spotted this beautiful specimen high up in the trees.

It was so peaceful drifting down with the current listening to all the exotic calls of the birds, insects, frogs and monkeys, some we could indentify and others not.

These birds nest ferns normally grow high up in the canopy, but they happily grow at ground level too. This one which we got as a small plant a number of years ago has turned into a beautiful specimen, and we now have others all over the garden.  I love the shape of the curling fronds and recently I took some photos thinking that they might be good inspiration for a quilt design.

I drew out a pattern in EQ7 and then I decided I would try out the design in a small format as fabric post cards.

For the small design I had some bright green batik fabric which I’d had a while and not used because it was less tightly woven than normal batik and I’d always thought it  a bit flimsy, but it worked fine for this project. For the larger piece I used some beautiful hand dyed fabric by Heide Stoll-Weber which I’d bought at the Festival of Quilts this year. I was a little reluctant to cut into it so soon but the fabric was so perfect, with all  the subtle colour variations, I had to use it.

I assembled the ferns using a non stick pressing sheet before fusing them to the background fabric. I then used a fine satin stitch round all the edges.

Detail of the stitching and quilting

There was a power cut in the early hours of yesterday morning, and as it was a public holiday to celebrate the first day of Hari Raya I didn’t hold out much hope of it being fixed very soon. Luckily it was quite a cool morning so I was able to take advantage and do some hand sewing on my large applique wall hanging which I started at the beginning of the year.

The design is inspired by a traditional native Iban pattern which I drafted in EQ6 and then played around with to make my own original design. As you can see from the pattern below I still have a long way to go to complete the project.

I changed the colour from my original pattern to use a striking red batik on a black mottled background. Here in the drafted pattern I have just plain borders but when I finally reach that stage I might decide to do something more elaborate, but I think that will be a while yet.

I am hand stitching the design using needleturn applique and silk thread. It’s a slow process but it’s something I enjoy doing and the good thing about it is that I can just pick it up and do it at any time.

The power did eventually come on again around 10.30 in the morning, by which time I had done quite a bit of sewing, but it was beginning to warm up and get sticky.

As promised, here are some more photos from this year’s Festival of Quilts at the NEC in Birmingham,UK. In my last post there was a picture of the fabulous winning quilt by Kumiko Frydl, so here I will just post a few that struck me as I wandered around.

This quilt “Summer Meadow” by Jane Davies features a lovely hand dyed background with  hand stitched details.

Detail of the stitching.

Of course I am drawn towards anything featuring  jungle so I liked this quilt by Stephanie Redfern called “The Secret Jungle”

Detail of “The Secret Jungle”

This quilt  by Cherry Vernon-Harcourt was the winner of the Quilters Guild Challenge with the theme of ‘Summer in the City’.

This quilt, ‘Blackberry Jam ,Jelly and Juice’,  made by Sheena Hughs, won second prize in the Art Quilt category

And this one ‘Pay the Ferryman’ by Annette Morgan was the winner in the Art Quilts category.

This quilt made by Grietje van der Veen reminded me of the beautiful olive groves in Spain. It was featured in the European Art Quilt exhibit.

I’ve just returned to Brunei from my annual trip to the UK and my second visit to the Festival of Quilts at the NEC in Birmingham. This year I didn’t attend any workshops as the ones I was interested in had sold out by the time I was able to register, so that meant I had plenty of time to look around and enjoy the wonderful display of over 1,000 quilts from all over the world.

 For the first time I had two of my own quilts in the competition, here I am with my quilt inspired by the Borneo rain forest. The other quilt was my hand appliqué birds and flowers design which I wrote about in an earlier blog post.

I attended the gala dinner on the opening night of the festival, and little did I know it, but the quiet unassuming Japanese lady who was sitting at our table with her two daughters was the winner not only of the Miniature Quilts competition but also the Best of Show announced at the end of the dinner. Her piece ‘Mission Impossible 2’ a foundation pieced and reverse appliqué Mariner’s Compass design with 128 points was a true example of precision and perfection and a very deserved winner.

Mission Impossible 2 by Kumiko Frydl

As I had a bit of time on my hands this year I volunteered to help with the SAQA exhibit  ‘Art meets Science’ with its very diverse array of quilts inspired by the theme. There was everything from a vibrant close up detail of a butterfly wing to an artistic interpretation of the H1N1 virus. I enjoyed meeting some of the other SAQA members while I did this as well as chatting to people who came to view the display.

While I was there, Alex Veronelli the Product Manager for Aurifil threads shot this video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aU1NBKzvGDM which shows the quilts in much more detail so that you can see the intricacy of the designs and the quilting.

What struck me most about being at the show this year was the friendliness and camaraderie of so many of the people I met, whether it was going along the corridors of the hotel, sharing a table at breakfast or lunch, walking to the exhibition hall, going round the various booths of the exhibitors or attending the SAQA coffee morning. It made the whole show a very positive experience and I feel I made new friends as well as meeting up with old friends.

Needless to say I took this opportunity to stock up on threads and fabrics. Living in Brunei I generally have to rely on buying over the internet so it is a luxury to actually be able to look at and feel the fabric I buy, and to have such a fantastic variety of threads in all weights, colours and varieties all in one place. For the fabric I concentrated on original hand dyes which are much harder to buy over the internet as you really need to see them to appreciate their uniqueness. I kept telling myself I should look for colours other than greens and browns, but as you can see I didn’t do a terribly good job, although I did find these beautiful vibrant red and pink hand dyes as well as the subtle grey and blue fabrics.

As you can see from the photo I also bought a lot of threads, a good selection of Aurifil, plus a few by Superior, YLI, Oliver Twists and Madeira. Again I was mostly drawn to browns and greens which I tend to use so much of in my work.

In the next part I will post some of the photos  of quilts I took whilst at the exhibition.

I have recently completed several large projects and so felt like taking a break and working on something much smaller and quick to finish. I’d had the idea in my head for these bougainvillea flower inspired fabric postcards and had even made a quick sketch while I was working on something else so this was the perfect project to work on.

I started off with some hand painted ‘sky’ fabrics left over from other projects, then couched down several strands of  hand dyed embellishment yarn. I used a free motion zigzag and invisible thread for the couching. I took some scraps of hand dyed and batik fabrics backed with ‘Misty Fuse’  to make the flowers and leaves.

I cut the fabric into tiny random snippets with sharp scissors. I’ve only recently started using Misty Fuse but so far I have found it very good to use as it is light weight, bonds well and doesn’t gum up the needle.

These were applied to the background stems using tweezers as the pieces were so tiny.

The leaves and flowers fused in place ready to be embellished with free motion stitching. I used several different shades of green rayon thread for the leaves and then several different pinks for the flowers.  Bougainvilleas come in a wide range of colours here in Brunei apart from the standard bright pink that you mostly see across Europe, so it was a good opportunity to play with some of the fabrics I don’t tend to use so much and make a series of cards. Once all the stitching was complete I backed the cards with Fast 2 Fuse, trimmed to size and then zigzagged the edges using variegated thread.

A little while ago I got this piece of applique out to show some friends and I was suddenly inspired to get it finished. I actually started work on this design five years ago and have taken it out form time to time to do a little bit more.

The original design was inspired by a piece of Indonesian commercial printed batik sarong fabric  that I bought locally here in Brunei. I’d originally planned to use it for patchwork but I felt that the design was too nice to cut up but it took me a long time before I finally made it into an applique pattern.

The original piece of batik from which I made the pattern

Once I’d made the pattern the challenge was to choose the colours that I would use for the applique as I didn’t want to use the rather dull brown, black and white of the original. I chose a dark blue, almost black mottled hand dyed batik fabric for the background and pale pastel colours for the flowers, stems and leaves.

The tail feathers and wings were quite a challenge.

The two birds amongst the flowers

My blog has been rather neglected over the past few weeks as I have been so busy, but I haven’t been neglecting my sewing and this is a project I made several weeks ago for a friend. This is a departure from my usual hornbill designs, but a friend from my sewing group asked if I would make a wall hanging with a toucan on it for her as she has a property in Costa Rica and she often sees toucans there.My friend had brought me a picture to work from so I scanned it into EQ6 so that I could draft a pattern for the appliqué design.

The image above shows the design that I drew out in EQ6, ready to be made into an applique pattern. I decided to use invisible machine applique for this project as the pieces were large enough for the edges to be turned under, so I printed freezer paper templates and contstructed the bird before adding it to the background.

 It was quite similar to make to a hornbill but the biggest challenge was getting the colouring and markings on the beak. I searched through my piles of fabric and found two different batiks which blended blues and yellows. I then added the details using fabric pens. I also added a little touch of colour where the yellow feathers join the black.

For the background I chose a lovely hand dyed fabric by Frieda Anderson that I bought at the Festival of Quilts last year. Sometimes I find it hard it’s hard to cut into these special fabrics, but in the end I have to tell myself that I bought them to be used and they really do help to give  a special touch to the finished design.

The finished wall hanging, quilted with a variegated cotton thread in the background and a solid coloured thread for the borders.

A more detailed photo of the finished wall hanging.

I belong to a yahoo challenge group linked to my Janome sewing machine and in March it was my turn to lead the challenge for that month. The theme I chose was ‘Going Green’ and it opened itself up to many different interpretations and it was interesting to see such a wide variety of different projects from within the group. Some people took an environmental slant and chose to use recycled goods and scraps. I was amazed to see how old pairs of jeans could be transformed into bags, book covers, dolls clothes and even cat and dog toys.

Other people chose to feature green fabrics in their work and I was one of those, as it’s my favourite colour and I enjoy working with greens. For my project I created a foundation pieced background of ‘crazy’ blocks which I printed out from EQ6. I then used invisible machine appliqué to add a jungle plant, spilling out into the borders. In the latter stages I was racing against the clock to get the challenge finished by the end of the month but I just managed.

Quilting with variegated and solid coloured cotton threads completes the design. Initially I started to quilt a trailing leaf design in the borders but then had to unpick what I’d done as I felt that it didn’t look right and drew too much attention away from the main design.

After the sad loss of Millie and Hector within such a short space of one another we were not in any hurry to get another cat, but it left poor Molly very unsettled. Just over a week after we had lost Hector our amah came to me and said that her neighbour had some kittens. I was very reluctant to commit to anything because I still felt it was too soon, but I said I would go and look, but when I went with her we couldn’t find the kittens. I went back several days later with my husband and this time all four kittens were there, and we were immediately smitten. Two of the kittens stood out, one a little grey and white boy and a very pretty little multi coloured female. The female was the first one who came to greet us and seemed the least timid of them all, she was also the prettiest, so it wasn’t really difficult to come to a decision.

Suzie's first day at home

 Molly is only five months old and not fully grown but she seemed large in comparison to the little kitten, who spent most of the first day trying to hide in various dark corners. It didn’t take her long to settle though and within a couple of days they were playing together and racing all over the house.

Looking pretty on one of my old patchwork quilts

 We named her Suzie after our friend Sue who’s birthday it was on the day we got her. She is quite a different character to Molly, very sweet and gentle and she likes to curl up on my lap when I am sewing or doing stuff on the computer. She can stand up for herself though and she and Molly have great mock battles.

Battles over the cat bed (the other cats used to go inside this little house, but these two prefer to lie on top of it)

It didn’t take long for the pair of them to start invading my sewing studio and turning everything upside down.

My waste paper basket seems to hold a strong attraction.

"I wish I was a little bit taller"

"This looks interesting"

Best of friends now