I was moseying around the web looking for pictures of faces for my face quilts and masks and came across this site about abstract painting. It has some good information on how to paint an abstract painting that is certainly also of interest to quilters.

Not only that but there is a short history of abstract art. It took me back to Salamanca and our last Spanish course there. One of the teachers gave a series of talks about Picasso and was explaining how he developed his Cubist style. I was pleased at the time how much I understood and obviously some of it stuck!

Third bonus point for me is that there are some good faces in the paintings on the site to provide food for my imagination for my face series.

And finally I love the use of yellow on the site and in the paintings.

I only started subscribing to Quilting Arts at the beginning of the year. I thought I had signed up in time for the January issue but the first one to arrive was the Spring issue. As others have said before the delivery times to Europe are ridiculous. It takes 4 - 6 weeks for an issue to arrive. I subscribe to other American magazines that arrive far faster - almost as fast as they go out on the racks. So when my first copy arrived imagine my disappointment that the printing was all screwed up. The colours weren’t alligned and the effect was horrible. I couldn’t look at half the pages in the magazine without feeling seasick.

An email to the publisher was answered promptly and I was promised a free replacement. I thought this might arrive faster, but it took another 5 weeks to make to our mailbox. Followed shortly after by the next issue, which had also been sent on the back of a pidgeon who was obviously very unfit. The magazines are interesting and have lots of useful information and eye candy in them. Having read parts 4 and 5 of the series on Design I decided to order the back issues so that I could have parts 1, 2 and 3. I was resigned to another long wait.

Imagine my surprise and delight when they arrived within a week. Pity they can’t offer this service for the current issues. Since we are still in the middle of chaos in the house with the renovations I’ve not had much chance to read them yet. But I have something to look forward to later.

in case you’ve been wondering what is going on at sew2speak and why I’ve not been posting, it’s because I’ve not touched the sewing machine in a bit. We are in the throes of redecorating the upstairs rooms of our house. As we are ripping out carpets and putting in parquet flooring, as well as painting all the walls, it is a major undertaking. We aim to be finished in about another 2 weeks and then I should have time to be doing some sewing again.

So please don’t give up on me and go away forever. Call back in a couple of weeks time to see what’s happening!
Until then live well and happy quilting,
Ruth

It’s maybe not the most expert of masks, but it was made from start to finish by me and using most of my own ideas for how to construct it. So I have learnt a lot in the process and know some things I need to watch out for next time.
Since I now have my own digital camera I was made to take the photos myself this time. So these pictures are a first in more ways than one.


For those of you interested in the details the front of the mask is made of the traditional three quilt layers. The batting is 100% cotton, which I always use because on small things like this you don’t have to pin or baste. The three layers just stick together like magic. I did some quilting use Madeira rayon thread, monofilament thread and couched some metallic embroidery thread down with the monofilament thread too. Around the mouth I hand sewed the back to the front using a kind of needleturn technique to get a neat edge. The eye holes were trickier so I ended up doing some satin stitch and then trimming out the surplus material.

I sewed the front to the back of the mask (which is plain black fabric) half way round by machine, then inserted the bandage base and sewed the rest by hand.

I then cut the holes out of the back for the eyes and mouth. The mouth was again easier to sew, as it is bigger and gave enough fabric to be able to turn back and sew the front to the back. The eyes were too small for that treatment so I whip-stitched over the edges to hold them together and then sewed round with buttonhole stitch using double thread.

The next one I shall allow for bigger eye holes as these were very fiddly. I would probably move the mouth further away from the eyes too. For a first attempt I think it turned out fine.

Here’s a final photo of part of the constuction process. It was one of the first photos taken with my new camera but I wasn’t pressing the trigger.

or Rome wasn’t built in a day
The base of the mask is dried out and ready to roll. In the end I decided not to add any extra bandage around the edges. After I’d trimmed it up I thought it would be stable enough as it is. It’s going to be covered in fabric so it should be ok.
Here’s how it’s looking.

And from the side

This afternoon I made a start on the actual mask itself. I’m not sure about how I’m going to go around the nose bump yet. Didn’t think about the lumps and bumps on the ceramic mask when I used it as the base for the bandages. I’m hoping some will disappear under the batting. Ever the optimist!

The mask is taking its time to dry out. I’ve got three layers of bandages on now. I need to cut out the eye holes and then neaten up the edges. Then when that dries I shall finally be ready to move onto the next stage. That will be another journey of discovery and will hopefully go a bit faster.

In the meanwhile I have finished the second face. I spent quite a time choosing the background fabric for the face. I auditioned lots of plain fabric in various colours both light and dark. One of the black fabrics had a pattern on it, black on black. That reminded me that I was going to try out using some patterned fabric. I finally settled on the green, which has a small pattern printed on it in black. After that decision was made things came together quickly. I did some in the ditch quilting as on Face #1 and slightly more satin stitching on this one. I think he’s turned out well:

There is satin stitching around the mouth and on the nose, but it’s not easy to see in the photo.