Time to pick up the threads

Many months have sped by since my last post and now it's time to catch up.  I have been busy but with other things so not much time for stitching.  Now I want to get back to it aided by my textiles group at Bredon in Gloucestershire, which goes by the grand title of Quilting Arts,

This is a Cathedral Window block which was something we tried just before Christmas and I truly want to do some more of this as the results are so rewarding and it's quite different from other types of patchwork.  I bought Lynne Edwards' book which demonstrates variations on this theme and some are so beautiful I can't wait to try them.  This aspiration gets added to the list of all the others in my head.

Currently we are being inspired by a book called Layer, Paint & Stitch by Wendy Dolan.  I'll post some photos of what we're doing as we progress.

As the title suggests the work is built up in a variety of ways and we have started the layering of different fabrics on to calico and at our meeting this month we will be using paints, heat guns to alter Xpandaprint (puff paint) and Lutradur.

Here you can see some tree shapes cut out of Lutradur and painted.  The foliage was blasted with a heat gun to introduce the lace-like structure and then painted.

I used the same technique to make clouds on a blue sky background.  Lutradur is white so it didn't need paint, just cutting into shape.  It doesn't fray but is quite stiff even though it looks lacy.


We held an exhibition in our Village hall last September which resulted in us attracting several new members. The exhibition was well received and we may decide to do it again some time.

Prior to that we had been making a Sampler Quilt a block at a time which some members have completed and others are still finishing with borders and binding and sewing up.  Those who didn't fancy this traditional quilting activity explored ways of creating cloth books featuring experiments and small pieces of work.

As the Winter approached  I quickly made a lap quilt for my husband who has Parkinson's Disease and feels the cold when no-one else does. This is bright and cheerful and I included a fleece lined pocket large enough to warm his chilled hands.

About this time I also made a table top cover with some more Sampler Blocks which were extra to the ones I had made up into the throw for my sofa.  I used a different colour scheme which re-awakened my interest in trialling patchwork techniques. I have to say that traditional patchwork and quilting is not my first love.

For a long time I had been storing an image of our garden pond printed on to fabric. So over Christmas and New Year I finally got round to making it up into a wall hanging.

It is all dupion silk and there is a mixture of free machine embroidery, computerised machine embroidery and quilting creating garden views around the original pond image.

I hit upon the idea of sewing a background of silk strips with colours that reflected those in the image of the pond.  This worked quite well blending into a background with sky, distant landscape, pond, grass and foreground.

Some of the surrounding features are 3D for example the little pots and the water lily leaves. The pink flower bushes at the front are multiple 3D petals hand sewn on with a French knot in the centre of each one.