Out & About: Unsung Muses at the Loch Lomond Quilt Show

Unsung Muses is having an outing to the Loch Lomond Quilt Show this week.  Hanging it proved a bit challenging, but I am rather pleased with myself as I had to go up the ladder and tie off the ends.  As a child I couldn’t go upstairs at Primary School, I was so scared of heights, so sitting at the top of the ladder and feeling comfortable there was actually quite an achievement!

I love the Loch Lomond Quilt Show.  It always has a variety of interesting exhibitions and you normally discover an artist or body of work you knew nothing about, but whose work excites you.  Hopefully this year that artist and work will be mine!

The first two days have been fun; the visitors are lovely and I’m catching up with lots of quilting friends as they come round to see the Show.

The actual work looks very different from when I hung it at the Festival of Quilts in Birmingham two years ago.  It’s amazing how different it looks in a different setting.  Personally, I like the white gallery walls better without quilt frames, but a number of people have commented how much more they like it here, with lots of natural lights and a more human setting.  What do you think?

Out & About: Leeds Embroiderers Guild

detail of one of the 37 steps series

After spending the last few months barely leaving Balfron at all, I had my second trip away in eight days at the weekend, when I ventured even further down the M74 and across the border and the Pennines to Leeds Embroiderers’ Guild. I gave a talk about my career to date and they seemed to really enjoy it.  They were a very friendly and welcoming group.

one of the pieces in the Unsung Muses collection

It is rather pleasant for me to give this talk as it gives me a chance to dig out old work and reassess it – some stands the test of time better than other pieces!  And, as the talk gets updated each time I give it, I can get more selective about what work I show!  This time I took some of the 37 steps and some of my Unsung Muses pieces, as well as lots of images of other work.

After the talk, the sun had come out and I was able to take advantage of my brother-in-law’s fantastic garden for another PomPom photo shoot.  These lovely little balls are really taking over my life at the moment... as well as my house!

 

 

In my studio: today

PomPoms waiting to be cut open

I reached the end of today with a panicked feeling that I hadn’t achieved very many of the things I needed to do.  So I started thinking about what I had done and thought I would share it with you to give you an insight into my days. 

Because I work from home and as a real double whammy, I’m an artist, many of my friends seem to think I spend my days sitting drinking tea and watching TV.  After all how else could you account for the lack of housework that goes on here?!  I do drink tea (got a cup right here with me whilst I write), but I also do other things too...!

My days start about 9.20 when I get back from dropping the kids off at school.  The walk back down the road is useful to help clear my brain and switch from kid mode to work mode.  Today was a day when I concentrated on the PomPom Blossom Festival.  Tomorrow it is making my own work and I’m looking forward to that too.

Alice, who owns Wonderland, a lovely gift shop in our village, had offered to sell some PomPom kits for us.  I made up ten new kits, cutting out the templates, having updated the instructions over the weekend to include pictures.

The post van arrived with a box addressed to PomPom Organiser, which was exciting and the contents were great.  Catherine Weir had made PomPoms from wool, fabric, plastic bags and even wadding.  They look fabulous.  Thank you Catherine.

 

I had an appointment to see the headmaster of the local primary school to see if the kids would like to get involved in PomPom making.  All the pompoms I have made have been relatively large and I wanted to try out a little one to see how long it would take and to see if I had got the proportions of the template right.  This was the result. 

 

The meeting went well and all the Primary 4-7 children are going to make PomPoms.  This is great news.  All I need to do is cut 150 sets of templates and teach the teachers how to make PomPoms... but not for another few weeks, so no panic yet!

The Travelling Gallery was visiting the school, so I was allowed to go and have a look.  It was lovely to see the children so engaged with contemporary art as it was explained to them in an interesting way.

On my way home, I picked up another carrier bag full of PomPoms made by the Womens Guild of Balfron Church of Scotland (Thank you ladies!) and delivered the kits along with some leaflets to Alice.

As I arrived home a delivery van drew up and handed me a flat package, so no PomPoms in it.  Instead, it contained five magazines from Stampington in lieu of payment for an article I wrote for Art Quilting Studio about my own work.  I admit I did have a quick flick through, but I am looking forward to reading them more in detail.

 

As the children had friends round to play after school, I was able to creep back into the studio to continue working a bit longer.  I answered some queries from Jane, the editor of Homemade with Love.  I shamelessly begged for some wool and editorial coverage of the PomPoms in a local magazine and got positive responses to both.  Yeah!  I also had some email chats about getting some PomPoms passed on from Glasgow Craft Bomb and about what we could do with them afterwards.

By this time, dinner had changed from tuna with roasted potatoes to tuna with noodles as I had left it too late to do the potatoes!  It then had to change again to tuna with some frozen ready rice as I had forgotten a mouse had nibbled my last packet of noodles.  Gallingly, the kids preferred this processed rice to my normal home cooked version.  And so ended my work day!  No PomPom photography or blogging.  But there is always tomorrow...

 

 

Out & About... with Solway Quilters

Thursday evening I was in Dumfries giving a talk to Solway Quilters about my ’37 steps’ project.  It was fun to revisit it again and it also made me realise that there is still some mileage in it.  I began to get excited about some of the concepts and starting imagery and think about how I could interpret them now as obviously my ideas and skills have moved on since then.  The group was lovely and seemed very appreciative.  It was a very pleasurable evening, especially after a three day migraine!

I was also thrilled as whilst I was doing a shameless plug for the PomPom Blossom Festival (I’m getting quite good as the shameless part!); the ladies presented me with seven fabric pompoms to add to the collection.  I was really touched.  Thank you!

I stayed in Dumfries on Thursday night (thank you Elma – your hospitality was fantastic) and on Friday was joined by eleven slightly nervous quilters and embroiderers for my workshop called ‘Unexpected Inspiration’.  They were all agreed they liked the supply list as it was all things they had already and no lugging a heavy sewing machine to another hall or worrying about whether they had the right fabric.  The flip side was they weren’t quite sure what to expect from a workshop for quilters without fabric!  They needn’t have worried as we all had a fabulous, fun day playing at finding inspiration by painting to music,

 

cutting up magazines,

drawing in strange ways and rolling dice.   I was really impressed by lots of the exciting ideas that were appearing. 

Everyone seemed to go home with at least one idea for a new quilt and promised to send photos of the finished items. 

 

I can’t wait to see them!

Do you have any fun ways of finding inspiration?

European Art Quilts in Popular Patchwork

I love the exhibitions curated by European Art QuiltsFoundation.  The current one, EAQ VII, premiered at last summer’s Festival of Quilts.  Each time the choice of ‘quilts’ moves further and further towards textile art, or fine art textiles and that of course means I like it even more.

The variety of quilts in it is amazing as is the array of techniques used.  It was one part of the Festival of Quilts that visitors really lingered in; some examining the quilts trying to work out how they had been produced; others just enjoying the artistry. 

I had the privilege of writing about it for the April edition of Popular Patchwork and I am really pleased at how good it looks on the page as well as ‘in the flesh’ so to speak.

This first page shows quilts by Sarah Welsby (top) and Amelia Leigh.

Talking of the Festival of Quilts, I booked my flight to go to this year’s show last week.  Are you going this year?

Log Cabin Quilt

Although pompoms have almost totally taken over my life at the moment, I am still trying to work away at other things too.  I bought some lovely Oakshott cotton last summer with the intention of making a log cabin quilt.  The red fat eighths were for the centres and then the blues were to be the ‘logs’.  The quilt would have been finished now, but I decided that plain centres were not as interesting as I wanted, so I decided to make little 36 patches to go in the middle.  I must be mad!  The centres of course took ages and are slightly less than 100% accurate, but I think it will all add to the final feeling of the quilt. 

I wanted 20 blocks for the quilt, and due to a miscalculation (I forgot seam allowances for some silly reason), I ended up with twelve centres from my first batch.  I thought I had made the other eight, but last time I counted, I was only up to 17 blocks in total.  Since then, I have not dared count as it would be rather depressing to think I still have three more full blocks to make.  The blocks are at various stages, which I like as it fools me in to believing there is slightly less work than I was expecting to be done...

Different types of PomPom

For our PomPom BlossomFestival, we are going to need over 1,000 pompoms for it to have a real impact.  Whilst I’m not intending to make all 1,000 myself and am putting most of my efforts into recruiting others to help (have you made one yet?), I’m making my contribution. 

Rather than just keep making traditional wool pompoms, I’ve been experimenting, trying out different types.  Plastic bag strips make really nice pompoms, though you shouldn’t use biodegradable bags as they can make a real mess as they disintegrate. 

Fabric strips are lovely and soft and give a lovely shape when finished.  I’ve also tried out wool dipped in PVA glue and wrapped round a balloon as a mould, which I’ve then popped.  This was successful on my second attempt; the first time all the wool just slid off the balloon. 

I’m hoping to try some giant ones once I’ve worked out how to stop the middle falling out and have sufficient wool to do them.

Do you have any other suggestions for unusual pompoms?

A Quilt for Malawi

A few weeks ago, I was contacted about a special quilt for a special cause.  The quilt is inspired by the children’s book When the Rains Come, published by Polygon and written by award-winning author Tom Pow. When the Rains Come weaves together a folk tale from Malawi and the story of three young children who must be looked after by their Grandmother. The story is beautifully illustrated by Malika Favre and depicts both the joys and hardships of daily life in Malawi.

Rachel Edwards (left) and Julie Julie van den Driesche  (right) with their quilt “When the Rains Come”

 

Inspired by Malika’s vibrant illustrations, two Edinburgh based quilters, Julie van den Driesche and Rachel Edwards decided to make a quilt to raise funds for MUMs (Malawi Underprivileged Mothers).

It is made from fabrics from Malawi and will be on display in Purely Patchwork in Linlithgow in April and at other venues throughout Scotland from April to September. The quilt will be raffled at £1 a ticket, to raise money to support the MUMs feeding programme. Apparently, a single pound will provide a daily meal for two children, five days a week, for an entire month.

If you can help this worthy cause, please contact Linda McDonald (lindamcd@blueyonder.co.uk) to arrange for ticket books and further information to be sent out. Although sometimes the difficulties of the world can seem overwhelming and that there is little we can do about them, occasionally, just having a vision and getting on with things can make a big difference to other people’s lives.  MUMs is one of these inspirational stories.  It was set up in October 2005 by Linda McDonald after hearing and seeing photographs of a government run maternity hospital in Lilongwe, the capital of Malawi. Since then she and her team have been instrumental in raising over £500,000 through sales of the MUMs recipe book series and private donations.   Please help if you can.

Festival of Quilts Competition Update

Having created a bit of a storm last year by publishing my thoughts on the Festival of Quilts judging and categories, it is only fair to update you on what has been happening. 

I am really impressed that both Twisted Thread and the Quilters’ Guild have been listening to what we were saying and have changed the competitions for this year’s FoQ.  There is a brand new category of Fine Art Quilt Masters and the brief reads a bit like an update from the old ‘Quilt of the Year’ competition.  They have also tweaked the definitions of art quilt and contemporary.  You can find out more here, along with the entry forms.

I urge you to enter, take part and visit the Festival of Quilts, because whatever you think of the competition, it is the best chance in the UK to see high quality quilts and to meet up with the quilters who make them.

More PomPoms

 

Unsurprisingly I’ve been making lots of pompoms! I’m not intending making all the 1,000+ pompoms needed for the Balfron PomPom Blossom Festival myself, as I’m trying to involve as many people as possible, I feel I should lead by example and make some.  Besides it’s fun!  I’m experimenting with different ways and sizes.  The fabric one was really nice to make and has fluffed up beautifully.



 

My other challenge at the moment is finding greenery to photograph the pompoms on or besides. We are still very much at the end of winter here and there are not many green sprouts yet! I can’t wait until the pompoms are all hanging on the trees in June against a fresh green background.

If you’d like to make a pompom or five for the Balfron PomPom Blossom Festival, please do!