Freedom Quilts

It seems like it has been quite some time since I blogged about my main occupation, quilt making, and yet, this is how I spend most of my days, even though I enjoy my little forays into mixed media, photography and graveyard visiting and all my other actitiving.

It's just that making quilts is very time consuming so there is little to show you while I'm in the process and on top of that there is the requirement of most shows not to have revealed your work to the world before the exhibition concerned opens. Such was the case for these 2 little (20 x 30cm) quilts, but they faced the public for the first time at the Festival of Quilts in Birmingham in August this year, so quite some time ago. I had so far forgotten I hadn't revealed them here.

They were both made for the theme of Freedom and will be travelling all around Europe for the coming few years, including exciting visits to Germany, the Czech Republic and Russia among others. This travellling exhibition is the brain child of a German quilter, Gudrun Heinz. She comes up with the themes (I'm participating for the 3rd time in one of her exhibitions), and organizes the busy schedule of where they will be exhibited. You can read all about coming venues, past exhibitions etc. on her website here. And there is also a CD available for each of these exhibition including the Freedom one.

My inspiration for both pieces came from a page in my Vintage Gluebook that you can see underneath on the left hand side. The vintage image I used on that page seemed to embody the Freedom theme to me. And by great synchronicity the page actually shows a map of a German city as well as gothic German text. How's that for co-incidence! It was simply meant to be turned into pieces for a German exhibition.

All the fabrics I used were hand-dyed and painted and of course they also feature my signature embellishments, seed beads! The figure was printed onto cottom fabric sheets and appliqued down. There are also postage stamps as well as vintage paper text (covered in Glossy Accents) and the title: Je suis libre, which translates as I am free from French. It sounds a lot more exotic in that language!

More Vintage Gluebook Pages

Here are the other 4 vintage gluebook pages as I promised yesterday. For all information about this swap, run by Mary Green, see my blogpost yesterday. The page above Hearts across the Sea) was the one I originally wanted to keep myself but now

I'm leaning towards this one, called My Travels. I'll have to make up my mind definitely when I packed them up tomorrow to mail them off to Mary!

And I'm also quite fond of this one which has an original photo on it. Who was this woman? Apparently a gifted gardener judging by her splendid blooms! It's called Varieties.

And finally there is Entertaining Guests, again with a playing card bought from Mary herself.

Vintage Gluebook Pages

Mary Green, our teacher for the Vintage Gluebook Class last year, is hosting a swap for Vintage Gluebook pages. You can find all the necessary information here, both about the swap as well as to sign up. She will bind the pages we get in return for us as well as gift us some of her actual vintage treasures. What could be better. So while my mother was here I mananged to make most of the pages by going to bed a bit later and getting up a wee bit earlier. I get quite narky if I'm not arting so it did help me maintain a good mood too.

All my pages use real vintage material and in total I made 8 pages of which I'm showing you 4 here, the next 4 will be on a future post. Mary requires only 6 for her swap and I made an extra one for her and also one for me to keep and add to my vintage gluebook when the returns come back. I used postage stamps on almost all the pages as well as inking the edges of every page with a walnut coloured inkpad.

The one above is called Finest Grown.

And here is Liberty Song after the title of the music. I started all pages by cutting watercolour paper to the required size (5 x 7") and gluing down a vintage page of text, without paying much attention to the text. In the end I used that text as the starting point for what came next on the page.

An actual vintage photo became the centrepoint for this page, called Un Grand Garcon (translates as A Wonderful Boy

And the final page for today is called Bliss. There is a vintage postcard as the focal point featuring the Palace of Versailles, and the loving couple comes from a playing card that I orignally bought in Mary's Etsy shop.

Mary Green's August Challenge

Mary Green , our teacher for the Vintage Gluebook class, issues a challenge on her blog every month, where she generously provides everyone with a collage sheet with 3 vintage images. August was no exception as you can see here.

All she asks is that you make something, the choice is yours, in which you use whole or a part of every one of the 3 images. I really shouldn't have given in to temptation (my To Do list is growing by the day!) but I was feeling sort of funny all day, due to the non-stop rain, the fact I drove all the way to the Hobbycraft shop (a round trip of 50 miles) to buy black Staz-on inkpad and guess which one was out of stock, and my dental visit yesterday. So I decided I needed a treat.

This is my contribution for her challenge, with the woman, the label and the words Je aime and La femme the required elements. I added vintage music, a vintage backing sheet from an old book and the vintage text which reads: the young wife could not avoid reflecting upon the situation in which she was placed. The background was a previously painted blue page in a watercolour sketchbook.

My first Art Journal page

Lenna has long been an inspiration to me and we have been following each other's art journeys for many years now. We did classes together (online as she is in Florida and I'm in Scotland!) and she taught me about stamping while I hope I have shown her how much fun sewing and fabric can be. We did the Sketchbook Project last year and again this year, as well as the Vintage Gluebook class. Lenna herself teaches many great classes online, such as this one.

So when she started an Art Journal and started working in it every day, I paid attention, not just because her spreads were beautiful but also because I had many journals in my studio but sadly they had remained empty so far. I had purchased them to make me start but that hadn't worked and all they were doing were making me feel guilty. However what those journals couldn't do, Lenna achieved by simply showing me the way. So I have started, and with a vengeance. I have one altered book on the go to journal in and 2 Moleskine Sketchbook Journals, one portrait and one landscape orientation.

If you want to start too, have a look here where Lenna gives you some hints and tips to do so! And for further inspiration you can't do better than to look at all the spreads she has produced so far on her blog.

I'm not aiming to journal every day like she is, but I will try and finish at least a spread every week or so and show them here, without much explanation, but simply to demonstrate how I journal and what I end up with. Having the shed to work in is a great help as that way my quilts and my paints don't get to meet up unless I want them to! I started this first spread in the altered book and had painted and sprayed the pages weeks ago when I was painting something else. Then I added my pictures of a red geranium, added the tape, started doodling flowers and then wrote. I found doing it in different stages really worked for me, I like letting things just happen. No idea where the Persevere idea came from, perhaps because I was having a difficult day at the time but it seems to be rather appropriate for the start of my Art Journal journey!

It took a few days before I finally decided this page is most definitely done and showing it here means I won't go back to it again.

A Lonely Ocean Journal Quilt

Way back when I promised I would show you all 4 Fantasy Journal Quilts, made for the competition organized by Grosvenor Exhibitions. I got as far as 2 and you'll probably be thinking I forgot all about it. And it's true, I did. Life and the exhibition got in the way but I remembered these again when they returned home last week after having been exhibited at the Quilt Show in Malvern. At the same time my rozette also arrived, a trophy and a fabulous collection of fabrics, all part of my 1st Prize. Such a treat. This one is not part of the 2 that won the first prize but nevertheless, it was one of my favourites.

The spread I did in my Vintage Gluebook (this class is still available, by the way, and with a reduction in the price. Find out more here) was the inspiration and as you can see I've not altered all that much apart from the orientation. The spread is landscape and the JQ portrait. There is a lot of use of printing the vintage images and text onto fabric, use of dyed and painted fabric, and also lots of embellishment with actual shells, which makes this the most delicate of all 4 JQs but nevertheless it came home unscatched. The cross shaped embellishment was a great find in among my bits and pieces and in my mind at least represents the Southern Cross star.

It won't be long now before I'll post all about the last JQ in this series, which is both the first one I made and the one I love the best!!

Labyrinths of Wonder Journal Quilt

Time to show another Fantasy Journal Quilt and this time is one from the other pair I submitted rather than the winning pair. As I mentioned in a previous post I put the pairs together quite randomly depending on their colour schemes.

This one was inspired by the page seen above made in my Vintage Gluebook and in this case I used the original vintage image, from a children's magazine published around 1905. This made it necessary to scan it in from my gluebook itself and because I wanted it on a very much larger scale for the Journal Quilt I scanned at 1200 DPI. This seemed to work well as the larger image on the JQ doesn't seem to have lost any definition. A mix of commercial fabrics and ones I had printed onto cotton fabric myself form the background of the JQ. The musical fabric was a black/white commercial fabric I antiqued with tea. The stamp is an actual postage stamp and the text comes from the same book as mentioned in the previous blog post. And yes, I lived up to my reputation as the queen of embellishment!

Here is a view of my non-winning pair as they were hanging at the recent Ingliston Quilt Fair, and I'll come back to the other JQ in the near future.

The Mystery of Sin Journal Quilt

As promised I'm returning to the Journal Quilts on the theme of Fantasy, one pair of which won the 1st prize in the competition. You had to enter a pair and I did go a bit mad and produced 2 pairs for no other reason than that I had such a great time making them! The winning pair encompassed the first and the last JQ I made on the Fantasy theme. They were put together as they sort of matched because I used the same green fabric in both.

All the Fantasy Journal Quilts were a direct result of taking the Vintage Gluebook class with Mary Green early in 2010. I have long had a love affair with vintage images and vintage books but that class woke me up to the fact that owning these treasures also meant that I could use them. So I had a wonderful time during the classes using sometimes the original vintage images and occasionally copies of them. You can find my pages by clicking on the Vintage Gluebook label in the sidebar. The resulting gluebook has become a firm favourite in my studio. One day I was casually leafing through it and that was when the thought struck me: "Why not translate some of my favourite pages into fabric?". Yes, indeed, why not, I am a quilter after all, and fabric will always be my first and deepest love.

This JQ was in fact the last one I finished and it was entirely inspired by a wonderful engraving I bought on Ebay, for no other reason than that I was overcome with that "must have" feeling as soon as I spotted it while aimlessly (well no, in fact I'm always hunting for vintage treasure!) browsing through a site dedicated to old engravings. It arrived (see picture above) and was entitled: Musidora Sorrows Lady Lake Christian c. 1795. I haven't had the time to do my own research on it yet but the site I bought it from has so far been very trustworthy in their descriptions. The lady will re-appear in future work as she was quite expensive so will have to work hard to make up for that! By the way the place I bought her from turned out to be located up north here in Scotland and one of these days I'll get in the car, drive for about 4 hours, spend a fortune, drive back 4 hours, and return home as pleased as punch!

As you can see I've mirror-imaged the original lay-out in the Journal Quilt. This was necessary not for any design reasons but because I had a piece of fabric with roses that were oh so suitable but were facing the wrong way. As the lady was a digital file by this time (I scanned her in!) it was easier to mirror-image her than to look for another fabric. I had made up my mind that rose fabric had to be part of the JQ! And once that happens I'm as stubborn as a mule.

The JQ is entitled The Mystery of Sin, and that text comes from an astonishing book I picked up for 50 pence. It has the title Proverbial Philosophy and was published in 1867 by an author with the letters F.R.S after his name which should have been a warning to me about the contents. To describe this as a religious book is a gross under-representation of its contents. And then the penny finally dropped in my dippy brain: the proverbial in the title stands for Proverbs! I know it's now almost 1.1/5 centuries since its publication but this book made my mouth fall open in total amazement at the garbage within! However, I'm not complaining, there are true gems of sentences in there of which The Mystery of Sin is only a small example!

The JQs are still travelling with Grosvenor Show Spring Fairs and will also be on display at the Malvern Quilt Show, 19th - 22nd May so if you're in the U.K. you might have a chance to see them in person.

Fantasy Journal Quilts

Time to reveal my final piece of good news and as you can see above my pair of Journal Quilts on the theme of Fantasy have won the 1st Prize in the JQ travelling competition. If you're in the U.K. you can see them at the Grosvenor Show Spring Quilt fairs and their final appearance will be at the Malvern Quilt Show.

Sadly I won't be able to be there for the prize giving ceremony as I'll be at the Loch Lomond Quilt Show which is on during the same weekend and where I am exhibiting 3 quilts in the 30 of the Best exhibit as well as a special project quilt for the upcoming book about 10 Scottish quilters, which will be published in 2012. So it was with even more pleasure that I viewed all the JQs today. I made 4 Journal Quilts for the competition (we had to make at least one pair to participate) and I will be returning to all 4 JQs in more detail in the very near future on this blog, I promise! But their inspiration was provided by some of the pages in the Vintage Gluebook I made last year!

As for my shopping spree, isn't it amazing how when you have money you can't find anything to buy but on the other hand if you don't want to spend much, you almost fall over all the gorgeous things you MUST have. Very strange. Anyway I did buy some items, but really only things I really needed such as 3 different sorts of machine needles and something to clean my iron (that should give you some idea of how badly I treat it, as I buy this almost anytime I see it for sale somewhere). A cake slice pack of batiks was my only indulgence. Such a good girl and now, what shall I do with the money I haven't spend??!!

No need of many words page

The New Year is getting off to a good start as I have almost cleared my To Do list in a frenzy of arting. If you had peeked in my studio you might have spotted the steam coming from the top of my head!

The first piece I made was in response to Mary Green's monthly challenge, in which she gifts us a PDF file with 3 vintage images. All she asks in return is that you make a piece of work that includes all 3 of the images (or details of them). You can see this month's sheet here. Download it and play!

I used a page from a French vintage dictionary and used this as my background. To that I added the building image (also true vintage) of which I tore the edges to blend it in with the dictionary page. The ledger (image from Mary) was torn up and the edges were antiqued with a Distress Inkpad and the couple (image from Mary) were cut out from their background and applied to the one I had created. Finally I added the roses (the 3rd image from Mary) as shown.

Vintage text was found and glued on as well as a vintage postage stamp.

I'm also participating in Mary's Green Paper Collage Club this year (as you can see in the right-hand side bar of this blog) where we're receiving vintage images and tutorials from Mary twice a month. You can sign up per month or go wild and subscribe for the whole of 2011. Guess what I did!

Mary's December Challenge

The previous two posts were all about the snow and might lead you to believe I'm not working! Not true! Or rather not entirely true. Yes, a lot of time has been spend outside but I have also beaded more than 100 blocks (over half way!) and I have even managed to produce a spread in my Vintage Gluebook. This is partly in response to the December challenge on Mary's blog and partly also in response to her Collage Basics classes.

Her challenge works as follows. She gifts us a collage sheet of 3 images on her blog and we have to use all three to make something. What is up to us and it was my choice to use my gluebook. It only has room for one more spread now and it's satisfyingly fat! I used Mary's images (some several times and in different sizes) and only added a vintage music sheet to the composition.

Vintage Fashion ATCs

I'm hosting another swap on the ATCsforAll site and once again I have chosen something vintage as the theme for the swap. Since doing the Vintage Gluebook class I've really developed even more of a taste for vintage and I'm looking forward to starting the Collage Basics course (like the Gluebook one taught by Mary Green). You can do this class too, just click on the relevant button in the right-hand sidebar of this blog.

For my own Vintage Fashion ATCs I started with watercolour ATC blanks to which I glued pages from a variety of vintage books such as dictionairies, encyclopaedia and music. Once dry I overpainted with gesso, shaded pink with acrylic paint and once that had dried I added buttercup yellow spray paint.

I overstamped the card with a large text stamp and then added the fashion plate images, in the shape of clear tape transfers. They too come from vintage books. The next additions were the black rub-ons (clocks, birdcage etc) from 7Gypsies. I found suitable text for all the cards and antiqued the edges with a Distress Inkpad. The final ATC (shown underneath) also needed a gold Dresden corner embellishment.

What is beauty?

First of all my apologies for the continuing silence here on this blog! I managed to download my Collage Coterie lesson at lunchtime yesterday but last night I simply could not get this blog to upload any pictures and in the end I gave up, specially as the weather outside was gorgeous and the sun beckoned!

It seems to be back to what passes as normal here in dial-up country so I will be catching up on art over the coming days.

First of all I made another spread in my Vintage Gluebook in response from a challenge issued by our teacher Mary Green on her blog. She has provided us with 3 vintage images and we have to use them all (or part of all) in whatever project we like. My Vintage Gluebook is almost full (only 2 more spreads to go!) and you can see how I have used the 3 images. Of course, Mary's images have been printed out by me, so are not real vintage. The background behind the actress has been made by me from a vintage Holy Card and printed out, but the image of the theatre as well as the music and text are true vintage pieces although the red round embellishments are thoroughly modern. I've also added chalk colouring to the lady.

I found the vintage quotation while searching through my box of vintage materials and it seemed to suit this spread so well!

Changes in the Appearance Spread

I have been lagging behind a bit with the Collage Coterie Class due to my mother's visit but I did manage to download our latest lesson on Sunday and today, after taking my mother to the airport, I sat in the sun with my vintage materials, scissors and a gluestick to make another spread in my Vintage Gluebook.

The lesson instructions included how to make a clear tape transfer and you'll have seen those before on my art as I have been using them for a long time. But using a vintage image to make a clear transfer was new to me as I did not realize that it would still work with the ink, even after such a long time.

The transfer can be seen on the left and is of an emperor of Austria from a vintage book, published in the early 1900's. Everything else on this spread is true vintage apart from the lovely lady. She came from one of the cards given to me by my brother-in-law, who sells postcards on Ebay. She is a beautiful girl and I did not want to damage the card itself so used a copy instead. I also coloured her in with chalks and outlined her with brown NeoColorII crayons. I rubbed the line with a wet finger to spread it about a bit. The stamp was the last item I added to the spread.

Three is Company

Despite a lovely day outing with my mother I still found some time this morning to keep up with the Collage Coterie class. Our excellent teacher, Mary Green, prompted us to use three in some way and I selected to make another spread in my Vintage Gluebook.

Everything on the spread is genuine vintage. And as you can see I've used 3 figures (the one on the right is Bismarck!), and also 3 postage stamps. I could not help myself and just wanted to add the text which I found in a vintage quotation book and which reads: Three is Company.

Wandersmann Spread

Lesson no 3 in our wonderful Collage Coterie Class was all about shapes in collage and I incorporated 2 different shapes in my spread, triangles and ovals. Everything on this spread (made in my Vintage Gluebook) is true vintage (no copies at all!). The triangles come in the shape of two cathedral spires, the one on the right from pre-war Germany and the one of the left from St. Petersburg at approx. the same time. The ladies in the ovals are the Tsarina of Russia on the right and a German empress on the left. I also added Neocolor Pastel crayons around the ladies to integrate them into their respective pages, using orange, black and white crayons and my wet fingers. Wandersmann means Wanderer, I think. I can't locate my German-English dictionary at the moment but am pretty confident about the translation.

Talking about shapes, there were some beautiful shapes to be admired in the garden we visited yesterday. On the lawn the piece de resistance was an enormous Cedar of Lebanon tree. Even the name sounds mysterious and Eastern and the tree was so impressive. Equally enormous as the tree were its cones, simply huge compared to those of the average evergreen. And an oval!! Perhaps that's what inspired the spread seen above. And the tree could be seen as a triangle.

One Great Secret

And it's up to you to guess what the secret is. As almost always I sort of wrote a story in my head when I made this collage but I like to leave the interpretation of the art up to each individual viewer! My brain can be a cesspool from time to time and the story I came up with was pretty rude!

We're already up to Lesson 2 in the Collage Coterie Class and this one was all about colour and contrast and our prompt was to be Inspired by Nature.

I took this perhaps a bit more literal than Mary Green, our teacher, meant it and for those of you of a tender disposition, a word of warning: yes, there is some nudity in this spread, although of a very subtle nature. I bought the engraving this figure was taken from on Ebay for no other reason than that I just had to have it. It's beautiful! Mary demonstrated to us how to use chalks and I knew I had some somewhere. I re-acquainted myself with the contents of my painting supply cupboard and there they were. These were pearl pastels and suited my image wonderfully well. Although this spread is for the Collage Coterie class , I actually made it in my Vintage Gluebook as everything on it is either true vintage or photocopied from true vintage material.

When I was finished layering and glueing everything in I had a look to see if it all worked together and to my intense astonishment discovered the word Peebles on the map underneath the semi-nude figure on the left (it's sort of underneath the fence). I live in Peeblesshire and only about 12 miles away from Peebles. It's where my quilt exhibition will be next year. What are the chances of this happening? I reckon it must be more than one million to one. The universe simply gifted me with this synchronicity and I am truely grateful. I then also spotted the word Milestone virtually under the feet of the same figure and I could only wonder at the great secret of it all! I think the vintage map is of North and South Dakota.

The nature inspiration can also be found in the proliferation of roses, both on the vintage wallpaper I used as background on both pages and in the roses on the Holy Card.

Letters from Herr Spread

Before starting my next online class with Mary Green (called Collage Coterie and you can sign up here!) I wanted to do another spread in my Vintage Gluebook using some of the items acquired at the Antiques Fair. I positioned one of the birds I uploaded a few posts ago on the right-hand page, and used as background a green end-paper found in one of my vintage book, accompanied by a piece of vintage wallpaper and a detail of a vintage map I also picked up (for only £1!). It's a map of Brigthton and environments and I have used the picture on the front of the map on the left-hand side, both as copies, rather than the original. I added more of the same wallpaper as well as German vintage text and some of my vintage stamps. Would you believe I bought another almost full stamp album? If you read this blog regularly this will no doubt not surprise you too much!! I definitely feel that I'm going to dedicate a sketchbook to stamps before too long.

The final touch was the text: Letter from Herr to pull it all together.

Count on Me Spread

The teacher for our marvelous Vintage Gluebook Class, Mary Green, has issued another challenge on her blog. She has once more provided us with 3 beautiful vintage images and we have to use all 3 or at least part of all 3 in our project. Of course, I could not resist!

And here is my spread in which I have also used various images from downloads available in Mary's e-store as well as some vintage text and music from my own supplies. The lady in question is Lady Randolph Churchill although I have taken the liberty of re-christening her for the occasion using text from the cheque that Mary provided. Part of that also found its way onto the left-hand spread. The cheque also provided inspiration for my choice of musical background. "Count on Me" seemed appropriate!

Let the Sunshine In Spread

It seems like ages since I last made a spread in my Vintage Gluebook. Most of my attention is directed towards the Sketchbook Project at the moment but despite that fact, I do have my regular wanderings around Ebay 's vintage materials. Really, there should be a pop-up window whenever you click on Ebay saying that "visiting this site can seriously damage your financial health"! I try and not spend a lot on any single vintage item I bid for but all those little amounts can still add up to quite a lot!

Not that this is a complaint, definitely not. I love getting my little packages from all over the world and opening them with eager hands. And this week I had a particular wonderful experience when I found what I have been looking for, for quite some time now! In the process I saved myself £120 so even from a monetary point of view I did well. I will reveal all about this in an upcoming post.

For the spread in my gluebook I used the cover of an Almanac from 1891. Although I did not pay very much for it, I don't want to use it but leave it intact so the image on the left-hand side of the spread is a copy, rather than an original, but everything else on this spread is real vintage. In fact the gentleman sleeping the day away in his wheelbarrow comes from the same illustration as the boys in The New Boy spread.

I made this spread sitting in our new shed in my very own little corner which I have claimed as my own, looking out over the lawn and when I looked up there was a phaesant hen eating seed which I had thrown for the birds. So beautiful! I'm beginning to understand what it is with men and their sheds!