Festival of Quilts 2024
Just one reason to love living in Birmingham - the Festival of Quilts is right on my doorstep!
I try and go most years as its such an inspiring event full of craft, ingenuity and colour.
There are always the most spectacular quilts to gawp at.
Some I can't fathom how they were constructed.
Others are just beautiful in the genius of their simplicity.
Others are luscious studies in colour which i find very inspiring to use myself.
People can be so creative with concepts too - like recording the headlines once a month or using the imagery of applique to bring attention to current affairs.
It really is one the most diverse and broad representations of Art that regularly shows - there was everything from the fine art of the craft of quilting right through machine & hand embroidery to the conceptual comment pieces made using the medium of fabric.
*
I feel topped up with inspiration to assimilate.
Around here lately
I’ve had some lovely teaching jobs through July.
I love guiding people to develop their creativity, bump up against some challenges to try new things and feel more confident and ‘can-do’ when they prevail.
Chasing the sun – cyanotype printing
When the sun shines in the UK you have to make the most of it whichever way you like and for me today it was to use up the remaining half a bottle of Jacquard Cyanotype liquid for fabric and do some cyanotype printing.
Cyanotype printing on fabric takes quiet a bit of prep work - last night I had to wait till the evening and then make my studio into a dark room and paint the liquid onto the fabric (blindly in the dark) and leave it to dry while it was dark out. Before I went to bed I put the dried fabric in a black lidded plastic box ready.
Another thing I like to use is dried things I've foraged or found but these are all best pressed and dried in advance. I included some of my design work which I had printed onto acetate to use especially. Vintage lace, crochet and pressed leaves all work really well too.
I learnt from last time when I stood in the dark trying to assemble these 'pictures' to prepare them ahead of time sandwiched between two sheets of acetate. A few slid about on the journey down to the garden this morning but were easily rectified. Then I could pretty quickly lay out the fabric and then the 'picture' on top. The edges of the acetate do sometimes register and get printed but this isn't a perfect past-time.
For full disclosure I did have 2 failures and both were caused by the wind gusting the acetate off the fabric into the air. This was solved by using the very heavy sheet of acetate which came in a paper cyanotype printing kit but I couldn't use it for the larger pieces opting instead to hang around ready to pin it down if nec ! I also think a got a 'less-blue' result probably from it having been open for 2 years and from me eeking it out on the fabric when I painted it.
Anyhow the dog had a nice morning warming her old bones and I've now got a little pile of lovely fabric prints to work with.
From design to stitch – I made a top!
This has been a long time coming.
Not just because I really need to be in the mood to sew (this has been waiting 18 months to happen) but because it seems one of those perfectly right, 'close-the-circle'- things that I think (as a pattern designer/sewer) that I ought to have done by now.
And I have.
There's a video over on Insta of the whole process from start to finish.
Japan – May 2024
We had a long-awaited holiday of a lifetime to Japan this year; one week in Tokyo, a few days south in Hakone and then up to Osaka where we could get to Kyoto, Kanazawa and Hiroshima.
Tokyo was full-on! Partly because its a 14hr direct flight with some jet-lag but also the scale of Tokyo needs to witnessed - it's BIG. Which means lots of subway connections to get to places.
I always enjoy an art gallery but was particularly interested to see what would be on show.
Typically Japanese it was a modest curation of the very best - a little of everything - in a quiet, understated way.
I did enjoy seeing how Japanese artists responded to the Impressionists - we hear so much about how the French artists were inspired by Japanese woodblocks that it was interesting to see that the dialogue flowed both ways.
Hakone was a relief of tranquility, water and greenery and the first sight of shrines with red Torii gates.
Which set us up nicely for more to come in and around Osaka: sunlit gardens where shadows played on the limited green palette but were still delightful for all the simplicity, traditional wooden houses and lanterns, Koi Carp in fishponds and ancient trees lovingly nurtured and supported through time.
There was also shopping! Japanese paper, stationery - which the Japanese do extremely well- artisan woodblocks and pottery, Cute Things (if you can personify something by putting a face on it, the the Japanese do) and a four story art shop where I modestly only bought a set of Gansai Tambi paints and some Japanese brushes - I think the Japanese nature of self restraint had affected me! I'll need to return :)
Black Primulas
Spring flowers are my biggest inspiration.
I should just block off a few weeks every Spring to sit and paint because I always find the volume of yummy flowers to paint outstrips the time available.
I loved doing this piece - just one of those enjoyable coming togethers of new brushes, a new watercolour-gouache hybrid paint I was testing (its gorg) some sunshine and a good audiobook.
Whole process videos here on Insta
