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

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.

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.

Just over a month ago we acquired a tiny black kitten as a companion to Millie our one year old ginger cat that my husband rescued from the side of the road last June. Our other cat Hector is sixteen years old and takes a dim view of being pounced on and generally  treated with disrespect so we felt that Millie needed someone nearer her own age to play with. My friend Karen just happened to mention on Facebook that one of her sons had just brought home another rescued kitten; I know that she doesn’t normally part with any of her rescued cats but I thought I’d ask anyway and was delighted when she said I could have the kitten if I wanted, so Molly came home.

She was very tiny when we first got her, and  a little bit weak, but it didn’t take very long at all for her to find her feet and for Millie, the ginger cat, to accept her as a playmate. Millie seems huge in comparison but nothing deters little Molly, and she seems to have incredibly long spider like legs, all the better for kicking and grabbing.

It has transformed Millie’s life and she seems to be so contented now.

She loves her fluffy mice, and this tunnel arrangement keeps them amused for hours.

It didn’t take her long to make herself at home on one of my patchwork quilts.

Or another! This is one that never got finished as I wasn’t happy with the quilting on it, but the cats don’t seem to mind the unbound edges.

Of course, it didn’t take her long to find her way into my sewing room.

Close up showing thread painting on the flower and butterfly

 I did all the embellishment before adding batting and backing because I wanted the butterfly to stand out from the background. These photos show the design with the quilting completed because the original photos I took didn’t come out very well thanks to a nice smeary finger print across the lens of my camera.

thread painitng on the butterfly and flower

So once this was complete I sandwiched it all together and then began the quilting. I didn’t want the quilting in the background to stand out and draw attention away from the butterfly so I used a fine 50wt cotton thread which blended well into the hand dyed fabric which I used for the background. For the borders I used a thicker variegated thread and a trailing leaf pattern.

The finished wall hanging

When I looked at the theme I almost decided not to bother because all the images it conjured up just don’t go with living in hot, humid Brunei. The theme was “Hearth and Home” and I immediately thought of log fires, warmth, comfort, sleeping cats, and dark, warm colours, just the things one doesn’t associate with Brunei, apart from the sleeping cats! I also thought of the wonderful Christmas story by Dickens, “The Cricket on the Hearth”, but decided that was a bit obscure. I started off by looking on the internet and finding some clipart images of sleeping cats and fires, but this seemed like cheating, and a bit too easy so I rummaged through my shelves and found a few old magazines for inspiration. I started ripping out a few pages here and there, but the image that stuck in my mind was of a cat staring out of a darkened window, all it needed was a nice warm fire so I scanned in a few images and then played around with Photoshop until I had a composition I liked. Meanwhile the clock was ticking away and I still had to draw out the design, find fabrics and then quilt the whole thing.

I don’t really like raw edge appliqué but with the time limits this was the only alternative and as I started pulling out fabrics with an idea in my head of what I wanted, the whole thing started to fall in to place, and I was enjoying the process. No time for lunch, luckily there was a bit of pizza left over from last night, and I carried on working through the day. Once the initial design was fused in place I added the batting and backing and then started to embellish with threads and free motion stitching. I used mostly rayon threads as they are the only ones I have in a wide variety of colours.

With the hands of the clock starting to speed up I finally got to the point of finishing and adding the binding and with just two minutes to go off the eight hours my journal quilt was finished.

If I’d had more time I would have like to have added some foliage and flowers in the area below the window and maybe also I might have written the title of the piece.

I’m glad I did the quilt, it was a real challenge, not just the subject matter but the time limit also, and I was quite pleased with how it turned out and maybe there is even potential for a larger and more detailed quilt there. As the challenge went on over the weekend it was interesting seeing everyone elses journal quilts and how each person had interpreted the theme so differently.

I traveled up from Southsea by train and as I arrived in Birmingham I was surprised by suddenly being surrounded by loads of women with small suitcases on wheels all heading purposefully in one direction. I guessed they were all going to the show, but what I didn’t realize at the time was that all the cases were empty, ready to be crammed with all the wonderful goodies available for sale at the show.

I arrived a little too early to check in to my hotel, so I dumped all my stuff, grabbed a bag and headed off myself. What struck me first was the size of the place and then the quality of the workmanship in the quilts and the wide variety of different styles on display. Everything from the latest techniques and materials to the most traditional, there must have been something to suit every taste. For the shoppers there was a marvelous variety of fabrics, threads, notions and everything else you could possibly wish for.

As I hadn’t been before and because I don’t normally have access to classes other than online, I wanted to take full advantage of the workshops being offered, so had signed up for two full day and one half day workshop. In retrospect, this was too much and didn’t leave me enough time to really look at all the quilts and trade stands properly. Two of the workshops I chose were on techniques and styles that are different to the way I normally work and although they were fun to do, and the teachers were good I don’t think I’d incorporate these things into future work.

 For me, the class that I got the most out of was the one conducted by the Australian teacher Pam Holland called Monet’s Garden, based on flower s she’d photographed whilst in France. Her method of working is similar to how I like to work, and the subject matter was also one that appealed to me. She introduced us to methods of creating shading and depth using thread painting and fabric pens, the pens were also used to add fine details. These are some techniques that I’d like to apply to my own quilts, and actually the pens would have come in handy for my last hornbill design that I was creating where I wanted to add some very fine palm fronds. Jan brought along a selection of her own work to inspire us including her award winning reproduction quilt and the full size copy of the Bayeux tapestry that she is currently working on. The attention to detail and workmanship in all the quilts is amazing.

The four days went all too quickly and I was very sorry when it was all over, but I left feeling inspired and keen to get to work on my own projects again and hopefully next year I’ll be able to enter something of my own. Here are a few photos from the exhibition……

The winner of the Art Quilts category

Winner of contemporary quilt category

A detail of quilt by Judy Bowker from Australia

I imported the photo into EQ6 and then because of the complexity of the design I decided I would draw out the pattern in two parts, first concentrating on the hornbill and then creating another layout focusing on the background palm fronds. I did this and then once the background was drawn I copied and pasted the hornbill into the background.

To create the wall hanging I started off with some fabric that I had hand painted for the sky and invisible machine appliqué to construct the design. Normally I use freezer paper templates which I iron to the wrong side of the fabric and then remove after the construction is completed but for this design as there were so many small pieces I didn’t want to have to cut the back to remove the paper. I used a different method where I still use freezer paper templates but iron the paper to the front side of the fabric and then turn the edges under to wrong side using the tip of an iron and spray starch painted onto the seam allowance. The spray starch helps to hold the seam allowance in place.

I printed out the full size pattern from EQ6 and then traced the outlines onto a stabilizer which I pinned in place under my ’sky’ fabric. The fabric was light enough for me to be able to see the lines through so that I could place my pieces accurately.

I used a lot of fine pins to hold the appliqué pieces in place for stitching. I used invisible thread with a fine thread in the bobbin and a very fine needle (#60/8) and started stitching the pieces in place a few at a time as I built up the design on the background.

I had a lovely striped batik fabric which proved to be just perfect for creating the varied colouring of the palm fronds.

The fronds at the lower edge of the picture were so small and had such sharp points that I decided to fuse them in and use raw edge appliqué. To quilt I used invisible thread and outlined all the fronds and the bird, with stippling in the background areas and meander quilting with variegated cotton thread in the borders.

The finished design.

The photoshows the work in progress on my original wall hanging with Aicha keeping a close eye on it. The sky was hand painted and I decided to do the same for my recent piece. I haven’t done any fabric painting for a while so it was fun to get my paints out again.

This was the fabric I painted for the tropical sunset sky.

My recent design was a little different from the original one as there were to be two cats on the wall, one of them a tabby. The tabby was quite a challenge as the people who wanted the quilt were going to bring me a photo but then were too busy so I had to just use my judgement and hope that I would get it right. I chose a grey subtly striped fabric and then used a fabric marker pen to draw the stripes.

The two cats on the wall, everything pinned in place and ready to stitch. I used invisible machine applique to stitch the design as I didn’t want raw edges.

The finished design, two cats beside each other on the wall, dense vegetation and the tropical Brunei sunset in the background. I used a narrow accent border of deep red print batik to create contrast with the outer dark green border and to pick up some of the colours of the sunset sky.

The picture above shows the design as drawn out in EQ6. I then went through my pile of pale fabrics to chose the colours I needed to make the frangipani petals and stems.

Batik fabrics for the petals and stems along with my original photo. I printed the design out in reverse onto freezer paper and then used this to make templates for the design. I ironed the freezer paper templates onto the wrong side of the fabrics and then using a scant quarter inch seam I turned the edges over to the wrong side and stuck in place using a glue stick.

The picture above shows the pieces with edges turned under and glued in place then positioned over a full sized print out of the design to get correct placement. I used invisible machine applique to stitch the design together, assembling the small pieces before stitching the whole flower to the background. I auditioned a number of different fabrics for the background and borders and finally came up with a combination that I liked. The fabric for the borders was a batik I’d ordered over the Internet a few years ago and hadn’t used as it wasn’t quite what I’d been expecting at the time.

The completed design.

Close up of the flower.

I was happy with the way this turned out so decided to make another wall hanging using similar fabrics for the flower but a hand painted back ground which I had made recently.

I haven’t done any fabric painting for a while but I was prompted to do it as I had to paint a ’sunset sky’ for another wall hanging that I was making and while I had all the paints out I thought I might as well do a few others.

Close up of the frangipani on blue background. I achieved the mottled look by using a sponge to paint the background.

Detail of the quilting in the border. I used a lovely variegated polyester thread  I had which went just perfectly with the mottled batik fabric.