see, i don’t really know when to quit

having dropped the 365 i appear to have talked myself into a new self-imposed regime: a sketch every sunday (posted, rather than necessarily drawn, on sunday). i’m resurrecting my diy art school after spending an inordinate amount of time mooching around mithi’s blog over the last week. you prolly all saw her embroidery hoops on whipup, did you delve any deeper?

it’s rekindled my urge to ponce about retrain at art school. there’s a course local to me that looks like the perfect fit, but that wouldn’t be possible until G is at school, so a few years away still. in the mean time i’d like to broaden my basic knowledge and skills foundation-course-stylee, and mithi’s blog will be a great help since she posts many of her assignments in detail, so i can try my hand at a few.

i’ve got my own copy of drawing on the right side of the brain and i’ll be working through that, but in the mean time i thought i’d warm up with some random sketching. this is the second version of this picture. the first was my usual style and took half an hour or more. i wanted to see if i could do a proper 5 minute sketch rather than a drawing. it’s okay, and i think the shapes are actually more accurate, though maybe that’s because i’d spent so long looking at it drawing the first one.

i prefer the stylistic distinction between blanket and horse in the first version – the horse with more detail, more lifelike shading, and the blanket more sketchy, but this one’s more lively which is what i’m looking to develop in my drawings, i think i naturally tend towards overworking which can make them flat.

it was (briefly) summer here yesterday so i thought i’d waste some precious sx-70 blend film to celebrate.

two more

(since i won’t be posting so many pics now i’m done with the 365 i’m bringing them back over here, the uploading process over at click is complicated enough that with the extra step i end up not posting at all)

my advice to anyone thinking of trying a spears weaving loom (size 2) as a cheap/easy introduction to weaving: DON’T!

to be fair, yes, it’s just a toy, and i think it might be fine for short lengths – mats, pouches etc. – but the instruction book leads you to believe it’s possible to make a scarf, so that’s what we tried. the problem lies in the construction of the loom – putting tension on the warps pulls the bottom bar (cloth bar?) out of its slot. the problem got more pronounced as i wrapped more fabric around the bar, as i guess this angles both bar and warp threads so it’s more inclined to pull out. this was absolutely the longest length i could get before the loom became completely impossible to use. the system for tensioning the warps through little holes with pegs, whilst ingenious, is pretty fiddly to use too (although with the basic design flaw you really don’t want to be advancing very much anyway).

added to the problem of the loom itself was my choice of yarn. as with our previous weaving adventure i decided to use cotton as, basically, that’s all i have in any quantity. of course i soon found out why wool is suggested – the cotton is smooth and slippy and doesn’t want to hold in a balanced weave. i think we were actually okay for yarn weight/sett and something with more fuzz might have turned out quite acceptable. as it was the cotton really wanted to smoosh together a lot more, turning out more of a weft-faced fabric.

but that’s not to say we didn’t have fun along the way. it turned out to be a really good collaborative project for M & friend, passing the shuttle across to each other and taking turns to beat the weft, while i lifted the heddle (the comby bit the warp threads go through). the shed (gap you push the shuttle through) created by the loom wasn’t that big, so it wasn’t always easy to push the shuttle through, which M found frustrating at times. the girls really enjoyed me passing on little snippets about weaving in “the olden days” from my current reading, women’s work: the first 20,000 years.

in between cursing the loom i had fun too, the basic process had just the right balance of repetition and concentration, and i like how quickly it comes together at the wefting stage. i didn’t find the warping too onerous and i liked the observation that what we think of as “weaving”, where you’re adding in the weft, is actually only half of the process, that warping is weaving too. i think i would thoroughly enjoy the process on the right loom. um, anyone know if the schacht flip loom is available in the uk?

edit: fibrecrafts will be stocking the flip in about a month’s time…

new category >

a gift for friends who are emigrating. it occured to me right at the last minute (the day they left ) that i could make a little something as a welcome to your new home gift. there’s something i find so comforting about just looking at a quilt, so i thought a mini quilt for the boys’ (5 & 2) new room might be a good plan. when i realised i could use welsh wool for the appliques i was sold on the idea.

everything came together so quickly thanks to G rediscovering her equilibrium and napping for 2 hrs+ which gave time for the idea to emerge and crystalise, for me to get the fabrics selected and appliques cut before she woke. unfortunately it’s unlikely there’ll be much more of that around here now the holidays have started and there are infinitely more exciting things going on than sleeping in the mornings.

the wool is blanket scraps from melin tregwynt – this stuff is so soft, so beautiful, it will definitely be making appearances in more quilts around here.

the stars and heart-shaped rocket blast were cut from an alexander henry(?) fabric i’d stashed “just because” a little while ago. i got a few colourful funky kid prints at the same time. it won’t be any revelation to those who’ve been sewing/quilting a while but may be to any wouldbe quilters reading, just how important it is to stash when you can see a fabric you love and you can afford it, it doesn’t matter that you don’t have a project in mind. i feel incredibly indulgent when i do it, but it makes the creative process so much easier to have a wide selection of fabrics, all of which speak to you in some way, it makes combining them a real joy and unexpected combinations arise unbidden. everything i used was from stash. the chambray i bought in a fit of excitement after seeing shannah’s wonderful red cross quilt, the embroidery cottons were part of my haul from a swap night i organised with local crafty friends – i managed to get rid of more than i acquired, which left me feeling very virtuous (lol, yeah, if i could feel the virtue through the hangover…)

appliqueing the stars was a little trickier than i envisaged. i ended up sewing over a sheet of paper for stabilisation (worked a treat – you just tear the sheet off afterwards) while litfting the presser foot and pivoting every couple of stitches to get round the tight curves. as it was the machine wasn’t totally happy and skipped a lot of stitches. since i was using brand new needles and swapped to a heavier one, the remaining potential culprit for the skipping was the upper tension being too tight (i only just looked it up now), since i’d dialled that up before deciding on the paper stabiliser. luckily i wasn’t over-fussed on a perfect finish for this one. i had a good tip from the button shop lady on this one – to use a double thread in the top bobbin, but regular weight thread, rather than using a heavier thread. where it wasn’t skipping the finish was excellent.

i have to say all that pivoting – along with the skipped stitches, which i thought at the time was just the machine being temperamental – had my mind wandering to this little beauty that i have my beady eye on. i realised just how much use a knee lift would be if i was going to be doing a lot of this kind of thing. while i can’t find much info online about the silver viscount model it appears to be the exact same machine as the babylock quest which is getting rave reviews over in the states. i’d been tentatively scouting the market for larger throat machines for a while but couldn’t bring myself to seriously contemplate either a) a straight stitch only machine or b) the thick end of a grand. but for a smidgen over £500 this one looks like a steal.

the quilting was my favourite part of the whole thing, although my fingers aren’t thanking me for it. i used a perle(?) cotton which took a little persuading through the layers, but it was worth it for that heavy, hand-stitched look. the inspiration for this came from the habitat quilt i mentioned in the last post, which is just multicoloured lines of heavy thread quilting onto soft-as-butter neutral fabric. i really should have hooped it in some way to stabilise the layers (it’s all enveloped together) since it was so small i thought i could get away without but its puffing up rather unevenly. i busked the quilting lines, just scratching the next stretch onto the fabric with the needle.

i’m pretty pleased with this, it’s taken less than a week start to finish, with G in “not sleeping in the evenings” mode too. i love quick projects. and it’s been a good warm up for my next new project in the pipeline (heh, ignoring the wip that’s been cluttering up the sewing room for the last fortnight) with all that hand quilting…

i’ve had plenty of chance to have buyers remorse over this impulse purchase from sundance catalog. i ordered 2 in complementary colour ways and justified the purchase by deciding to give them to the girls. they’ve been on back order for weeks and the second has only just shipped. if it gets caught for customs like this one did we may not catch sight of it until the autumn.

but i’ve realised that for all the expensive blanket purchases i’ve agonised over i’ve never once regretted any. blankets make me happy. and this one turned out to be so much softer than i could have imagined. i even had second thoughts about exactly whose blankets they are to be – will the girls love and appreciate and care for them as much as i would? is it too much extravagance to give them such expensive things? they’d be just as happy with something disposable from ikea, right?

D suggested i give this blanket (which is nominally G’s, as M has her sights set on the orange and pink one to come) a trial run on our bed last night, that G was unlikely to notice. but almost as soon as she came up to wake us this morning (having been up for ages and fixed herself a peanut butter sandwich for breakfast ) M said accusingly “did you ask G if you could borrow her blanket?” and started chatting away excitedly about her orange one. i’m amazed she could see a thing through the blackout-blind gloom, but i guess that’s that cunning plan scuppered…

btw the quilt it’s resting on is last year’s expensive blanket impulse buy, from habitat

iron and ruler (last picture in my 365 project)

it had been on the wane for a while now, but i’ve decided to officially call it a day with the 365. i’m sorry i didn’t get to finish it – i don’t even know how far i got, perhaps 175?, i lost count a way back and never caught back up. the gaps were becoming more frequent and holidays have always been the time i find it hardest to keep up, so the start of the summer holidays seems like a good natural finishing point.

i started the project in the hope that it would keep me awake creatively, without demanding too much in the way of time, space or effort while i was concentrating on the new baby thing. and it worked a treat, although of course i managed to find plenty of ways of getting out of my depth and my camera collection has grown exponentially. it really got me much more comfortable with my dslr and photoshop, as well as reviving my interest in film and film processing. it helped me see in different ways, and really pushed me out of my comfort zone, particularly photographing strangers.

but my passion for the project melted away almost overnight as soon our little room took shape and i could sew again. i’m doing something textile-related every day now, so the need to keep something creative going with a camera has evaporated. i could try to push on with it, but i don’t want it to turn into a chore, and i don’t feel the need to prove anything to anyone, least of all myself.

i’m so glad i started the project, and took it as far as i did. looking back i’m rather astonished that i took some of those pictures. so 204 pictures (that’s the current count on flickr, there may be one or two knocking around here i never uploaded), 15 months (i said there were a few gaps!) and several shiny new cameras later, it’s goodbye project 365.

• textile design development course notes from the south west institute of tafe.
• that link via true up (kim from dioramarama’s other home) which is turning out to be a fantastic source of info and inspiration. she also has an amazon shop piled high with indispensible books for fabriholics – imagine how happy you could make the fabriholic in your life who has a birthday coming up
• design sponge: how to make a repeat pattern: the cut-and-stick way. i used a great online tutorial for the photoshop offset filter to get started with my spoonflower fabrics but i can’t find it anywhere now – it used a photo of a flower and involved duplicating layers and erasing to the underneath one – don’t suppose anyone knows the one i mean?
• making plaids in photoshop from the plaid queen herself michelle of cicada studio

hopefully will come up with more links to drop here anon.

i wanted to make a baby quilt that wasn’t babyish – cute but not twee. i don’t think i did too bad a job.

i learned more about fabric design working with my spoonflower fabrics (i.e. it’s much easier – and more economical – to work with non-directional prints than directional ones).

i learned how to starch properly, following the method here instead of the one on the side of the pack, and found how much easier it makes piecing and applique and making binding (i.e. i didn’t use it on the binding and it was a pig to sew).

i learned that attempting to machine applique a few mm from the edge of the piece doesn’t really cut the mustard (although you can’t really tell from any distance).

i learned the tightest curve i can manage with a quilting-length stitch and a walking foot (the answer being “not as tight as these damned circles!”).

i learned (after much swearing) that a blunt needle causes skipped stitches, as does one which is too light for the fabric/layers you’re trying to sew through.

i learned that lots of stopping and starting in quilting is Bad, and that a locking stitch would be a mighty fine thing to have on a quilting machine. having said that, i’m happy enough with the quilting design to overlook the little runs of locking stitches.

i learned that when your poncey adjustable glass-shaded lamp has a note in the box warning you have to hold it when you adjust it in case it falls and the shade breaks you should take this as a sign that it’s crappily designed and will loosen and smash all over your quilt if you so much as look at it and return it immediately to the shop.

i learned that a hoover a good shake out the window and a wash gets broken glass out of quilts

i remembered that chopping the edges off a quilt to make it square, whilst Naughty, does indeed make it nicely square and it almost looks well made from a distance

i shamelessly stole malka at a stitch in dye’s idea of a curtain wire on the wall, since we had one we weren’t using, and i struggle to take pictures of big stuff on the table. it gives me somewhere to hang projects in progress as well as just making the room look pretty

i subconsciously took rather more inspiration than i realised from this little quilt the lovely josie at mr monkeysuit (she of owl quilt fame) made for hillary lang at wee wonderfuls. i checked back on it as i knew it had been somewhere in the back of my mind with the circles and was rather alarmed at quite how similar my duckies ended up . on the other hand, the inspiration i took for the quilting from this exquisite quilt of alex’s was entirely conscious. i don’t believe i’ve seen the full quilt – i’ve wandered through moonstitches a few times looking in case i missed it but i don’t think i did. i really really want to see it, alex is my quilting heroine.

the top was a little awkward at times, but mostly trouble-free. i set out to use as much of my 3 spoonflower FQs as possible on the top, i worked the design out by cutting up to-scale pieces of coloured paper. the big circle used the bulk of the fabrics and i just played with placing the small circles until it looked right. i would pay slightly more attention to the orientation and arrangement of the little circles if i did it over again.

all the circles are appliqued: starched, pressed around a template and bodgingly stitched a few mm from the edge w/straight stitch – i wouldn’t do this again, i’d rather hand stitch, for that little extra time the finish is miles better. after i’d pieced the large circle i wasn’t happy with the bulk at the centre and i’d read recently someone say they’d had the same and chopped out the middle, so i appliqued another circle over the top then trimmed the underneath away. similarly, i “appliqued” the large circle onto the white ground and then cut out underneath – i did have a trial run at piecing curves and decided that with my sewing skillz this was by far the better way!

the overall size was determined by the backing, which is my one yard print. the finished quilt is 40″x31″ and would have been larger had i not lopped off part of the top i thought i wouldn’t need somewhat prematurely.

i knew what i wanted to do with the basics of the quilting – i have a thing about pintucks, and what i think of as japanese parallel lines of quilting – and i knew i wanted it to be curved and irregular, to keep it from being too stiff. and i wanted to bed the smaller circles firmly in that pool of ripples, without disturbing it too much. but i kind of stalled at that point. i hadn’t realised quite how much the large circle would scream “beach ball” once i’d added the smaller circle in the centre, but i certainly didn’t want to emphasise that by stitching in (or roughly-in-the-vicinity-of ) the ditches. but when i saw this picture i thought this simple pattern would fit in the segments, echoing the double lines around the small circles. i liked that it would be rather looser to offest the potential for death by quilting elsewhere the finished daisy effect isn’t quite in keeping with the mood i was aiming for, but i don’t think it’s a terrible choice. i picked a binding from my stash, it had to be polka dots really, and happily i had plenty of suitable yellows stashed. the simple joy of bias tape making aside i wouldn’t bother with a single-pass binding again. even using the walking foot i had problems with puckering and – despite my aversion to unpicking – i had to redo it several times until i got anything even vaguely satisfactory. i much prefer the finish on a turned binding, i think i might even revisit the improvised technique i used on the balloon quilt, since it made a nice neat finish without any obviously wandering stitching.

i’ve tried it for size and it’s a perfect fit for the cot, but for the moment it’s staying on the wire so i can take it in properly.

the whole spoonflower process is concentrating my mind wonderfully on colour profiles, colour spaces, colour modes… there’s an ongoing discussion on the spoonflower flickr group that is (slowly) enlightening me about all this stuff.

my only encounter with colour profiles to date has been the issue where i found my images appear much less saturated on flickr than they do in photoshop. in an attempt to address this i tweaked a few ps settings according to some random dude’s suggestions, without really understanding what i was doing, and ended up in sRGB. i don’t think this is the main cause of my colour shifts with spoonflower, but i don’t think it can have helped.

it does appear to have been the right thing to do for my saturation problem at least, according to this very helpful page: “Using Adobe RGB for web images leads to washed-out looking colors in applications that are not color aware (i.e. most web browsers)”.

but it looks as though i’m going to have to get a proper handle on the whole thing so i can flip between settings depending on what i’m working on. as part of my attempt to do that i’ll drop any helpful links i can find here:

• dry creek photo: colour management
• peggy jones on colour management, on colour settings, a gazillion other helpful digital imaging handouts
• computer-darkroom: soft proofing explains how to use the proofing view in photoshop (lol, the what? unconscious incompetence anyone ) and how to create a corrective layer group (where it refers to sets those are groups in cs2, who knows in cs3…). this depends on having a colour profile specific to your printer, when you install a device it has its own profile. i guess we need to ask whether spoonflower will supply us with ps profiles for their printer and in the meantime go through those we have and choose whichever looks nearest to the results we’re receiving.
• techexchange.com: colour management for digital textile printing i haven’t read this all the way through yet so not sure how relevant it is.

update: stephen at spoonflower says they are hoping to be able to make an icc profile available for download at some point in the future. yay

i have a tendency in all areas of life to switch on and off like a light, no happy mediums here. i pick up something new and eat, sleep, breathe it for a few months, then just as suddenly i’ll switch off (usually because something newer and shinier has caught my attention). this flitting from one thing to another leaves huge gaps in the development of my knowledge and skills, but because i want to get into everything up to my neck as soon as possible, the people i look to for guidance and inspiration are generally those people who’ve stuck at it for a long time and developed in a much more rounded way.

(coming to the point, promise) so this leaves me with that ever-familiar feeling that i’m racing to catch up. the world is turning without me and all those incredible projects in my head aren’t getting made. and i get frustrated with all the things that are standing between me and my making time, and that’s when it stops being fun.

i just finished a quilt and my first thought was “okay what next”, in the hope of clearing something off my mental memo board and making some space, without even stepping back and looking at the project i’d just finished. i forget it’s possible to make space between and within projects, that it isn’t a race. that, even though i have a shiny new work room to play with, free time can still be spent away from the sewing machine. that a rounded family life leads to a rounded creative life.

and while being online can be motivating and inspiring, tbh the last damn thing i need right now is any more inspiration, at least until i can check off my half dozen current or imminently pending projects. and reading blogs gives me a serious case of keeping-up-with-the-joneses-itis too, so i’m pledging here to trim my bloglines and spend less random web time too. i doubt any difference will show here tbh, my sporadic drive-by FO posting will continue, hopefully at a sustainable pace.

quilt teaser…

i was browsing flickr earlier and came across something very exciting, syko’s new window quilt. now this struck me in a number of ways:

• her style is instantly recognisable. i aspire to eventually developing a distinctive style of my own, but i think to do that i have to stop dabbling around and narrow my work a little so i can actually develop along a theme. i think i’m going to find that difficult as novelty has always been my driving force, knuckling down i don’t do so well…
• did she invent the idea of a window quilt? it wouldn’t surprise me in the least, she’s a talented woman. i’ve never heard of such a thing before, but it makes complete sense to add the play of light through fabric into the equation. layers and light and things obscured…
• i’ve been wondering for a long time how it might be possible to develop some overlap between my pictures and my stitching. various ideas have been floating around my head and they’re slowly beginning to crystalise. and with that i must go and play with drawing pins and cling film in the garden before it starts to rain…

/cryptic