By sion, on September 29th, 2006%
Decided to finish as I started with this, so it’s all hand-quilted. Very chunky stitches, with varicoloured embroidery threads, because I was playing with a bunch of hazy ruminations about texture and colour and the partnership of thread and fabric. Was something to do while semi-zonked from the assortment of drugs and exhaustion over the last week or so. I think I’m going to bind it with black satin ribbon sewn or tied on with v narrow multicoloured ribbon. Yes I know it’s lairy, it’s supposed to be :p
My fingers and thumbs kind of hurt, both blistery ouch from wrenching thick needles & thread through unsuitable batting plus the collection of nasty holes (the one under my nail is ze owie). If I do anything else with handwork, I’m going to have to invest in some of those groovy little stick-on thimbles.
I have come to the conclusion that anyone who voluntarily handquilts a real quilt (like, bed-sized, or even a lapquilt) is absolutely stark – yes yes, I realise that with proper threads and needles and so on it’s a different and I made things awkward for myself as usual, but still. MENTAL.
By sion, on September 29th, 2006%
  I’ve got ladies migrating from one day to another as their schedules allow, so there’s no “Thursday girls” or “Saturday girls” etc any more. Roma’s decided to do both Tuesday & Thursday where possible, Joy is going to be coming to the next Saturday class, Chris is coming Thursday & Tuesday, Jill is going to squeeze in as much as she can as soon as her kids stop being horribly sick and her doc stops scheduling her for inconvenient tests.
Chris’s (right) is astonishing given this is her second class & she was totally unprepared for the first (actually came in to buy some fabric and decided to join us even though she’d forgotten it was on that day). She’s working at the speed I was expecting of everybody, possibly because she’s about as independent as I expected everyone to be.
 Joy’s schedule changed suddenly, so she’s not sure how many more times she can get to class. She decided to turn the panel she’d started into a cushion, so we chose some fabric that would work as both borders and for fussycutting and she finished it off. I suspect that on top of scheduling issues she’d gotten disheartened at how slow she was progressing (nobody believes me that it’s slog slog slog fiddle fuss slog god this is getting boring … oh WOW suddenly it all came together … lol), but she’s over the moon at how her cushion top looks and is looking forward to the machining class.
  The doc suggested with some asperity yesterday that I take a break & put both el & myself on bedrest, so I’m taking advantage of the long weekend and everybody playing musical chairs to take a week off. More if I need it, but I can’t go too long or Judy will be back, and these girls will get fed up with it if it turns into a neverending project anyway lol. I do actually feel significantly better today than I did yesterday, long & crazymaking day notwithstanding, so maybe all the meds finally kicked in properly & I’ll be sorted with a few days rest. My tip for this month would be: don’t catch this steenkin flu, it absolutely sucks donkey dangles.
Anyway. Roma’s (above) is coming along great, I reckon. She’s started on her goanna, and I lent her some pens so she could do more colouring at home. I suggested 3 of them shared a FQ of the grey fabric she’s used down the bottom there, because it’s great to fussycut & colour to suit, so she’ll be colouring that too.
By sion, on September 24th, 2006%
and here are a few pics from my Saturday class. El’s flu took a turn for the worse and mum rang all upset and wanted me to meet them down at casualty (El’s fine, but they decided it was time she was on antibiotics), so I just grabbed a couple of rough shots as I headed out the door. It was a good day despite the repeated escape attempts by my incredibly cranky lungs.
Morning shots (IOW, last week’s work + homework)…
Wendy:  
Sandra:   
I got sidetracked and didn’t get start-of-day shots of Margaret’s work, but here’s how hers was coming together by the end of the day (only the kookaburra and his branch & surrounding leaves are fused in place as yet):  
 Wendy’s end of day, background assembled – there’s a tree going on the right, which the parrot seen above will be sitting on:
Sandra end of day (she’d put all the other critters away, but they’re looking great too):
By sion, on September 22nd, 2006%
I thought I’d post pics of work some of the ladies are doing in the workshops. I didn’t want to cancel another session, so thought I’d just go in and give them a few things to work on, but ended up putting in a full day. Roma is galloping ahead and doing homework (and today she stayed after class to keep working, talk about keen lol) and doing a bit of experimenting. Joyce says she’s having a wonderful time with it, and she certainly seems to be enjoying herself. I start them all off the same way: each chooses one bird to start with, because even the slowest worker is going to get one bird complete on the first day. If they finish early enough, we start thinking about backgrounds and what sort of structure they want to build.
   These three all chose one of the kookaburras as their first bird, and then went for a single-piece background intending to add some fussycut detailing (rather than building up a complicated background with all fussycuts). Roma and Joyce chose my hand-dyes for backgrounds, while Karen chose a dense floral commercial print (which looks surprisingly good in a totally different way). One thing I’ve had a surprising amount of trouble with is convincing people (in all the classes) to extend branches etc to the edge of a block rather than float a branch or stump in a sea of background. All the ones who usually work on traditional pieced quilts also default to bunging stuff right in the centre (actually that may be the default for most people, I’ve just been assuming that the symmetry and precision and balance required with trad piecing is a habit that’s hard to break). As you can see, Roma decided her kookaburra was sitting on a fence rather than a branch, Karen extended both ends of hers clear to the edges, and Joyce got adventurous with the freehand cutting. I took these pics first thing this morning (before I could forget AGAIN) – the rest of last Thursday’s group are coming on other days, so I’ll try & take more as I can.
  Here are the results of their 2nd session (the others from last Thursday are doing theirs on another day). Roma had done another kookaburra for homework (above), but wasn’t happy with the placement (or the floating stump). I convinced her the placement was better than dead centre would have been, and we discussed some fixes for the stump. Since she wanted to extend a branch from the long tree block over into the top panel, her first task today was deciding how she wanted to assemble the hanging and then choosing a sashing fabric. While she was sewing I helped with fabrics for Joyce’s king parrot & Karen’s other kookaburra. Then I helped Roma with her tree fabrics while Karen was toying with a fence and Joyce was playing with her parrot & branches. Helped Joyce & Karen pick their sashing & tree fabrics, and by the time they had the blocks assembled it was about time to take an early mark.
By sion, on September 22nd, 2006%
Been playing with this for a few days. Hand-pieced, since El’s been demandingly cuddlesome even for her. Since I pieced it this way I may just go ahead and give hand-quilting a shot, just for fun. Probably with embroidery thread, which is one of those things I collect in pretty colours even though I never use it, just because I’m some kind of oversized bowerbird.
Anyhow. Got intrigued by a curved piecing article I glimpsed in a book a friend was reading, and did a half-assed version of her technique based on very faulty memory and lack of the correct products. And inability to get any time on the sewing machine, of course. I sketched a quick design on some freezer paper, cut assorted bits of it out & ironed to various fabrics, clipped & pressed some seam allowances (the concave side of a seam) over to the back of the freezer paper, and used a gluestick to tack the pieces together. Sort of worked, even though I was just using a bodgy cheap gluestick. Don’t think it would have stood up to sewing the seams on the machine, but I think I will get some of the proper supplies and try again on a larger piece because in some ways it was rather fun.
I’m a bit torn about this sort of thing, to be honest. I deeply, deeply admire beautifully pieced work, especially where curves are concerned. There’s a certain magic to true mastery of technique which is entirely distinct from the magic of the art … compare to dance, for instance. Watching good dancers can be enthralling purely for the play of muscle, the marvellous strength and agility and athleticism, the awe-inspiring control and skill. All that is distinct from (while contributing to) the illusion, the expression of story, which is the art. Or at least it can be seen to be so – one can possess technical mastery without artistry, and one can express artistry even without technical mastery. Um, anyway. Where was I going?
I think I was going to say something like, not sure I want to devote the time etc it would take to become really proficient at complicated piecing, and there’s no point in doing it if you’re not going to do it well. Partly because I get really obsessive about piddling stuff (a millimetre off on a point, for eg) and partly because I’m way too lazy to house so much perfectionist angst. So I tend to go for techniques (in any medium) which are less exacting and which require less planning – techniques which allow me to go with the flow and make it up as I go along, IOW. But then I feel self-conscious – even guilty or ashamed – about “taking the easy way out”, because I’m a twerp.
By sion, on September 17th, 2006%
I’m really impressed at how all the girls are all going in the workshops/classes. Despite the opinions of the ex and my brother, I’m obviously not bossy enough though – I will obviously have to learn to keep the brakes on and enforce a one-step-at-a-time approach, because otherwise some people get overexcited and manage to both ignore the notes and forget verbal instructions, and do something rather unexpected. Like cut a hole in the middle of a bird … because … well, we cut the centre of the fusible webbing out! It’s very nice at the end of the day when ladies who’ve been muttering all day about being too stupid or uncreative to be any good at this have got at least one beautiful bird ready for embellishment and a home. Two of the ladies yesterday had their backgrounds all planned out and had made a start on more birds, and they were the most vocally “can’t” until about 2pm.
At any rate, three fullday sessions down, and I keep getting so involved that I STILL don’t have any photos. I will hopefully rectify this starting Tuesday.
Meantime, I do have some pics of a couple of old prints & an unfinished drawing, recently unearthed from a box the ex brought down. I’d thought the drawing was lost, which sucked, because I couldn’t remember if it had been any good and because it was supposed to be a 2-page illustration spread for a story I wrote back in … 1993 I guess. Every now & then I unearth one of the iterations of illustrations for it, and think “I really should do something with that story …”
The others are a drypoint that I was never very happy with, a trite & fairly crappy linocut, and an etching taken from a plate before I did the aquatint (I thought I’d lost my only remaining print of this, too). I was bit obsessed with de Chirico and gameboards when I did these prints (1991), and they don’t do a great deal for me as prints, but I’d been looking for the drypoint for months because it kept nagging me as a starting point for a quilt.
I’ve been wanting to try something with pieced curves … whaddya reckon?
By sion, on September 14th, 2006%
ran my first workshop yesterday – class of one, ha. I was actually a bit relieved to get such a gentle toe-in-the-water, and she was over the moon to get a one-on-one session for peanuts lol. She had a ball, although by early afternoon she was starting to stress out a bit that she was intolerably slow or something … I kept saying no, it’s just like that, you’re doing all this fiddly stuff and more fiddly stuff and it feels like it’s taking forever, and then bang, suddenly it all comes together and you have a picture. She made a male fairy wren first, then his mate, and decided to put them on a piece of my multicoloured hand-dye as background. We thought it looked like they were just off the ground in light-shot undergrowth, so I showed her how to draw a stick the right shape for them to perch on, and she was going to put morning glory vines below them. Once she got the stick on though, suddenly it looked like they were perched up a tree in dense bush, and the “mossy” stick suddenly looked like a particular type of eucalypt bark, so she decided she’d do gum leaves instead for her homework. I’m hoping she gets brave enough to make a start on the kookaburra she wanted to do too, but I won’t be at all surprised if I end up extending the classes instead. I forgot to take my camera in dammit, so I won’t have a pic of my first student & her first block until next week, bah.
I have got the camera ready to take in tomorrow though, so I should get some from tomorrow’s mob. I’d better get to bed!
Did I mention that the pook has started preschool/daycare, and is absolutely loving it? She’s even napping in the afternoon, how’s that for positive peer pressure?
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CHITCHAT