InStitches Creative Textile Courses
  • Home
    • Contact us
    • The Small Print
    • Privacy policy
    • COVID-19 information page
  • About us
    • The story of InStitches
    • How to find us
    • Want to stay locally?
    • News and events
    • What our students say
    • Gallery
  • Courses & workshops
    • Courses and workshops at a glance
    • short courses and workshops >
      • Artful Stitch
      • Free Motion Quilting
      • Colour to dye for workshops: Adding colour
      • Colour to dye for workshops: Adding marks & pattern
    • Studio Days
    • Year-long courses >
      • Inspiration to Stitch
      • Stitching by Design
      • Bringing colour to life
    • Textile adventures >
      • Guest tutors 2021 >
        • Judith Needham - weave your own chicken
        • Christine Chester Poetry of decay
        • Caroline Bell - eco printing on fabric Masterclass 2021
        • Amanda Clayton - Fragile Forms
        • Judith Needham - Willow apple basket
        • Caroline Bartlett - An Investigative Journey
        • Amanda Hislop - Abstracted Land 2021
        • Stewart Kelly - Following a line
        • Alice Fox - Natural Structures
        • Matthew Harris - Text-ile
        • Wendy Dolan - Architecture in stitch 2021
        • Liam Biswell - Experimental Printmaking
        • Debbie Lyddon - stitched collage 2021
        • Cas Holmes - Layers, lines and image 2021
      • Guest tutors 2022 >
        • Christine Chester Poetry of decay 2022
  • Online workshops
    • Online
    • Online Live: Cas Holmes
    • Online Live: Debbie Lyddon
    • Online Live: Wendy Dolan
  • Shop
    • Workshop Gift Vouchers
  • Blog
    • On our travels

The story behind the quilt: Pink Floyd this way

14/6/2018

2 Comments

 
A couple of years ago I travelled around India and spent some time in Rajasthan. Wherever I travel I take hundreds and hundreds of photographs and very often I come home, unpack, stick the laundry on and then don’t do anything with the images. Until, that is, when the 2018 Contemporary Quilters’ In Print challenge was announced.

The peeling, shabby walls of India tell their own stories and the walls of Pushkar were no exception. Wandering the back streets one afternoon, camera in hand, photographing anything and everything I took a series of images and it was these which were to become the starting point for my quilt.

This part of Pushkar had definitely seen better days - black mould crept across the once white walls, the paint worke was peeling and tatty posters and handbills were stuck everywhere. Graffiti spread like a rash. Much to the amusement of my fellow travellers and accompanying guides I often photograph graffiti. From Cambodia to Vietnam, Myanmar to India I’ve photographed a lot because, I don’t know about you, I think that when it’s in a script I can’t read, a lot of it, far from looking destructive, looks creative! The pattern of these words inprinted on the walls are telling stories often only know to the writer.

If you’ve followed the blog for awhile you’ll know I often photograph doors, walls, windows and now graffiti! So out came the photographs (actually, on went the computer – isn’t that where all photographs are stored nowadays?) and these two images immediately caught my attention. I remember photographing them and being amused – Pink Floyd, playing here, right here in the back streets of Pushkar, really?! Absurd, but it tickled me that’s for sure.

Picture
As with all the CQ challenges there is a size restriction and for this challenge it was 100cm x 45cm in either a horizontal or vertical format. I tried both and ended up selecting horizontal which meant I had to modify my original ideas, but it made me focus!

First step was to fuse the two images, nothing technical, I simply printed them off onto normal copy paper, married them up and glue them into place and rephotographed them!

Picture

This fused image was then uploaded to Adobe Sketch on my iPad. This app allows you to have different layers so I was simply able to trace marks, shapes and text . SSSh! No drawing required...

This whole cloth quilt is a piece of vintage linen. To create the rusty marks for the door I draped the fabric in a large plastic tray, the rusted objects (and we have quite a lot at the studio!) were strategically placed on the door area, as well as littered over the rest of the ‘wall’ surface and then I poured over black tea. It’s the black tea combined with the rust which gives the grey, black and finally rusty marks which I needed for the first layer of colouring. This is definitely a quilt of layers!

Picture
Once I’d rinsed and dried the fabric the door area’s rust marks weren’t as distinct as I’d hope for. Balancing nails on their head for the nail marks isn’t an easy task! What is easier is to dip a nail into pva glue, print the required mark and sprinkle with rusting powder before spritzing with a water /vinegar mix. The cup of ground coffee which had gone cold by this time was useful for adding extra colour to the door ‘wood’. Nothing goes to waste when you’re being creative!
Picture
Machine stitching came next to give structure to the door with hand stitching to blur the edges. Then it was time for another layer of paint. White opaque fabric paint, mixed with puff paste, was sponged onto the wall area and then heat set to expand – I was after that slightly blown, bubbly texture of old painted wall. The creeping damp was created by sponging over black fabric paint.
Picture
I’d already ‘traced’ the text in the Adobe Sketch app so it was a simple step to create cut file and send it to the Cricut for cutting as a stencil. A couple of test runs using copy paper were needed to find the correct size (the separate arrow was tricky!) before I then set it to be cut in freezer paper. The Cricut has been in the studio for quite awhile but it’s a struggle finding time to play with it and put it through its paces. We have it for making repeatable stencils as it’ll cut through a wide variety of materials so I’m sure that once I’ve figured it out it’ll be a brilliant tool to have at our disposal.....

Anyhow, freezer paper stencil ironed into place, it was time to add colour with Markal oil pastels. I over did the black slightly so then I had to used several cotton buds to carefully remove some. Curing takes a couple of days before I could start stitching. For a little quilt there was a lot of hand stitching to create the surface texture, thank goodness for tv box set!

I didn’t want a visible binding so chose to apply a facing to finish the edges. The last step was to apply, using red Markal pastel and a stiff brush, the red graffiti numbers.
Picture
I’m pleased to say it was juried into the In Print exhibition and you can see it at a variety of venues around the UK until spring 2019. At the moment it’s at the Forge Mill Needle Museum in Redditch and at the end of August it’ll be at the West Country Quilt and Textile Show, which is where I will catch up and see the whole collection.

Bye for now,
Hazel& Terry
2 Comments
Laura
5/4/2020 06:19:36 pm

That's a sign for the Pink Floyd Cafe and Hotel in Pushkar! You can sort of see that the "cafe" part has worn away and make out the A F and E :-)

Reply
Hazel
5/4/2020 07:02:56 pm

Hi Laura, Well I never realised that! Now you have point it out I can just see the word cafe! And to think I was so close but so far away of seeing Pink Floyd!!

Reply



Leave a Reply.


    Welcome to our blog! Here you'll find out what's been going on, plus plenty of ideas and inspiration and the odd cake recipe!

    Check back often to see what we're up to - it's great to have you along

    Hazel & Terry
    Picture

    Enter your email address:

    Delivered by FeedBurner

    RSS Feed

    Categories

    All
    #10minutedrawingproject
    And There Was Cake!
    Artists To Inspire You
    Blog Changeover
    Bringing Colour To Life
    Colour
    Craft Ptoject
    Creative Play
    Creative Warm Ups
    Creative Warm-ups
    Festival Of Quilts
    Finding Inspiration
    How To...
    Inspired By Cloth
    #institchescreative2020
    Line
    Places To Inspire You
    Quilt Shows
    Text
    Texture
    The Story Behind The Quilt
    Tools Of The Trade

    InStitches travelblog
    InStitches textiles travel blog
    Picture
    Picture

    Archives

    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    April 2016
    March 2016
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    January 2014
    November 2013
    October 2013

    Visit InStitches's profile on Pinterest.
InStitches: exciting courses for people who love textiles, quilting, design, stitching and sketchbooks

Connect with us

follow us on Facebook
read our blog
Instagram inspiration
Pinterest pinnings
newsletter signup
follow us on Facebook
read our blog
Instagram inspiration
Pinterest pinnings
newsletter signup

Courses and workshops

Courses and workshops at a glance
Short courses and workshops
Longer courses
Guest tutors 2021
​Online workshops
​Studio days

InStitches

About
How to find us

Support

Contact
​
The small print
Privacy policy

Our address

Sunfield Studio,
Unit 12, Sunfield Business Park
New Mill Road
Finchampstead
Wokingham
RG40 4QT
We support
Just a Card logo
Copyright © InStitches 2010-2021
All rights reserved.