Best Kept Secrets

My prompt from Carol for this round was the book Best Kept Secrets of Ireland which Carol bought and sent to me, but we think has been a victim of Covid post, probably sitting forgotten in a warehouse somewhere keeping its secrests all to itself. 

Scraps added improv style to just have a play and see what happens

I've been pondering and pondering the phrase best kept secrets and what kept popping into my head is Barry's tea (our national Irish drink isn't Guiness but a good strong cup of black tea with milk!).  In lieu of the book Carol prompted me to think of my favourite place.

That's a tough one.  My favourite places are where we go walking the dogs.  We have a few spots about the place.  I live in Limerick, on the Shannon so we have miles and miles of riverbank.  We are just over an hours drive to the Atlantic and have many more miles of the beach and cliff walks and my favourite beach to walk the dogs in the summer is Doughmore beach in Doonbeg or Beal Beach near Ballybunion.

Free motion quilting and fancy stitches crazy piecing style

In the end, I kept coming back to my favourite place from childhood, Curragh Chase Estate which is part of our National Forestry Service Coillte (pronounced queel-cha).  We used to cycle the 12 miles there when we were kids or be driven out for a days rambling on special occasions.  We used to use an old seat belt and swing from a huge tree, fighting for light with the biggest weeping willow I've ever seen. 

Theres a big grey granite stone house which burned down twice, a man made lake and bridges with swans, a wishing chair and a pet cemetry which I always loved. 

It was the home of the deVere family before it was handed over to the state.  Aubrey deVere was a poet and I always wonder what it must have felt like to open the door in the morning, wander down the grey steps into cultivated greenery surrounded by woodland and feel blessed to own all of that. A very different kind of life to most people.

Must have been just horrific watching the main house go up in flames.

Still, to this day, I love to walk with the dogs along the trails under the trees especially when its raining (which is quite a bit!).  You get that smell of green and feeling of dampness from the ferns and the soft rustle of the wind.   Defintely my favourite place to just be.

Cut up and moved about to fit this framing mat.  Hints of memories peeking through.

#1, Nature: Winter Blackbird

It's very exciting to be a member of this new group, and this, our first, theme was a fantastic one to get started with!

I had all sorts of ideas right from the beginning, which in the end were abruptly abandoned when I looked from my dining room window into the garden below and saw a beautiful male blackbird sitting in a Cotoneaster bush.  Right there was a view representing the beauty and vitality of nature, even in the middle of the city.

So here is my winter blackbird.

You can read more about him on my blog

Nature challenge - Making Waves

Hi everybody, I'm excited to see what our first challenge has created and so eager to read all the posts today.  I am very happy to share my quilt idea which for the moment is called Making Waves.

Mine is a top only at this stage and not a finished piece - apologies to all.  I have had an issue with a disk in my back and sitting is giving me trouble so no sewing has been going on, but there has been drawing, pattern making and lots of fusible used to get me this far so I hope it is ok to post this for our first challenge.  To read about the process and how I went about making this please visit my blog: Charly & Ben's Crafty Corner.  For this post I thought I might share some of the inspiration and influences I noticed in the making of this wave collage.

I'm a member of the Irish Patchwork Society (IPS) and in addition to having monthly meetings where we share show & tell, speakers and demonstrations, there are annual challenges to make quilts for exhibitions.  I'm the chairperson at the moment and it was one of our tasks on committee last year to come up with the theme for our National Exhibition.  This was a lot harder than I thought and we rejected a whole list of things!

For some reason we were all feeling very nautical and decided in the end that we wanted something water or sea related.  Maybe it was all the political stuff going on, or the fact that in Ireland you are not very far from the sea but for some reason we settled on Making Waves, thinking this would give ample scope for our members to go in lots of different directions with their quilts.  So that was on my mind and when the topic of nature came up I just couldn't shift it so decided that while I may make something else for the exhibition due in May, I had to do something with the wave and get it out of my head onto paper.

I pulled a few items into my sketchbook to see what it was that grabbed me about the idea and I found that I loved the Sashiko design available on Urban Threads because of the curve and the feeling of the wave falling in around you.  This became the inspiration for the sketch below to work from as a pattern. 

The idea of a paper pattern to work from came from Tracey Watson, an art quilter and member of my branch of the IPS.  She uses what she calls a cartoon to work from to make the most beautiful nature inspired quilts and creates curved templates to put her quilt together in sections.  Not being quite able for that with little to no sewing, I did attempt to approach my wave in the spirit of this process.  I did discover that I am not very good at drawing with a mouse and drawing on paper, scanning it in and scaling it up would have been quicker!

I also find that I am heavily influenced by the projects I have made most recently and the fabric out on the table close to hand.  Somehow, what I've just used makes it's way into the next piece!   This block for a class I am teaching in March on the elements of a modern quilt was looking down at me with it's improv pieced section and I thought, wouldn't it be cool if I could use lots of different fabrics to get a pieced effect on the wave?  The problem for me, was how to get all those flowing sections of the water and curve, using lots of different colours and pieces.  I mulled it over for a while, getting quite stuck.  Then my friend Louise asked if I had seen Shannon Brinkley's collage quilts using animals and cityscapes, so I had a gander, read up on her process and was thoroughly intrigued.  I didn't use Shannon's process but I was inspired by it to make the wave section a collage and this is the result.  I hope you like it!

This was a great first challenge and start to our group.  Looking forward to the next one!
Ruth

That Tiny Touch of Nature

In the middle of December, I was out gathering some native grass seed with a conservancy group, when a small bird demanded my attention.  She was a Sedge Wren, and I knew she was perfect for this project.  Just a tiny touch of nature on the edge of a huge city -- so easy to overlook but still surviving, still bringing a spark of diversity into a monoculture of humanity.

Sedge Wren

About three years ago, I had taken a picture of a Carolina Wren, and the curving lines of the branches and vines around it caught my eye.  I realized how shrubs that are nondescript to us, are important shelters from the birds' point of view.  I had done several small sketches and practice mini-quilts from that picture.

Carolina Wren

Since that first Carolina Wren picture, I have gotten other pictures of wrens and sparrows sheltered within branches.  I thought a series of them as a wall hanging would make a great project for our theme, but I only finished this one small square.

The original photo had composition issues, with branches taking up the majority of the space, and blocking the view of the wren, so I simplified it to turn it into this quiltlet.

I painted dye on the corners of an old linen napkin and machine quilted lines to suggest the leaves.  I printed the wren on inkjet printer cotton and appliqued her on.  The white area I had left for the tree branches was too white and plain, so I added some color with fabric crayons.  To emphasize the lacy gray-green lichen around the bird, I stitched some rayon braided ribbons and pique trim in loose loops.
I will post more of the details on my blog Deep in the Heart of Textiles.

As with a lot of pieces, I can see a lot of room for improvement here!  But I had fun making it, and I am glad to commemorate one of my own nature encounters.

Quilt Reveal of "Nature Photography"

This exciting day has arrived!
The Endeavourers, a new online art quilt group has its first quilt reveal for its members!
Our group of 14 quilters from around the world were charged to interpret the theme of NATURE and make a quilt based on it. You can read our mission statement HERE.

I was not the only member who had ideas churning in my head for nearly two months. Nature can be defined in many ways such as the essence of something, human nature or that of Mother Nature. I chose to focus on the definition of nature as "the phenomena of the physical world collectively, including plants, animals, the landscape, and other features and products of the earth, as opposed to humans or human creations." 

I continued to look at photos I had taken in the last few years on my walks and travels--that showed how I interpreted the theme of nature. I could not decide on a single photo that told my story, so I selected 24 of my favorites. I chose to collage them. Below is my completed quilt (22.5 inches by 21.5 inches) I call NATURE PHOTOGRAPHY.

I challenged myself to move out of my comfortable piecing techniques. The idea of film negatives (from bygone times, when I was a kid and a young mom) where we took photos and didn't discover the results until they were returned from developing and printing. It is so much easier now, delete the photo that does not meet our expectations, save those we want on a hard drive, CD, memory stick--or, the Cloud! To be printed when we desire and how we desire.

To read the details on how I tackled sewing this quilt, visit my blog HERE.

A late start!

Hello everyone! Nice to meet you all!

When I first saw the title "Nature" I thought "Oh, that will be quite easy" ..... Nah!


I have to admit I had trouble getting started, although I had the idea of working from this photo right from the word go!

I started with ideas of drawing the branch with leaves and berries, but soon realised that including leaves would be too complicated in the time I have left!

I hope you will visit my blog where I am sharing more details with all my blogging friends.

Hugs,

Barbara xxx

Dipping Into Nature

I am very glad to be a part of this group.  Participating in the themes and challenges will spur me to try new subject matters, materials, and techniques.

But what a huge theme to start with -- Nature!  So many ideas are swirling in my head -- how to pick just one?

When choosing from among a wealth of possibilities, here are three tips that work for me:

1) Start from where you are.

I am very fortunate that, after decades living in cities and suburbs, I get to divide my time between two very different rural properties.  (Texas is more or less divided in half, with the eastern half being green and humid, and the western half being tawny and arid.)  I have spent a lot of time over the last eight years, trying to learn and document all the species that live in these two places.

East Texas farm in November.

Central Texas ranchita in November.

And when I am in more urban settings, I still notice touches of nature that managed to survive and thrive, and I take pictures of those too.  So for this project, I will start with an image I already have, and some techniques I already have experience with.

But that still gives me so much material to choose from.  Capturing the ideas on paper in quick collages and sketches clarifies my thinking -- it's like each idea is happy to be noticed, and it stops chattering, "Pick me! Pick me!"

(For years I have told myself I would start an art journal, and this group has provided the impetus to finally do that.  So that is already source of satisfaction!)

But that leads me to my next point --

2) Do not go overboard in researching a direction.  For me, this is not the time to seek out and study dedicated artists.  Even at the art journal stage, lots of people produce phenomenal, finished work that overwhelms me and makes me think I should give up now. I avoid looking at a lot of websites and look more intently at the subject I am working on.

3) Small strokes.   As in canoeing or kayaking, small strokes can help you progress.  I realize that this is not going to be the Great American Quilt on Nature, or even (I hope) my own Ultimate Nature Object.  This is just one step. Maybe some day these small strokes will bring me into the rushing rapids of creativity, and I will develop a recognizable style, but if not, at least my own thinking  should become more creative.

My project this time is going to be very low-key, but I am enjoying the time spent on thinking of possibilities, and on enriching my work habits!  

A Little Peek

Before the February 1st reveal, I thought I would give a little peek at what I have been working on for my NATURE themed project.

It is also a practice run on posting here on the blog. Come back in a few weeks!