Printing and knitting

My own blocks

My own blocks

Wooden print blocks

Wooden block prints

 Here are some of the pieces I have been printing over the past couple of days. I have also been experimenting with discharge printing, but photos will have to wait until after I have ironed and washed the pieces since I have no idea whether it will have worked. I did try the discharge paste with a piece of black fabric a few days ago, but nothing happened. Apparently this does happen with some fabrics even when they are cotton. I think it depends on the dye originally used. It probably doesn't help that I have had this paste for some little while...... For this second experiment I have used a piece of my own procian dyed fabric as well as a piece of painted fabric.

I really enjoy messing around with my collection of print blocks. I plan to have a further session this week using my gelliplate and screens. I'd like to have a go at using a resist. A friend showed some work she had done at a workshop using a resist. It has prompted me to have a go myself. I'd like to get some more printing done before I tidy up my workroom ready to get some sewing done.

Printboards ready for more printing.

My printboards are getting to look more interesting with all the work I have done over the past couple of days.

Experimental piece

 As you can see, my experimental piece of knitting is coming along nicely. I think this will probably end up being a cushion cover. Just four more of the small squares to knit and then knit onto the bigger section. I still have to decide what to do about a border.

Test knitting - Bronze Oxide

The shawl is coming along quite well. I am looking forward to seeing what the whole thing will look like. I did finish the little knitted skirt. It looks rather sweet. I added some little wooden flower buttons from my button collection. Yes, I have a large collection of buttons along with the fabric stash and the thread..........

Printing, quilting and completing bits and pieces.

block, stencil, thermofax and gelliplate prints

I had a lot of fun with the MEG group on Friday when I organised a print workshop for them. We played with my gelliplate, stencils, home made blocks and wooden blocks, my thermofax screens too. I took in all three of my print boards and a couple of easels to make an extra table. 

The photo above shows the collection of prints I managed to achieve during the day. It will be interesting to see the collection of prints made by the rest of the group. It was a really friendly session with not a lot of chat, since everyone was concentrating on whatever they were working on. Thanks everyone.

House 1 - now finished.

Butterfly block now complete.

As you can see, I have been finishing things off over the past few days. The first of the house blocks is now quilted and bound. I think I just need to add a bugle bead for the door handle.

The butterfly block doesn't quite feel finished. I think it needs some more stitching, but will have to wait until I decide exactly what is required. A few butterflies would be nice.

knitted waistcoat under way.

I also got started with the knitted waistcoat. I do love the way the pattern grows under my fingers. Yes, that is a small pocket. I shall be adding the edging at a later stage. It seems to have been missed out of the pattern, but is shown quite clearly in the photograph. It shouldn't be a problem to recreate.

Spending some creative time with my sewing machine and other projects.

Where have the past few days gone? It has been really busy here - a new print board has been put together, four cushion covers, a simple top, some zipped bag/purses and a new print board have all been finished and I have nearly completed a new linen dress for myself. I haven't bought any new fabric, just a couple of zips. Everything has been constructed out of my rather large stash of fabrics, threads and general "stuff". I wish I could say that my cupboards and shelves are less full as a result, but I really cannot see a difference just yet.

the felt layers of the new print board

 I decided to make a third print board since I shall be giving a print workshop in August and my two current boards will not be sufficient. I can improvise some extra space, but the third board will just make everything so much easier for everyone.

All three boards together

It was so lucky that I had plenty of acrylic felt and enough of an old cotton sheet in my stash to be able to complete this project. The board had seen occasional use as a drawing board, but will be so much more useful to me as an additional printing surface.

I'd completely forgotten, until I sorted through my photos, that I'd also been to a dyeing session. This time I followed some advice I found on the Kemshall's website about preparing fabric for dyeing. The resulting colours have been so much better, I shall definitely do this again. The advice gave specific quantities for the washing soda used in preparing the fabric for procian dyeing. I now have a solution in a sealed pot ready in the garden shed for when we next have some good weather and I can prepare some more cotton. I hadn't realised that the solution could be kept and used again and again.

 These cushions were not started by me. They were handed in at the last Pinfold meeting and I volunteered to construct the cushion covers. They are now ready for the cushion tombola which will be part of the group's exhibition later this year. The covers have been hand embroidered and look so beautiful. Each cushion is just twelve inches square. I hope that the embroiderer will be pleased when she sees them again.

Speaking of tombolas. This collection of zipped purses have been made for The Quilters' Guild tombola at Festival of Quilts in August. So far I have made nine, but I have a couple more which have been cut out ready to sew together.

Yet another cushion for the Pinfold tombola. This one started life as a miniature quilt block challenge which has been stuck in my unfinished pile for a very long time. It is twenty inches across.

the dress waiting to be finished

 The dressmaking patterns were found in a recent edition of Ottobre magazine. The dress still has to have the armhole facings stitched into place and also the hems completed. I really need to iron it too. It has been fully lined.

a completed top

The top is going to be rather useful in the warmer weather. It was made from a piece of crepe de chine I had in my stash.

So apologies for not having posted here for a few days. I have been rather busy. I still haven't started those cotbed quilts.........

Postcards, books and printing on felt

Completed Apache top

It has been an interesting week. For once I have quite a number of completed, or nearly completed items to share. 

Firstly, a photo of the completed knitted top which I talked about last time. As you can see it has a really interesting closure in that there is a knitted tab which is pushed through a buttonhole in the right front of the waistcoat. This should be handed back tomorrow.

Printing on felt

On Friday I went along to a workshop at Friday Felters. This was with Val Hughes, a very talented textile artist. This was a really interesting session, although I must admit to not liking the block printing medium which I used for my sample. The felt is still sticky today. I shall have another go and print using my usual fabric paints. The blocks shown above were made at the workshop using foam board as a backing with thin foam. As you can see, I cut the foam so that I could use a positive and negative of the same design. I haven't used the second block yet, I found the idea of printing on felt had a lot of possibilities and will definitely be doing it again.

Completed book cover

 You may recall this post, where I showed an earlier stage of working to put this book together. Since March, I have been steadily adding bits and pieces to my book, deciding yesterday that it really now needed to have a cover. So, here it is. I still haven't filled all the pages, but will continue to add bits and pieces during the rest of the year. Tomorrow, it will be travelling along with me to the NWCQ meeting where other members will be showing their altered books. I didn't join in with that topic, preferring to make my own book rather than use a printed book. I really don't know what they will make of my version.
The cover is part of the old sheeting on my small printboard which I replaced earlier. Shocking to think it has languished in my fabric stash for so long before being used. However, it was perfect for this book cover. Just the right size too. It won't be too long before I need to replace the current printboard cover on that same small board......
The cover is stretched over a piece of foamboard which was left over from making some exhibition notices last year. Useful stuff. It is quite sturdy and stops the book becoming too heavy.

A few of the pages

 The next two photos show some printed bits and pieces which may well end up inside the book once they are completely dry.

Some material to be added to the book

 The lettering was printed using a set of children's wooden letters which I have had since my teaching days. Rather nice to be able to use them. The block pattern at the top of the above photo is another of my home made blocks made using foam board, double sided tape and thin foam. Like the earlier blocks, this also has a negative block which I haven't yet used for printing.

A sample to try out the lettering

This scrap of fabric is all that remains of the printboard cover which I used for the book cover. So useful to have a piece like this to use to try out different things.

My postcard - "Wish you were here"

Last week, I went along to a Pinfold meeting where the challenge was to complete a fabric postcard on the topic, "Wish you were here." I decided to revisit the design I used for my Horizons quilt, "Caribbean Memories". The original design was 0.5m wide and 1.5m long (19.75" x 39.5"). You can see it here. This piece still needs to be trimmed. It uses scraps of sheer and satin fabrics with some woven silk over a backing of calico. The detail of the leaves has been free machined with a small amount of paint used for the coconuts. The size of this piece will be 87mm x 139mm (3.5" x 5.5"). I will be taking this to the beading group in the morning since they are considering this as a challenge.

Fabric, quilting, and knitting

Essex pullover - my current knitting project

Such a long time since I wrote anything on this blog. So much has happened over the past few months, but I won't bore you with any of it here. I am knitting, as usual and the photo above shows the current project, a cropped sleeve, fitted jumper with a fair-isle design around the picot edged sleeves, body and also the yoke. The mix of picot edged sleeves and body teamed with a fitted shape really intrigued me. So many of the jumpers and cardigans I have knitted over the years are rather shapeless. They are lovely to wear, and cosy, but it was time for a change. Not sure how this will work out, but this could be interesting.

The knitted body of my jumper

So far, I have completed the body, knitted in the round, up as far as the point at which the sleeves will be attached. The first sleeve has been started and I am in the process of knitting the fair-isle pattern. As you can see from the photo above, the picot edge to the body (and sleeves) is sewn after the whole jumper has been completed. I haven't done a picot edge in this way before, having knitted it into place in a previous project (a knitted bag). It will be interesting to see which of the two techniques I prefer.

Indigo dyeing

I was lucky enough to take part in an indigo dyeing session at a friends house a couple of weeks ago. These "flags" are my own pieces shown after washing. They are hanging in my friends garden on one of her trees. There were a number of us playing around with an indigo dye vat that morning. We were so lucky with the weather too. It can't be guaranteed that we get a bright sunny morning at this time of year, so we did give ourselves a backup plan, just in case we couldn't do any dyeing. Indigo dyeing really does have to be done outside. The pieces above are, from left to right - a tightly woven cotton, cotton lawn and two silk hankies. The first piece had been dyed after being folded into pleats and pinned using bulldog clips. The second was merely loosely pleated and knotted at intervals. The silk hankies were tie-dyed after being folded together and held in place using rubber bands. Great fun!

I'm not sure what I shall use these pieces for, but I really enjoyed the experience. I have also recently been experimenting with rust and tea dyeing.

Tea dyeing - the fabric was scrunched around the tea bags used.

Rust dyeing using tea.

Rust dyeing using a fruit tea wrapped around a scouring pad.

Last week I found myself having to replace the cover on my printing board. I shall be using the old cover since it just looks so interesting. Not sure what it will be used for, but I feel sure that I will find a use for it.

The under layer of my old print board cover.

The top layer - I just love the muddle of patterns

I am also quilting. The following photo shows the quilting in progress. This is a very simple pieced design made up of square blocks. The working title is "Spring Flowers" and uses some of Tracy Fox's gorgeous dyed fabrics.

Quilting in progress on "Spring Flowers"

Catching up with sewing projects.

The past few weeks have been very busy. First, I had to remove the old cover on my small printing board. It had just got to the end of it's useful life and I was due to go and help out with the crafts at a birthday party last weekend. I had offered to teach anyone who wished ti have a go, to print on fabric.

My old cover for the small printing board.

It was quite interesting. I only ended up with a couple of people actually wanting to have a go, but quite a number coming along to look and see what I was doing. I had taken all my fabric paints, printing blocks, thermofax screens and a lot of fabric. One man was really taken with the idea of printing that he spent some time with me and was delighted to take away a carefully decorated piece of fabric. Sadly, I just did not take any photographs, I just didn't have enough hands. You may be surprised to hear that this was a friend's 50th birthday party, and it all took place in her garden. The nice thing is that she had a go too and gave me a lovely bouquet of flowers.

September challenge for the Sky's the limit group - "Change".

Last week was filled with completing challenges ready for deadlines which were looming. The first to be completed was the chameleon on my Sky's the limit piece. I still am not fully convinced by this piece, mostly because I made a mistake with the stomach area and had to add a piece of fabric to cover a piece which was really far too dark. I feel this needs much more work than I can do at present. What do you think? I call it "Change, alter, adapt". It is calligraphy using up my old fabric dye pens which were drying out over a dyed piece of fabric made some time ago. Over this is a piece of scrim which has then had a bobbin work drawing stitched in place. The whole piece has then been quilted onto a wadding base.

For Wednesday, I had to complete my last piece for the Chinese Whispers challenge. This has been going on since last September, but I haven't been able to post about it before now.

The original photo - underneath the Tay Road Bridge, Dundee, Scotland.

It all started with a photograph. I took this during the Quilters' Guild AGM and Conference held in Dundee, Scotland in May 2012. It is a view looking through the pillars of the bridge. I was very lucky with the light conditions on the morning I took this photo. It had been extremely foggy earlier on.

My piece based on the Tay Road Bridge.

I must admit that I wasn't very happy with my own piece, feeling it is just too simplistic. However, at the time I just didn't have the time to make a more complex piece. I feel it would be wrong of me now to replace this piece with something else since my next challenge now that I have had all the pieces back from everyone else taking part in the challenge is to make a book with all the pieces I have. Hmmmm.

Chris' piece - designed from my textile piece.

I passed my textile piece on to Chris. We had been instructed to pass everything on to the next person hidden in an envelope to hide it from everyone else taking part in the challenge. We would only be allowed to see all the pieces at the end of the challenge.

Chris' note attached to her piece reads, "I found this quite difficult to know what to follow on with at first. However, two things came to mind - a ploughed field and a wooden door, or floor. Decided to use the pattern I had for a foundation pieced house and make the door of wooden slats!"

My main difficulty was that Chris' house was landscape in orientation and not portrait. However, that adds a rather interesting challenge in itself.

Mary's piece - designed from Chris' piece.

The next piece came from Mary who made this enchanting quirky castle. She had only seen Chris' foundation pieced house, so her block is also landscape in orientation. She wrote, "The log cabin reminded me of a house and an English Man's House is his castle so I did a quirky fairytale castle in applique."

Bernice's piece, designed from Mary's piece.

Seeing only Mary's design, Bernice completed this piece. She wrote, "The castle that Mary passed to me caused me to think of knights of old. Then when wondering how I cold depict my thoughts, I came up with the idea of making it a fun picture just suing simple applique techniques."

Brenda's piece designed from Bernice's piece.

Brenda wrote, "After seeing the crusader with such an aggressive stance it conjured up ideas of what or who he had rousted. So we had to have a knight fleeing on a horse to gain the safety of his castle."

Rosemary's piece designed from Brenda's piece.

 The last piece to be completed was Rosemary's. She had organised the challenge for us all and kept us to time as well. Not easy since we met every other month to exchange pieces. Each time we each had a piece for someone else's Chinese Whisper. In my next post I really must put together the photos of the pieces I made for each of the others involved in this project.

Going back to Rosemary's piece for me, she wrote "The picture is of a castle in Guimaraes, Portugal. We went there on th last day of our holiday. The figure is D. Alfonso Henriques. He won the battle of Sao Mamede which paved the way for the foundation of Portugal. The castle was built to defend the monastery and Christian Community from the attacks by the Moors and Normands, so I decided to use my holiday memories as a basis fo the Chinese Whisper piece. It is hand stitching on appliqued background with the knight on a separate piece of the applique fabric stitched in place by matching the background stitching."

As you can see each piece is a superb item in it's own right, all very different and now my challenge is to make a book which will retain the quality of each of the pieces I have been given and yet will make a book which works as a whole piece in it's own right. Not easy!

Thursday brought a very different day. I met up with other members of NWCQ and we had a wonderful day of learning different techniques of dyeing.

Freshly dyed fabric waiting for me to get around to washing it all.

Our teacher for the day was a good friend, Sandra Wyman who is an expert dyer and great fun to be with. I was extremely saddened to hear that she too had lost a very dear furry friend very recently. She wrote a very moving post about the loss of her dear cat. Do go and read it.

Now all that is left for this month is for me to complete my Journal Quilt for September - it has been started and just needs to have the stitching completed before it is ready for posting. Then I must get on and wash all the fabrics which I had such fun dyeing yesterday. Thanks Sandra.

Printing and painting fabric.

Printed and painted fabrics.

It has been rather too long since I added a post to this blog. Things have been crazily busy here. I still keep stitching and have been knitting too whenever I have had a spare moment. I shall post about those another time. Visiting my friend Hilary the other day, I was only able to take a couple of things along with me. Items she had not seen. It was a few days later when I got around to getting some ironing done that I rediscovered some printed and painted fabric which I had completely forgotten about. As you can tell, I really don't do any ironing very often - unless it is ironing new fabric after washing it for the stash.

These pieces were made during a rather enjoyable day spent with the NWCQ group. We spent some time printing fabric - I took along my thermofax screens and some stencils, a collection of previously printed and painted fabric and my print board.

Thermofax printed onto painted gauze.

Stencil onto previously painted gauze.

 Well, my print board got a little damp after printing the cog wheels stencil above, so I used one of my pieces of salvaged poly-cotton (an old valance) as an additional dropcloth. I folded it twice to print this:

Stencil onto previously painted gauze.

Dropcloth after printing the gauze above.

Second layer of the dropcloth showing dampened original dropcloth leaking through.

 As you can see the results were really interesting. I shall be keeping this impromptu dropcloth on one side for further printing and painting.

Old dropcloth overprinted using thermofax screen.

This last piece of the day still needs some work, but is developing in a rather interesting way.

Completed book pages for the Machine Embroidery Group. Brenda's theme is "Flora and fauna".

"Breakthrough" completed journal quilt for the Sky's the Limit group.

There have been other pieces completed, but I won't bore you with them here. At present I have started work on a quilt which I hope to complete in time to be entered for the "Horizons" challenge for the Contemporary Quilt group. It is full of pins at the moment so I haven't taken a photo - maybe next time.

Thanks for reading. I shall be back.