I bought some linen at the Stoffmarkt Holland to sew myself a summer dress. So as I didn’t have access to the next module of my C&G course I made a start on it last Thursday, which was a public holiday here. The pattern is from a Burda magazine I bought last summer.

I only got as far as tracing the pattern in my size and then cutting out the pieces from the material and then I had had enough. This is my least favourite part of the whole process.

Yesterday I made a start on sewing the pieces together. The bodice is looking like it might become a piece of clothing soon. And my pressing skills learnt at QU were put to use here too.

The collar is assembled and ready for attaching to the bodice. Here I really noticed that the classes I’ve taken for patchwork have improved all my sewing. The collar went to together first time and the lapel edges are all the same length. Accurate piecing helps with dressmaking too. I could tell my dressmaking skills were rusty though. I had only cut out half the number of pieces for the collar - only one lapel and one collar piece No wonder I had so much extra fabric!

This may be the last post for sometime as we are off on holiday next Saturday. As we are traveling by car we will probably take my little Apple Notebook with us. So there may be something to look at.

Today the Stoffmarkt Holland came to Frankfurt and we were there! I have to admit that I find it all a bit overwhelming. There are so many stalls and so many people that I end up dithering. You can buy everything from sewing thread to notions and sewing patterns. This time there was even a Bernina stall.

Despite the plethora of possible purchases I managed to narrow it down to some cotton fabrics in various pinks (which turned out to contain lycra when I got home ), some batiks, 2 pieces of denim and some linen to make myself a summer dress.

Sqeze is very patient and follows me around doling out the cash when I decide to purchase. What more can a girl want?

I’ve been making holes in my fingers again this weekend while making my first attempt at sashiko quilting. It is a simplified version of the fan pattern. I didn’t have enough blue fabric that was fairly loosely woven so I used green instead.

As I couldn’t find a local shop to buy the authentic supplies I used the suggested alternatives of cotton perle embroidery thread and chenille needles. Something wasn’t quite right with my combination of supplies, I had the devil of a job getting the eye of the needle with the double thickness of thread to go through 3 layers of fabric. I ended up using my thimble as a battering ram and then a circle of grippy plastic that usually lives in the kitchen for opening stubborn jam jars to get enough grip on the needle to pull it all the way through

I missed a few stitches on the back and I blame it on the generally adverse conditions under which I was working!

From the front the stitches look pretty good though - quite evenly sized. Not bad for a first attempt.

I was intending doing a bit more than just the bare minimum for this activity but I have decided to find an internet supplier for the genuine supplies before doing any more. Then I can see what I should be looking for as an alternative. I have a good resource book called the Ultimate Sashiko Sourcebook by Susan Briscoe that I bought at a quilt show. It explains really well how to work the various traditional designs over a basic grid. Lots of inspiration just browsing the book.

I’ve been making pin cushions of my finger tips this weekend doing some hand quilting. The tip of the index finger of my left hand looks like raw meat I’m not a very accomplished hand quilter and I can’t say that I really enjoy it. I always seem to get into a fight with the quilting hoop for a start. I had a go without the hoop but it didn’t really improve matters, although I’ve read on some blogs about people who don’t use hoops or frames.

Here’s what I’ve been doing. The object of the exercise was to try various threads and colours to see the different effects you can get. The quilt top was from the exercise on transparency in module 2 of the course.

I made the mistake of using the all cotton batting that I usually use on my quilts that will be machine quilted. It is great for machine quilting because it kind of sticks to the top and backing and makes it less likely to get wrinkles sewn in, but it is compact and hard work for hand quilting. On my first attempt at hand quilting in a QU class of Hawaiian appliqué and hand quilting we used high loft polyester batting and it was much easier to quilt.

This image shows the quilting in a little more detail. I was trying out various thicknesses of thread. The blue thread going across the quilt is the variegated Valdani thread. Although others rave about this thread I find it quite variable in thickness as well as colour. It tends to beard more too.

In this red corner I tried out (bottom to top) ordinary red cotton sewing thread, one strand of stranded embroidery thread, gold thread, 2 strands of embroidery thread, more gold thread and then some different thicknesses of cotton sewing thread.

I liked the effect of the double stranded embroidery thread and it wasn’t any harder to quilt with than sewing thread.

I need to give my fingers a chance to recover and then I have one more activity to go and I’ve finished module 3 of the course. My goal is to complet module 3 by the end of May.

I had a nice surprise today when the postman came. These two books arrived from my cousin Bernadette in the UK. Thank you!

The one on the left is from 1987 and has some interesting ideas for using different materials in appliqué such as cords, ribbons, beads and buttons. There are also ideas for ways of using the appliqué itself from lampshades to leather jackets.

The one of the right is from 1957 and is called “Werkliches Schaffen”, which is a wonderfully quaint title in German that I am having trouble translating. (Leo my favourite online dictionary had never heard of werklich!) It roughly translates as artistic creating. It covers all kinds of handcrafts from the usual knitting, crochet to leather work and pottery. According to the introduction it is aimed at girls, women and mothers (are they not women?), kindergarten teachers and teachers. They should not spend their free time sitting their hands in their laps but should develop a creative hobby.

Despite some rather old-fashioned and somewhat strange ideas -

for the non German speakers “This laundry bag is useful for storing dirty laundry not just in the household, but particularly for single girls” Why single them out? - it has lots of interesting and yes useful things to try out.

Here’s another quaint photo showing girls weaving tapes and ribbons.

I actually really like these old fashioned books. Despite the rather strange language and ideas they are usually full of techniques and handicrafts that are in danger of dying out and getting lost altogether. I have a few pamphlets that were my mothers with things like making shepherd’s smocks and some handicraft magazines from the 1960s from the next door neighbour to my parents.

As the appliqué was hand sewing I made a start on it in the week. I like to have this kind of craft work to do in the evenings. I find it quite relaxing so long as I don’t do too much at once. I finished the piece this morning. I didn’t find the technique as frustrating as Lori did although it is a little annoying to keep having to remove the stitching that was used to outline the design to be able to keep sewing.

This method is really reverse needleturn appliqué because the actual design is the lower fabric and one cuts through the upper fabric to reveal the design. The method I learnt at QU was to cut out the design from fabric and then appliqué it onto the background fabric. The stitching was also using the needleturn technique.

I think the orange and purple fabric I chose is on reflection a little too busy. It rather overpowers the design itself in places - particularly the centre cut out shapes. So a lesson leant there. This detail shows the center shapes without being confused by the pattern on the fabric too much.

I was quite pleased to see that my sewing followed the tracing lines of the design quite accurately. There are a few wobbles but then it is hand craft!

On balance I think I prefer the technique I learnt at QU. Although it was an interesting exercise to compare the two methods. Both will have their uses.

Well I’ve made a start on the next activity, which is to do some hawaiian appliqué. I had to make my own design. I thought it was quite interesting how the design developed with each new attempt so I’ll share the process by posting them all.

This was the first attempt. The starting point is an 8 inch square of paper folded into eighths as a triangle. You then take a pair of scissors and start chopping out bits of paper until you get this.

It wasn’t very inspiring and still looked much like a square with holes cut out. I realised that I needed to be more adventurous with the scissors and cut up into the bottom of the triangle more, i.e. on the third edge with no folds. This is the second attempt.

Don’t ask why the photographer chose to set this on point. It’s just one of those things. A little better, but it still doesn’t grab you. At this point I decided that the centre of the first attempt had potential so I played around with that as a starting point. I tried to make the third edge more interesting, which lead to this one:

Getting there but the corners were too fussy for my liking. So I tried to use the shapes I already had to make the corners more integral to the overall design. My fourth attempt is the one I plan to turn into a piece of hawaiian appliqué.

That’s as far as I’ve got at the moment. I’ve done some hawaiian appliqué before and used a completely different method. I’ve decided to follow the instructions in the course just to compare the 2 methods. I can’t help thinking that I shall be agreeing with Lori’s comments in this post, see point one. There was none of this stopping and snipping in the method I learnt. We shall see.

Unfortunately in English we don’t have many nouns with gender specific forms so in English the title of the exhibition at the Schirn gallery in Frankfurt has to be Women Impressionists - not so concise. We went to see the exhibition last Thursday, which was the May Day public holiday here. We thought that as it was lovely weather and father’s day that there would be few visitors. Seems other people had the same idea!

The exhibition shows the work of Berthe Morisot, Mary Cassatt, Eva Gonzalès and Marie Bracquemond. It includes some 160 works from international museums and private collections. It was interesting to see how different the subject matter of their paintings is compared to the male impressionists. Most of the works displayed showed portraits of women going about their daily lives - getting up, sewing, bathing children, taking tea with visitors, hardly any landscapes and very few still life paintings. This can be explained in part that women were not allowed to go out unchaperoned and so could only paint things within their own homes.

The work of Mary Cassatt appealed to me most. There were a series of colored drypoint and aquatint prints, she exhibited in 1891, that were inspired by the Japanese masters shown in Paris the year before. This is one of them:

The Letter

Although she wasn’t married and had no children of her own she produced a number of wonderful paintings of mother and child.

Sleepy Thomas

Or this lovely painting of a young girl, who looks completely natural and unposed:

Child in a Straw Hat

I was particularly interested in the part of the exhibition devoted to Marie Bracquemond, because it brought together studies and sketches that she made for her paintings, from various museums and collections, so that you could see them with the final work. This gave quite an insight into the work behind the scenes that leads to a finished work of art. This is not something you often get to see.
This was one of the studies for the painting from the Musée d’Orsay which show three ladies with umbrellas:

Femme a l’ombrelle

All images are press photos from the Schirn Gallery website.

It amuses me that this technique is known as the English paper piecing method. Just goes to show how we are influenced by the American view of the world. To me this is just paper piecing. It is in fact the first technique that I used to make a patchwork quilt at the end of the 1970s. My first ever quilt was mostly hand pieced as a Grandmother’s flower garden design. I didn’t know at the time that this was what it was called. It is in all shades of blues and purples as this was the colour of my bedroom in my parents house at the time I started. It took so long to make that it become a double bed sized quilt because I’d got married in the meantime! I also didn’t know that you were supposed to use batting so it only has two layers.

So 30 years and more later I am again doing paper piecing but on a much smaller scale. I actually enjoyed doing it but only in small bursts. Here’s the finished piece:

And here it is next to the original photo. I like the way it goes from representational to abstract.

This time round the mini quilt benefitted from some of the previous courses I’ve taken. Especially learning the Secrets of Circles at QU with Myrna Giesbrecht. I have some nice “roses” on the back of the piece so that the seams lie nice and flat:

The points aren’t too bad on the front either. Also as a result of the same class.

I’ve chosen the fabric for my hand piecing of the abstract cygnet piece. Once I made the effort to get going I quite enjoyed myself. I’m just finding a bit hard to get going at the moment. I done about a third of the piecing too. I decided to just follow the design and the photo as I had them in front of me. I didn’t go to the bother of numbering all the bits as per instructions as that seemed like a lot of unnecessary bother to me.

No photo of the piecing yet, but here’s one of my choice of material: