Happy Valentine ‘s Day

MiniMini 34

The progress on my MiniMini quilts is painfully slow. But slow progress is better than no progress at all so I'm trying not to mind. This is number 34 and at the moment I haven't quite decided how many more I need but definitely more than 34!

All these quiltlets are 6" (or 15cm) square and will be put together eventually into a larger piece of work. This one is machine quilted, raw edge appliqued with hand stitching, and hand beaded with size 11 seed beads. It is further embellished with a button.

I always photograph them against other things so you can see the scale of the work (see top picture). Seeing the picture I might decide to do some dusting today!

minimini 31

These minimini (6 x 6" or 15 cm square) quilts are another example of small projects that can be fitted in whenever there is a spare moment. I am steadily making them but uploading them here takes a bit longer. This is no. 31. I am hoping to make 100 in due course and put them together into one large piece of work.

They were originally started (at least the first 6) as part of an Instagram challenge by the Make Modern magazine and I enjoyed them so much that I have simple continued.

All of them are machine quilted, raw edge appliquéd and hand beaded. This one also has a modern button.

To show the scale I have nestled this one in among a gunnera leaf.

MiniMini 19

Progress on my minimini quiltlets is slow, very slow. As is progress on everything else due to Flora's sweet presence. But there is no rush. Eventually this series of 100 small pieces (6" or 15cm square) will be done and when it is, I will put all of them together into one large piece of work. There are no flowers outside to show off the small scale so I resorted to this picture above that also features some of the vintage china that came to us from my mother-in-law. The little angel represents the spirit of the holiday season.

The quilt is machine quilted, raw edge appliquéd with hand stitching, hand beaded with size 11 seed beads and embellished with a yellow button.

November Journal Quilt

This is the penultimate journal quilt for this year. All the JQs are sized 8 x 10 for the challenge on the Contemporary Quilt Group and the group also set the requirement that each journal quilt has to contain a coloured piece of fabric at least 1/2" square. For November the colour of this piece was orange.

I made the choice to use tartans and tweeds for my journal quilts this year and to give them a folksy, handmade look. This has proved harder to achieve than I had originally anticipated but I'm getting better at it. Sadly there is now only one month left to go!

Most of the fabrics I used came from the Lochcarron Woollen Mill and from Fabric Affair. Needless to say that over the course of the year I have acquired so many tartans and tweeds that I could easily make another 12 journal quilts, but I'm sure they will come in handy sometime in the future.

This piece was hand quilted, raw edge appliquéd with hand stitching, hand beaded with size 11 seed beads and further embellished with vintage buttons, some of them wooden ones. The binding comes from a piece of ShweShwe fabric bought from the African Fabric Shop

September Journal Quilt

The year is galloping on towards the finishing line and we have now arrived at the last 4 journal quilts for the Contemporary Quilt Group that all have to contain a piece at least 1/2" square coloured orange after our previous colours of 4 purple and 4 green. The Contemporary Group also set the size at 8 x 10".

You are probably aware by now that I'm using tartan and tweed fabrics for my journal quilts this year, coming from Lochcarron Woollen Mill as well as from Fabric Affair.

 I'm trying to make my journal quilts look folksy which has been much harder than I imagined when I started. Techniques used are: hand quilting, raw edge appliqué with hand stitching, hand embellishing with beads and buttons.

The large yummy button you can see above came from Daytona Trimmings in West 39th Street, NY. We found this shop in the same street as our hotel and although still closed when we tried the door at 8.30 am on a Saturday morning, Neil came to the door and led me in. Such service and what a treasure trove the place proved to be! Highly recommend a visit if you should find yourself in New York.

minimini 8

I'm well on my way with making the miniminis now and I'm leaving other things on my desk while I dedicate myself to making more. This is number 8 already. I won't be writing much now about how I came to make these tiny modern quilts but just work steadily on till I have 100! For scale I will try and photograph them with other things such as this first rose out in our garden.

This one is machine quilted, machine pieced, raw edge appliquéd with hand stitching, hand beaded and embellished with a button.

If you want to see the other ones I have made so far you can do so by clicking on the mini mini label in the sidebar or underneath this post.

March Journal Quilt

 This is my monthly journal quilt for March. I'm doing these as part of the Journal Quilt challenge on the Contemporary Quilt Group. They determined the size at 8 x 10", portrait orientation and also stipulated that the first 4 months were to have a piece of purple fabric in it, at least 1/2" square.

 I made the decision to use tweeds and tartans for my journal quilts this year with a lot of hand stitching and embellishment. No one, I think, will doubt after all these years that I can make quilts in the traditional way so I have given myself permission to make these in a very untraditional fashion. No piecing but instead a lot of raw edge appliqué all held down with hand stitching.

As several people have pointed out I could have used my embellisher machine to bind all those layers together. However  that sort of misses the point. It was because I am so in love with the quality and feel that hand quilting gives, that I choose to do it my way. Most of the fabrics in this one came from a visit some weeks ago to LochCarron Woollen Mill in Selkirk. I was a bit nervous I wouldn't have enough fabrics for all my JQs this year so at last week's quilt show in Ingliston I was over the moon to find more tweeds. I probably have enough fabric now to make much more than 12!

February Journal Quilt

The time as usual is flying by and it's already a new month and thus time to show you a new Journal Quilt. I am making them this year for the Contemporary Quilt Group who set the size at 8 x 10" portrait orientation. Their other requirement is to add a purple patch at least 1/2" square to each journal quilt for the first 4 months of the year.

I have also set my own "rules" in that I am using a selection of tweed fabrics, some of them from my visit to LochCarron Woollen Mill last year. I aim to give my JQs a traditional patched look while at the same time using far from conventional ways of putting my JQs together with a lot of raw edge appliquéd hand stitching.

 And of course my usual embellisment with vintage buttons and size 11 seed beads. 

And  I haven't forgotten that purple patch!

January Journal Quilt

Finally a piece of stitched work is appearing here on this blog. I don't think it has featured since the beginning of December last year when I uploaded my last journal quilt for that year. This is the first one for 2016, unimaginatively named January. Still that says what it is. I'm making these monthly for the challenge set by the Contemporary Quilt Group. They set the size for this year at 8 x 10", portrait orientation. The other requirement is that for the first 4 months of this year the journal quilts have to included a piece of purple fabric at least 1/2" square, for the next 4 months that colour changes to green and for the last 4 months to orange.

I also set my own "rules" and I'm going to use a mix of tweed and tartan fabrics, most of them coming from Lochcarron Woollen Mill. The fabrics itself were my inspiration.  One of their fabrics forms the background which was hand quilted.

Pieces of woven cloth were put on top of each other and each layer was hand stitched down. Beading was added around each layer with size 11 seed beads and vintage buttons were added on top.

Finally I sewed on the binding which is an African fabric (from the African Fabric Shop) and as per usual I did my signature beading around the edges of the binding. It was great to sit and do lots of hand stitching again. Now for that large quilt which is still lingering in the studio.

Prinstagram Buttons

When I discovered that Social Print Studio were starting a new line printing instagram pictures on pin buttons (1" in diameter and like a brooch at the back)  I just had to give it a try. I do love how they print your instagram pictures on cards, stickers, film strips and little books but buttons sounded even more delightful. And I was not disappointed.

Here they all are (I could not resist a double order, to save on postage!). 30 wonderful 1" buttons featuring my art and photographs and I predict that you will see them again popping up in future projects. At the moment I'm simply enjoying putting them together in different arrangements. Oh, the simple pleasures of life!

Art Exchange

Many people who know me well are also aware that my studio is a veritable treasure trove of goodies and whatever you're looking for in the way of supplies it's a fair bet that somewhere I will have something that suits. The reason I have so much (quite apart from my magpie tendencies!) is that when I'm in the creative zone I don't want to stop in order to go somewhere and buy the supplies I need for that particular piece. Living in the country as we do that usually means a day excursion and I lose the flow! Instead I buy stuff that I love whenever I see it anywhere or alternatively buy during late night online shopping expeditions. But making sometimes very large quilts means that even my supplies occasionally do get depleted. One supply that I can never get enough of is that of small, white, vintage buttons and recently I even moaned on this blog about just how fast they seem to disappear into art.

One of my regular blog readers, Jewels, contacted me by e-mail to tell me that she has a large stash of them and offered to swap some of them for a piece of my art. And here is the piece in question. It's called the Bird Inchie quiltie for obvious reasons! The imagery on this little quiltie comes from Alphastamps and the inchies were made using my fabric paper collage method. If you are interested in how that is done, just click on the fabric paper collage label below and the oldest post there will explain it step by step.

In exchange I received a gorgeous package from Jewels filled with beautiful vintage buttons and other goodies. Yummy! Only problem is they are so lovely that I will be saving them for that extra special project I'll make one of these days! You can read more about this and see more pictures on Jewels' blog post here.