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.

My next activity for the C&G course was reverse appliqué. I’ve done some on the machine before, but not by hand. Instead of just basing the design on one of my images of lines I decided to make something a bit more challenging. My first place to look for inspiration was the book 1000 Patterns by Drusilla Cole. I’ve mentioned this book before on here. It’s a book I am always referring to. The chrysanthemums in the Japanese section first caught my eye, but then I saw the daffodil in the index. As they are my favourite spring flower and are just starting to come out here in Frankfurt (but not yet in Schmitten!) I changed my mind. Here are my first sketches from last weekend:

During the week I did some browsing around the web and came across these drawings of daffodils. These were another source of inspiration. I also came to the conclusion from looking at some stencils on the web that my original sketches were too complicated. I was fixated on making lines with the reverse appliqué instead of shapes. Having realised that, my final design became much easier to sew.

Here is the finished design:

When my final sketch was finished I realised that I hadn’t really left enough space between the shapes for the edges to be turned under when sewing. So when I traced the design onto vellum to make my template I moved them all out a bit to make room. I used a 2B pencil to trace the design onto the green fabric. I prefer using pencil to the coloured marking pencils. It washes out well, takes a good point and they are a darn sight cheaper than the “quilters marking pencils” I usually don’t have trouble seeing the pencil lines on most fabrics.

The actual sewing went quickly. I was finished in one evening. No thick paint layer to get the needle through!

And here’s a view of the back so that you can admire my stitching

At the weekend I spent some time browsing through back copies of Quilting Arts magazine and various other quilting books for inspiration as to how to quilt my latest WIP. In the end the real inspiration for the design came from this book:

I first learnt about this book in a QU class (Quilting Designs by Susan Purney-Mark) and keep going back to it for inspiration. A book I can highly recommend.

The other book, which I find useful just to keep your mind open to how the quilting can really change the quilt, is this one:

I have used ideas from this book too, although I tend to use it to waken up the ol’ brain cells to the different quilting effects possible and then turn to other sources for the ideas.

Today I also went into town to buy some machine embroidery thread. I’m trying out a new brand. It’s Gütermann VICI 40 100% Rayon-Viscose. I bought it from a haberdasher’s that I recently discovered on a chat forum. It’s TOKO Kurzwaren. It’s the best one I’ve found so far in Frankfurt. They also sell online. I’ve been using Madiera thread up to now so I shall be interested to see how this compares. I hope it’s good because the shop carries a huge range of colours.

So now I really have no more excuses for not getting started on the quilting.

I was signed up for a second shibori class at QU, which was scheduled to start this coming weekend. Unfortunately it got cancelled. So I treated myself to a book on the subject instead. It arrived on Monday.

I was only able to really start looking at it in any detail last night, as up to now we have been completely occupied with our renovations. But they are over now, so watch this space, things should start happening again. We have a large space of wall left empty for a new quilt, so I have a new project to get going on.

Back to the book - it’s by Janice Gunner and from what I’ve seen so far it will be a great addition to my few dyeing books. She really explains the techniques well and there are lots of examples of fabric produced using the various methods to whet your appetite. So although my class fell through I think I may well be doing a bit of dyeing anyway.

While we were back in the UK I found this book whilst browsing in Waterstones in Truro, Cornwall. I had looked at it a number of times on Amazon, but couldn’t make up my mind whether I would find it useful or not. Being able to flip through it was enough to convince me that it was worth getting. So it travelled back to Germany with us and I have since read it cover to cover. So which book am I talking about:

I’ve since been recommended Sandra Meech’s second book Creative Quilts, so no doubt it will soon be landing on my bookshelf too.

I have decided to spend the rest of this year on self study and not take any more classes for now. Unless of course something irresistible turns up I have a number of ideas that I want to continue to follow up on and also lots of good ideas to try out from the books I’ve been mentioning on the blog. So taking time to do these things seems like a good way to spend the second half of this year.

About 2 weeks I took delivery of three books by Ann Johnston, two about dyeing and one about quilt design. I have already browsed extensively through the two dyeing books and am sure that I shall have lots of fun trying out the things suggested in them. I like the fact that the books are spirally bound. It will make them very practical to use as a reference when dyeing. Ann’s method for dyeing is slightly different to the one I’ve been using so far, that I learnt at QU from Marjie McWilliams. Having done those courses with someone to hold my hand via the ether I have the confidence now to branch out on my own. Ann Johnston’s books are very easy to follow, well laid out and with a large number of experiments and variations to try out.
The first book is about low immersion dyeing and gives recipes for mixing colours, for dyeing gradations, for dyeing gradations with more than one colour.

The second book covers lots of other techniques for getting dye onto fabric, including painting, stamping, tying and much more. The nice thing is that it is all done with stuff, which it is easy to collect together and isn’t going to put too much of a strain on the budget.

The third book covers general design principles like line, colour, value, texture. All the examples are quilts that Ann has made herself or with some help. The fabrics have all been dyed and printed by Ann. So taken together you can see how the cloth you might make using the techniques in the first two books can be turned into fabulous art quilts - if you are Ann Johnston

The final plus point for me, about this third book, is that the quilts shown are all of the type of design that appeals to me and that I would like to make. So the book is a great source of inspiration too.
Definitely money well spent.

Where do people get their inspiration and ideas from?

Although I enjoy looking at the art quilts and other textile work that people are making and showing us on their blogs and webpages, it’s not where I get my ideas from. One of my favourite ways of finding new ideas for quilts is to use the vaste source of information available on the web. I think of a word or phrase and do a google search on images. The things you turn up are sometimes quite surprising and for me it’s a kind of visual brainstorming. From the many images that appear, I then choose about 5 - 7 with a maximum of 10 to save for future reference. Obviously the images never get translated one to one into a quilt, that would be piggy backing on the creativity of others, but from them ideas are born, which I then allow to ferment in my brain. And some of them finally make it into a quilt.

Another source of inspiration for me is looking at paintings by various artists. There is a series of easily affordable books by Taschen called the Basic Art Series. They have excellent photographs of the paintings and plenty of them. Again just browsing through them from time to time puts new ideas into my head. Other books I enjoy browsing are catalogues from art exhibitions that we have visited, and books of photographs (those coffee table books!).

And finally there are the many photographs and slides from our holidays and my favourite photoblogs on the web. We are currently in the middle of a marathon process of scanning in all our slides. So that is one more resource that will be more accessible to me in the future.

I’ve not been doing any sewing since I finished the cushion cover. Instead I’ve been reading up on the theory of design. My first introduction to it was on Jim Shaw’s website. He has an online series of lessons on 2D design, which are well worth reading.

My latest acquisition on the design front is a book by Steven Aimone:

I can highly recommend this book. It has lots of colour photos used to illustrate the points being covered in each chapter. The examples are taken from many different mediums, which in my eyes makes it a more interesting and informative book than one that is aimed at a particular craft. It also has a number of different exercises throughout. And this time I might even be inspired to do some of them. I’m not usually a doer, more of a reader and then jump right in. But this time I feel I might learn something from them. We’ll see.

I’ve not been doing any quilting or dyeing this weekend. I did cut down an old pillow to make a new inside for my Ulu Fruit cushion but that’s all the creative stuff I’ve been up to.

Instead I’ve been doing an exercise from the book “The Visual Dance” by Joen Wolfrom.

I discovered the book in the description of a course on QU that I may take next year. After browsing the reviews on Amazon I decided to order it. Although Joen uses a rather unusual colour wheel in her chapter on colour (the only references in Google refer back to her book) the advice on colour and the other chapters make interesting reading. The book also contains lots of colour photos of a wide selection of quilts by various artists.

The exercise I am doing - I’ve not finished yet - is aimed at helping you discover your own style. The idea is to flip through books and magazines with photos of quilts and without much inner debate, order them into categories from “love” to “hate”. Then after a space of time you go back at look again at your choices and analyse what it is about each quilt that made you place it in its category. From the notes on each quilt you can summarize to give yourself a good idea as to your intuitive personal style. Joen’s advice is to spend your time making quilts you like. Sounds like good advice to me.

Although there were no big surprises, it did help to harden up my instincts so far. I’m not a pictorial quilter. I like geometrical shapes such as in most traditional quilt blocks. Apart from gaining more insights into your own style the exercise helps you define your personal characteristics of a stunning quilt over a good quilt.

I’ve not been doing much of that this weekend, because I managed to cut a slice into the little finger of my left hand with the rotary cutter on Saturday night, but I have been reading about it in a new book that arrived on Friday. It’s called “Transforming Fabric” by Carolyn Dahl and explains 30 ways to paint, dye and pattern cloth. Some of the ideas are not new to me, but most of them are and the book contains lots of photos to whet your appetite. One method tells you how to print using fish. Not sure if that will be high on my list of techniques to try, but it gives an idea of the variety of techniques described.

I did have my third attempt at potato dextrin dyeing. I had to use a bit of brute force to encourage it to crack.

Cracks at last

They look quite impressive here, but the dye wasn’t so sure. This piece turned out to have rather few lines on it and quite a lot of white. A second piece, which looked like it was going to be a disaster, actually turned out quite interesting. So I’m leaving the third piece overnight to see if the colour will be more intense. Photos to follow later.