Have you enjoyed visiting a quilt/ textile show or Open Studio this summer? I’m sure many of you have, but have you every given a thought to what goes on BEFORE  to get everything ready?

This year we started early with thread...a festival of textiles at Farnham Maltings, then in August, which is far from being a holiday month for InStitches, saw us start with the The Festival of Quilts at the NEC, Birmingham and close with The West Country Quilt and Textile Show at UWE in Bristol and at the end of September we shall be taking part in the Wokingham Arts Trail.

So, what exactly do we have to do to get ready for a show?

Through out the winter and spring we can be found winding thread skeins when we watch tv, that’s nearly 1000 (so far) this year, which is equivalent to 31 miles of thread! They are then scoured (to remove the winding oils from the mill), washed and soda soaked before being dyed. After that they are rinsed, washed and rinsed again - all by hand, before being hung out to dry. Then it’s back to the tv and box sets to re-twist the skeins, label and price.

All the while we are trying to avoid...

...threads of despair!

Sari silk ribbon and vintage wool blankets also receive the InStitches touch of colour before being cut and packed ready for sale.

Metres and metres of fabric are also dye and print, washed and lovingly ironed (!) before being cut up and folded to go into our themed rolls and stacks.  Hazel puts the colour/pattern combinations together and then Terry comes and re-arranges them...team work!

More teamwork is involved in making up the workshop kits for all the teaching we do at the shows.  InStitches' friend Ruth comes into her own at times like these - she colour co-ordinates all the fabrics and threads which she then matches to the handmade labels - no mean feat when you consider how many kits we require!

Last year's printed fabric stash was turned into cushion kits: more ironing, cutting and folding, a coordinated hand-dyed thread selected and an instruction leaflet written, printed and folded...

And if that wasn't enough Hazel had the bright idea that some of the indigo fabric would be great made up into tops ready to wear at the shows...

All this and we haven't even got to set the gallery/ booth up yet; so don't forget to come back and join us next week to see how that went!

Hazel & Terry

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The Festival of Quilts has many competition categories into which any quilter can enter a quilt, and providing it isn't provocative, indecent or dangerous, it will be hung - and judged! The Fine Art Quilt Masters category is also open to all, however where it differs is that it is a juried competition.  There were over one hundred quilts submitted this year from which the panel of 5 judges, leading figures from both the art and textile world, chose just 23 for the 2018 gallery.

The aim of TFAQM gallery is 'to celebrate those quilts that transcend craft and demand equal billing with work shown in an art gallery'  The judges were looking for a  fully-resolved composition and powerful artistic impression.  The design also had to be original, but other than that anything was possible!

​On the Festival of Quilts site you can see images of all the chosen quilts, but I this week I'm sharing with you a little bit about my entry, The space between the moments.
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No one was more surprised than me to receive the email letting me know that my quilt had made it onto the 2018 shortlist.  Sure, I had filled in the entry form and sent it off: but I didn't expect to get in (who does?)  It's a bit like the National Lottery (or whatever it's called now) - winning (or in this case, being shortlisted) is what happens to other people, not to me.  But to be in with a chance you first have to buy a ticket...or in the case of TFAQM, make a quilt and send in the entry form!

​So how did The space between the moments ​come into being?
 
I lived in Finland with my husband and children during the 1990s and fell in love with a country, its people  and its way of life: it felt like home.  I also learned how to cross country ski and would spend hours out alone in the snowy forests.  Skiing was such a joy, and I relished the freedom and peace which came from being absolutely alone in a pure white, crisp landscape; for the last 20 years I have longed to capture that feeling again. 

If you've been following this blog for awhile you'll know that I finally returned to winter Finland this February - all the way north to just below the artic circle.  I'm a lot older, not as flexible (was I ever?) and a tad more risk adverse these days but gradually as the week progressed so did my ski legs.  It was far more challenging than the routes I had been used to in my 'home' town of Hyvinkää, but it wasn't any less exhilarating,

and I even managed to ski out along the Russian border - at minus 22 we didn't stand still for long! 

Everything needed for a day out on skis had to be carried with you, so my bulky Olympus camera stayed in the cabin and I used my Android phone to take photographs (fact: android batteries carry on working in sub-zero temperatures unlike certain other types!).  I love the panorama function on phones as it's so quick and easy to use - a definite plus point in those temperatures. 

After a long day out on skis and on the way back to base camp our guide stopped each of us in turn and asked us to wait until the skier in front was no longer visible.  Only then, when we could no longer see or hear the other skier could we set off.

Finally, after two decades of waiting, I could once again capture the freedom and peace in a pure white, crisp landscape.  The sun was all but gone and the moon and stars were out so on I skied, trusting my instincts and letting the tracks guide my skis. The only sound was the crack of a branch as it finally snapped under the weight of the snow and the rhythmic swish of my skis on the frozen snow. 

By the time I crossed the frozen lake it was too dark to photograph the way I'd come, so the following day I went back just before sunset.  I wasn't disappointed and  I whipped out my phone and snapped a few panoramic shots before the light faded.
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As soon as I saw the image on the phone screen I knew it would become a quilt - it just asked to be made.

So, how did the quilt come into being?

Fortunately I still had some vintage linen fabric, in the right proportions (the finished quilt is 1.98m x 49 cm), left over from making my daughter some curtains (the things we end up doing for those we love!)  This went into a bucket of pale blue dye.  Obviously not pale enough because it came out looking like a Caribbean afternoon.  So I moved on to using screen printing inks.  They are more fluid than regular textile paints and as they are translucent I can build up layers of colour.  Which is just what I did!   The blue colour still looks a bit perky in some of the photographs, but in 'the flesh' it's just about right.  

Once the paint surface was dry and heat set it was time to layer up the quilt and start stitching.  The sky and snow were quilted using my Bernina Q20.  The sky first had relaxed free flowing lines which were then infilled with text.  Annoyingly my hand guided text is very neat and tidy - not at all the look I wanted for this quilt, I was after something much scrappier.  So I had to put in many hours trying out different styles, not sure I quite achieved it, old habits are hard to kick.  I also needed to brush up my angular meandering pattern as it isn't one which comes naturally but it was so right for the snowy section.  

With the machine quilting done it was time to relax and enjoy the hand quilting.  I used to be a dedicated quilting hoop / tiny stitches kind of quilter.  Not anymore.  These days I just tip all the possible threads I may need, never mind about the weight, into a basket, grab a selection of needles and settle comfortably down for some relaxed hand stitching.  I still use a thimble though.  Can't hand stitch without one.

I only used a very relaxed cross stitch for the hand stitching, building up the density in greens to give the impression of the tree line and in white/off white for the snow.

Hardest to represent were my ski tracks.  In the end I smudged some Derwent Inktense pastel over the surface, but that looked like a river.  So as very pale lavender thread was back-stitched in to show the way. Even after the stitching was done I tweaked the paint, a dap of white here, and bit more dark green there.

But there comes a time when you've just got to stop; my time was as I knelt on the floor in tears.  I could do no more.   I was done, exhausted and drained.  No other quilt has required such an emotional commitment.

So I took the required photographs and sent off the form. 

The quilt was rolled up and put it away.  I went out and did some gardening.

​You know the rest.

By now you will have seen or read about the huge galleries of Nancy Crow’s experiments with monoprint in thickened dye on fabric. The scale and sheer determination was arresting and I particularly liked the effect of the massed pieces and those with a wonderful sense of depth.
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But we’re going to show you glimpses of some of the smaller galleries. First of all, a disclaimer!: as we were very busy on our stand for the four days these photos have been snapped quickly on a phone, and are just intended to give a flavour of the incredible work involved. We’d certainly recommend that you follow the orange links to the artists’ websites or visit their exhibitions elsewhere if you get the chance.

The Button Box by unFOLD took inspiration from the book of the same name by Lynn Knight and explored different aspects of women’s lives and their changing role in society over time, an apt subject for the centenary year of women’s suffrage. The works, all thought-provoking, sometimes appearing frivolous, highlighted a serious message and evoked powerful memories and feelings of nostalgia, complete with Grannie’s button box to riffle through.

​The gallery was dominated by Christine Chester’s piece #neverthelessshepersisted, illustrating the distance walked in one working week by a fustian worker in the 19th century (91 miles – the equivalent of Manchester to Stoke-on-Trent and back). I didn’t know what fustian was till I spoke to Christine: apparently it was a fabric similar to corduroy, woven with looped ridges in the weft thread (up to 40 ridges per inch across the width) and once woven women had to cut the loops and raise the nap by hand by walking up and down the length of the cloth laid on an extremely long (up to 150 yards) table. I think Christine said that the length of thread she used represents the miles walked, with red bars for significant distances (sorry Christine if you’re reading this, I’ve forgotten exactly what you said!).
Sara Heatherly’s pieces reflected the early years of the 20th century, and the journey from ‘never being me’ to achieving the vote via suffragettes and munitions factories. Other artists explored the importance of maintaining appearances in the days before modern toiletries and cosmetics, marketing aimed at women and using the mending as an excuse not to come to bed! In all a diverse and entertaining gallery on many levels, and one of my show favourites.

A complete contrast, but another of my favourites was Alexandra Kingswell’s More than the Sum gallery. Alex is a former graphic designer who loves numbers, pattern and colour, successfully combining them all into her bright, uplifting, geometric pieces. Based on specific numbers or mathematical sequences such as Pi (the number we all encounter in maths when calculating the area of a circle - an infinite string of never-repeating digits, starting 3.14159265....  ) and Fibonacci’s sequence (1,1,2,3,5,8,13 etc - each number being the sum of the previous two), she makes herself increasingly complex sets of rules governing fabric selection and placement and the results are striking. 

In the images above the top two pieces are representations of Pi, the first a combination of four experiments using different groups of colours eg warm colours for prime numbers and cool for non-primes, and the second using two colours for each digit, taking Pi to 675 decimal places. In each the button is the decimal point. I'm  guessing that this is quite mystifying for many, but for those of us who like numbers and patterns it is fascinating, and I'm still trying to fathom out how she does it. Either way, the results are beautiful. Visit Alex's website for a fuller explanation of her process – I could never do it justice here (and her images are much better)! 

Janet Twinn also makes large colourful quilts, but they are quite different. The author of Colour in Art Quilts (Batsford), Janet dyes and screen-prints her fabric to create a complex palette from which she makes her quilts. Her gallery, Lost in Landscape, explores garden flowers and the Cotswold landscape in the changing seasons, starting with simple drawings which become more complex as she adds layers. Predictably, I have only photographed the blue ones (!), but if you want to see more visit her website .

Art Textiles: Made in Britain is another group of UK artists whose exhibition WILD was very diverse, involving figurative and abstract work, 3d installations and a mix of quilting, embroidery, mixed media, garments and book-making as a means of expression. Unfortunately I didn't take many pictures, but these are three of my favourites - and there are loads more over on their website. 

 Finally for this review is leading Japanese quilt artist Shizuko Kuroha’s gallery Indigo and Sarasa: Pieces of my Life. She uses antique indigo-dyed textiles contrasted with traditional block printed sarasa fabrics in large quilts with complex patterns formed from strips and carefully arranged log cabin blocks. Hazel and I both love log cabin piecing and Shizuko is a master at this. And these are no ordinary log cabins, with precise colour placement to achieve secondary patterning and, despite the rustic, country-style nature of these fabrics, some of the tiny blocks had ¼” strips! The designs draw you in, the antique fabrics providing texture and added interest and a wonderful depth and calmness. I can't find a website for Shizuko but there's a great article about her on this link.

​There were so many other galleries which we didn’t manage to take pictures of including Unfolding Stories 3 by Contemporary Quilters West, which had some interesting work by this large group, and which you’ll get another chance to see at the West Country Quilt & Textile show at the end of the month; SAQA’s Concrete and Grassland  exploring the juxtaposition of the natural landscape and the human constructed cityscape; Fly me to the Moon – a collection curated by Susanne Miller Jones, inspired by the Apollo moon missions and all things lunar and the exquisite work of Gulnara Polyanskaya’s Serendipity club students inspired by world architecture in the Russian Textile Gallery.  And, of course, the prestigious Fine Art Quilt Masters, into which Hazel’s quilt The Space between the Moments was juried – but more about that in a future blog post.

So next time you visit a quilt show, make sure you save time to visit the galleries, alongside the competition quilts and the shopping. There's so much to see all gathered into one place!

That's all for now - thanks for reading!

Terry & Hazel 

​​This is the fourth year that we've had a stand in the Quilting in Action area​ ​as well as teaching in the ​Quick & Easy workshops​, so we didn't get much time to have a look around the show - or blog for that matter! However we did get to see some quilts and enjoyed several galleries, which we will feature over the next couple of blogs.

​First are some quilts of the quilts which caught our eye. We both enjoyed the Modern Quilts category - back for its second year. The use of colour and space make for some striking compositions which when combined with plenty of quilting equals some truly stunning quilts.

Sarah Hibbert's Happenstance ​is a traditional drunkards path block with an alternative piecing layout with extra strips.   The large scale of the blocks allows Sarah to showcase the wide variety of patterned linen fabrics with straight line quilting complimeting the curved piecing. 

Iva Steiner's quilt, ​Narrow Geese Around​ was paper pieced and quilted on a domestic machine.  However in her artist's statement Iva says she quilted it in a way to suggest that it had been quilted on a longarm machine!  ​Narrow Geese Around​ was received a ​Highly Commended.​

Not all modern quilts include a lot of white as Melanie Turbitt's quilt shows.  Again this quilt was quilted on a domestic sewing machine, as well as being hand quilted.  The finger print was made using bias applique and the unique print was taken from her husband's thumbprint!

Another modern quilt with beautiful machine quilting was Tomomi McElwee's ​Wind Ripple​. A square of improvised piecing using scrap fabrics was off set on pale grey, which allowed the maker to use the large empty space to showcase the beautiful texture created by the free motion quilting to look like the wind ripple on sand dunes.

Hanna Farquharson's quilt, ​Family Sanctuary  had travelled all the way from Canada.   ​ Hanna made the quilt the actual size of the endangered artic wolf that she loves.  In her artist statement she says that 'the circular den is a sacred space, sanctuary, honouring and protecting family.  The white fabric represents the pristine beauty of the snow and represents the harsh weather and challenges to survival. Fierce love unites family'.  The central emblem carries family the  initial and denotes four children.

Quo Vadis? ​is Birgit Schuller's emotional response to all that has been happening in the world recently.  She asks 'Where are you going, mankind?'  but states that the options are numerous yet no clear direction can be determined.  Birgit free motioned her quilt using a longarm machine.

Quilts are made for many reasons and often to celebrate special occasions, as was the one made by Tracey Pereira for her friend's birthday.  Tracey used the ​Free Wheeling​ pattern by Denise Schmidt and free motion quilted it with her own, bespoke, patterns.  Beautiful, what a wonderful birthday present!

Aztec colours, geometric patterns and the Aztec word for racoon was the inspiration for Paula Steel's ​Mapache Tale.  The quilt uses stripes to represent the racoon's tail with an Aztec inspired colour palette.

Modern style quilts featured in other categories as well and you'd be forgiven in thinking that ​Little Marble Track​ by Claudia Scheja from Werne in Germany, was full sized quilt.  One of the main criteria of the Miniature Category is that in a photograph the quilt should be indistinguishable from a full sized one.  So scale of fabric, stitches and binding are all crucial - as well as the usual design principles.

Helen Howes often uses improvised piecing even when she's works in miniature as she has done this year in her quilt ​Another Fair Copse​.  

Winner of the Miniature Category was Philippa Naylor with her perfectly pieced ​Circuit Training​.  Philippa used a combination of hand and machine piecing with hand applique and hand guided free motion quilting. Stunning! 

Click on the gallery above to find out who made the quilt and which category it was in.

I do like quilts with a sense of humour and Moira Neal's quilt ​Time flies when you are having fun​ in The Quilters' Guild Challenge Category certain had that. Click on the images below to see more detail and in Moira's own words 'Stand, look and laugh!'

Moira must have had so much fun and it's a quilt with so many memories caught up in its making - her mum died whilst she was making it, but she says that happy times are trapped in her mum's handmade lace which she ahs incorporated.  Her mum would have certainly been thrilled with Moira's Highly Commended award.  

Another quirky quilt is ​Mousehole - no cats!​ sewn by Brenda Thomas.  Mousehole is one of her favourite Cornish fishing villages with its almost circular harbour, golden sands and beautiful turquoise water.  Moira says that her pictorial quilts invariably feature a dog - hence the name of this quilt!

Elita Sharpe must love cats, because there's a naughty one peeping out from her quilt!  ​I see you​ features a large paper pieced faceted cat's face, which is an original graphic designed by her daughter, Faith Mazzone.

The Quilt Creations Category always has interesting and very non-traditional entries.  Umbrellas​ by Tanglewood Textiles featured an umbrella made by each of the 6 makers.  Inspired by the seasons, weather and nature each member of Tanglewood Textiles created an unique umbrella in her own individual style. Each year Terry and I try to spot which one was made by who - all six makers were once our students!   So from left to right the makers are Hilary Drake, Melanie Pask, Jackie Amies, Sarah Dixon, Anne Gallagher and Susan Short

​Next time Terry will be showing you some of the galleries.

​Hazel & Terry

We both produce our own unique fabric to use in our quilt making. It’s all about the total ownership and freedom that comes with the creative process; we have a piece of white fabric, dye it, print it, remove some colour and then add even more: we take the cloth and make it our own. No two pieces are the same and often the results aren’t quite how we planned, but that’s okay - over the years we’ve learnt to embrace the serendipity that comes from working with the bucket and bench.

Each summer we move the dyeing process outdoors and into the sunshine - and yes, the sun does always shine on an indigo day! Indigo dyeing - pure alchemy. Back in July I blogged about our latest indigo day (missed it? Take a look here) so this week I thought I’d show you what I’ve been sewing with one of the pieces we created.

See the honey comb piece on the left? That’s a full width half metre piece of shrunk cotton, which we rolled up along a piece of chunky cotton string and pulled up tight until it resembled a hair scrunchy. A couple of dips in the indigo vat and that’s the cloth you get! Super easy, super fast...and super fabric!

So what did I make with it?

Each summer, as we cut, roll and label the fabric for our stand at Festival of Quilts I always say ‘next year I’m going to sew something to wear out of some of our fabric’. If you’ve ever visited us on our stand you’ll know I never had.....until this year! Yes, we have been (worryingly) so organised that everything is cut, folded, bagged and boxed ahead of schedule that I’ve had time to sew a top!

If you follow me on Instagram you’ll have seen that over last year or so I’ve come back to dress making with some summer dresses for me

and last year a couple of fiendishly tricky 1930’s evening dresses for my daughter - definitely a labour of love!

I didn’t attempt anything as complex for the indigo fabric but chose a simple top using a pattern I’d bought when we were at thread last month at Farnham Maltings, from our friend Viv of Purple Stitches.

I thought it was a great pattern to showcase some of our indigo fabrics! Its also got just 3 pattern pieces!

Multi sized with a couple of length options and printed on good quality paper - so much easier and more robust than the flimsy tissue paper the bigger pattern companies use. Cut out in a flash (does help that the InStitches studio has lovely large, height adjustable tables !) and sewn in a couple of hours

I like a lined yoke and if you go onto the pattern website there’s pattern options and videos to show you how. No excuses really!

I’ve made 3 already! So what does the indigo one look like? Take a look...

I’m really please with it. If you want to see how it looks on then do be sure to stop by and say hello, we’re on stand QIA15 next week at the Festival of Quilts - I could just be wearing it! And you never know - Terry might even have her's cut out and sewn up in time...

Hazel & Terry