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I got up very early on Sunday – for me. We were booked onto a guided tour around the Botticelli Exhibition at 10:15 in the Städel Museum in Frankfurt. Just recently we have been to a couple of guided tours around exhibitions and have really enjoyed them. So it was a relatively small price to pay to get some culture. It had the added advantage that we got a parking space practically outside the exhibition and beat most of the crowds to see the exhibition. It is very popular.
The tour was well organised with everyone being given a headset and the tour guide using a microphone. So despite it still being quite crowded we could still hear everything well. The tour lasted about an hour and took in 6 or 7 of the paintings, which was quite enough. The choice of paintings was also very good to cover a wide range of the works. The tour guide was obviously knowledgeable and told us lots of interesting background information, including some about how the exhibition was organized and how the paintings were transported.
 Idealized Female Portrait, Städel Museum, Frankfurt
I’ve been doing some design sketches and experimenting with ideas for my final assessment piece for my C&Gs.
Marie, my tutor, had this to say about Reflections
This is the standard of work you have been aiming for, now you have reached a level that you can build on to become the practitioner you hoped that you would become, many congratulations. You have a style here that suits your personality and I agree with your comments on finding your own creative voice.
and
Now you can start to think about the quilt, you have set yourself a very high standard, I would love to see you push your boundaries even further, you have proved yourself capable of far more than we have seen previously.
So I have to raise the bar for my final piece. My current thoughts revolve around:
- hexagons
- metamorphosis
- colour to black and white
I found a useful resource on the web, where you can produce you own graph paper using various shapes. I used it to make my triangle graph paper for sketching.
I sewed the quilt label onto the back of the quilt in the afternoon of New Year’s Eve as the final task to completion. So I did complete it in 2009. It wasn’t particularly my goal to finish in the old year, but it was a nice way to close the quilting year for me.
Looking back I see that I started the work on this quilt in mid August 2009. It has been more than 4 months in the making, which is the longest of any of my pieces to date – I think even longer than my CHF piece, although I spent more of my free time working on that piece. However it has been time well spent. I have learned a number of valuable lessons and have produced a finished piece that I believe has pushed out the boundaries of what I can achieve. It has been a valuable step on the road to finding my own creative voice.
I am very pleased with the way the wall hanging turned out. It is how I imagined it to be in my mind’s eye. It is also a piece that reflects my personal style, which I think I am becoming more clear about as the course progresses. I like the more abstract, geometric type of design. Although I like looking at figurative artwork, it is not something that appeals to me from the personal design and creation aspect. I am happy that I managed to find a theme that is based on natural world (as the assessment brief stated), but that I have been able to use to fit my own style.
I used a new to me technique for binding the quilt and have found a new and valuable technique to add to my tool box. I was particularly pleased to have learnt this technique, because it produces a good sturdy edge (as Marie my tutor had told me) and allows one to achieve an excellent finish without having the additional element of a binding in the design. With my wall hanging I don’t feel that a traditional binding would have been an appropriate finishing for the quilt. I found a really useful tutorial on this technique by Brenda Gael Smith over at Serendipity Patchwork and Quilting. A big thank you to Brenda for her generous sharing of experience.
Please take the time to look at some more images of my quilt in the gallery. I wrote a little about the process of creating the quilt there too.
I first read about the quilt being made by the prisoners in the high security wing of Wandsworth Prison in the Autumn edition of the magazine Intelligent Life. You can read the article here online.
It has turned up in the news again on Times Online, as the newspaper is supporting the charity Fine Cell Work in its Christmas Charity Appeal, that is involved in the production of the quilt.
The quilt is to go on display in the V&A Museum in London in the Quilts exhibition that is to run from 20 March – 4 July 2010. The exhibition will show British quilts from 1700 to the present day and will show quilts from the V&A textile collection not usually on display. Sounds like it will be worth a visit, if one is in London.
I have been off work since Monday. The weather has been pretty foul. Lots of snow and then the temperatures rose and we had rain on freezing ground. We braved it out on Tuesday and did all the shopping for Christmas. Since then I have had time to work on my reflections quilt. I was working on the quilting design, but decided that some of it would be too insignificant if only a thin quilted line. So I decided to use some 1/4 inch strips. I sewed them on using a twin needle and because the wrong side never looks very pretty with a twin needle I sewed them onto the quilt top and the batting.
Here are some photos:
This one proves that I do own something other than my red cardigan, which seems to feature in a lot of these shots 
The quilt top with its added strips. I am pleased with the results.
A closer shot of the strips.
Frohe Weihnachten
God Jul
Boas Festas
Joyeux Noël
Buon Natale
Feliz Navidad
Prettige Kerstdagen
Hope there was one there for everyone!
At the weekend I finished the quilt top for my wall hanging assessment. The brown fabric works fine – enough contrast and quite how I imagined it. I am currently pondering how to do the quilting. As my C&G tutor Marie said: it would be great to link the quilting design with the initial inspiration in some way. Those are my feelings too. There was less variation/texture in the dyeing of the yellow fabric – it was different fabric to the blue, less crisp in the hand. It was interesting to see what a difference the fabric makes to the results of the dyeing. So I think I need to add some more texture with the quilting. Current thoughts circle around ripple effects. I need to go back to the original sources to get some more inspiration.
I briefly considered turning the quilt inside out with the backing and batting – I think known as the pillow case method – so as to have nothing showing around the edge. But on thinking about it, I decided that with a quilt this size, the quilting could alter the dimensions and take it off the square so I’ve decided that it is best to go the traditional route and quilt first and then use a binding. I wrote along these lines to Marie who suggested I used a turned back binding, similar to a facing. It wasn’t a method I had come across, but it is sound advice. I can avoid have a binding showing on the quilt front, but I can still quilt first and then square up and bind. Marie says it gives a tremendously sturdy finish to the quilt.
This quilt is taking much longer to produce than previous quilts, but I think the effort will be worth it in the end.
Thursday evening I received a phone call from out neighbour to say I should send Sqeze round – there was a large parcel for me in their hallway. They had kindly taken it in for us. Sqeze came back with a ginormous parcel, which turned out to be three parcels taped together and wrapped in brown paper: dolly and her box, my workbook and the digital photo frame.
Dolly has joined her sister on the window sill in my studio. Shamefully her sister is still naked. I’ve not got around to making her clothes yet. Perhaps the proximity to her fully clothed sister will reproach me into clothing her too.
It was good to get everything back, but I’m not sure what to do with it all. At the moment everything is distributed around my studio, I shall have to think what the long term solution should be. I’m still toying with the idea of somehow re-cycling the box into some other art work. For now I can contemplate it when I’m at the ironing board.
On Thursday evening we went for a private guided tour of the exhibition “Art for the Millions” at the Schirn Gallery in Frankfurt. The company DH works for is a corporate sponsor of the gallery and this is one of the perks for employees and spouses.
The exhibition shows over 100 life-sized figures in seven scenes depicting the exploitation of the peasants by the landlords. The figures were produced during the Mao era and the originals are made of dry clay and can still be seen in the original setting – the rent collection courtyard – in the Sichuan province in China. The original intention was to educate the masses about the justification for the cultural revolution. Whether the scenes depicted are entirely accurate or not the whole group is certainly thought provoking. The figures produce an immediate emotional response is the viewer.
The figures on show in Frankfurt were produced in 1974 – 1978 in copper coated fibre glass with the intention of lending them out to other countries for exhibition. More than 50 people were involved in the creation – professional and amateur sculptors, students and workers. In 1972 Harald Szeemann, curator of documenta 5, attempted to bring one of the sets to Kassel, Germany, but was unsuccessful for political and financial reasons. The current exhibition is the first time the group of figures has been shown in the West. The exhibition is in conjunction with the Frankfurt Book Fair, where this year China was the featured guest land.
The exhibition is exceptional in that there are no barriers around the figures, which gives a completely different impression as you can really get up close to them. Although for obvious reasons you are not allowed to wander around within the groups.
At the time the figures were produced there was no tradition of sculpture in China. The figures are strongly influenced by European art and artists such as Käthe Kollwitz and Rodin.
A general view of the exhibition. In the original setting the figures are displayed around 3 sides of the courtyard – not possible in the Schirn due to the shape of the exhibition hall.
From scene 3 – winnowing machines are used to sift out the grain.
From scene 4 showing the administrator, who decides if the quantity of grain is sufficient.
From scene 6 – farmers who could not pay their tithe in full were punished.
All images are press images from the Schirn Gallery.
I am about half way done on the quilt top for my nature theme. I have done all the blue now and will be moving on to the yellow. I am making progress even if it is quite time consuming – each piece having to be cut individually. It takes me between 45-60 minutes to complete a row across the quilt. I have ten rows of 21 completed now. A way to go yet!
I am pleased with the contrast between my browns and the blues. It is working out as I envisaged it. I don’t think I’ll be needing to do any painting on top when the quilt top is finished.
I’m not at all sure how to finish off the edges on this quilt. I don’t think that I want to do a binding. I may try the pillowcase method of turning it inside out on the backing. Anyone any ideas, thoughts?
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Ruth | Category: 