Making simple books - November's meeting

Eight members of the group met up at Croft in November for a session on making simple books. Julie B led the session and demonstrated the techniques.

We started by practicing mark making on strips of paper. Then did a group exercise, where we made marks on a sheet of paper, then passed it to the next person. Each piece finally ended up back where it started, with marks made by everyone on it.

The strips were then made into little concertina books like these and we learned how to make evenly-spaced folds.

Then we made the other sheets into little 'one sheet' books by folding and cutting. Here are some examples.

And here are some more. The black one has panels from the mark making added after making the book and would be a good way to present small samples.

After lunch, Julie demonstrated two ways to stitch pages into a book. One was created from a single signature stitched along the fold (including the cover) and the other used a Japanese stab stitch binding to join unfolded sheets of paper. Here are examples of both.

Thanks, Julie, for an enjoyable session.

We will next be meeting up after the break in January, when the session will be on designing disappearing patchwork blocks.

Best wishes for the holidays and I hope to see you in the New Year

Karen

Transfer prints from September's meeting

As promised, here is another instalment from the backlog of photos I have taken at recent meetings. This time it is painted papers, printed fabric and stitched pieces produced as a result of September's meeting. Thanks to Ann for leading the session.

Painted papers

Some people ironed their papers onto fabric on the day

Helen and Liz had already stitched into some of their fabric

Thanks for visiting. The next photos will be from October's 'Beyond Celtic' session.

Dyed fabric from July's meeting

Apologies to anyone who has been looking for posts about the group, but you'll be pleased to know I've got lots of photos to share with you. The first ones show some gorgeous pieces of dyed fabric from July's meeting. Thanks to Leah for bringing along the dyes and leading the session.

Notice the lovely orange bag in the middle of this last picture.

I'll post some more in the next few days on the transfer dye session at September's meeting.

Stitched resist from June's meeting

The last meeting was an opportunity for us to prepare fabrics for dyeing in July. I described some techniques that I had been trying and showed my samples, which can be seen below.

I used two different approaches in producing these samples:

* hand or machine stitching, then drawing the fabric up tightly

* dense machine stitching which did not need to be drawn up

The first sample shows hand stitching, in lines, in a block and to outline shapes. The four lines at the bottom are running stitches through one, two, three and four layers of fabric. I used polyester thread double for the stitching.

I started pulling up the threads with the nested squares on the right and I definitely got better as I progressed, because this part did not come out well but the other areas were better.

Here are the results for the parallel lines at the bottom.

And here are the results for the top portion.

I also had a couple of samples using machine stitching, where I had loosened the top thread so I could draw up the stitches. Both used parallel lines of stitching, like this.

This first sample is a bit patchy, the gap is where the thread broke as I tightened it. (I used the same polyester thread as for the hand stitching.)

For the second sample, I used a thicker (quilting) thread in the bobbin, which meant that I didn't have any breakages.

The second approach was something I'd heard about at a show last year and wanted to try for myself. The idea is that stitching will block the dye from fabric covered by a close zigzag or other dense stitch patterns. I tried two stitches in these three samples, in which I pleated the fabric before stitching through all the layers. The stitches are all close zigzag except for the thinner lines in the middle sample which use a stretch stitch. This was an easy way to get a repeat pattern.

The straight lines came out rather faint, but the others worked better. Here are the results.

Finally, I tried stitching a pattern through a layer of fabric on top of wadding. I don't have a picture of the stitching, but here are the results with the wadding on the left and the fabric on the right.

For more ideas, see the blog 'And then we set it on fire', where October 2014 was devoted to stitch resists.

Dabbling with design - May's meeting

Thanks go to Liz for leading last Sunday's meeting on developing designs. We tried a series of exercises:

1. Combining squares of different sizes

2. Distorting block designs

3. Cutting up magazine photos

Here are a few photos of the results.

Thanks to everyone who came along. I hope you enjoyed the meeting.

Photos from April's meeting

We had a good turnout at our last meeting where we were experimenting with using puff paste with Lutrador. The paste was applied through stencils and Thermofax or printing with bubble wrap etc. Here are a few photos of the results:

Join us on 17 May for a session on design development. More details soon.

Trapunto quilts blog

Here is the link to the blog I mentioned at the meeting on Sunday. It belongs to Geta Grama from Romania. 

Her shadow trapunto quilts are super and can be seen in this post.

http://cadouri-din-inima.blogspot.ro/2000/01/my-shadow-trapunto-quilts.html

Trapunto and Boutis

Ten of us met yesterday to experiment with trapunto and boutis techniques. Here is a picture of what we were doing.

And here are a few close ups of 'work in progress':

It will be interesting to see how they all turn out when finished.

 

Colouring fabric at our February meeting

We met on 15 February to explore various ways of colouring fabric. Here are a few photos I took of what people were doing.

Some were mono printing:

Others were experimenting with glitter flakes:

Or with watercolour crayons:

At our next meeting on Sunday 22 March we will be trying out ways of using boutis and trapunto techniques in non-traditional ways. These are both techniques where the amount of wadding is varied in different parts of the design to emphasise some areas. My next post will show some examples.

Come along if you would like to experiment with these techniques, or to learn the basics working some small samples. You will be able to use either hand or machine stitching.

Folding, pleating and weaving at our January meeting

Lis brought along lots of her samples to our January meeting, so we had plenty of choice when it came to manipulated fabric techniques. Here are some of them:

Folding

Pleating

Weaving

Then we each chose one or more techniques to try. I'll post more images after our next meeting.

First meeting of 2015 this Sunday!

This Sunday, 25 January, we will be having out first meeting of 2015 at the usual venue of Croft Memorial Hall (WA3 7BQ).

 

We will be experimenting with manipulated/folded patchwork and Lis will bring along various examples which you may like to try after seeing the demonstrations.  As usual, you are welcome to bring your own work if you would prefer.

Please bring something for the shared lunch. The cost is £5 for the meeting, plus an annual fee of £10 due this month.

 

Requirements for manipulated / folded patchwork

Fabrics 

If you have never done this technique you will need plain cotton fabric, calico will be fine.  

If you are familiar with this technique bring other fabrics that will hold the crease – you could use patterned, dyed, striped or different coloured fabrics. 

This technique uses quite a lot of fabric and as several techniques will be demonstrated you will need more than 1 metre or several fat quarters.

Equipment

Sewing Machine and hand stitching kit with appropriate threads.

Many of the techniques can be done by hand if you do not have a sewing machine.

Cutting mat, ruler and rotary cutter.  Ironing mat and iron.  If you don’t have these we can share.

Optional

Bondaweb or your equivalent choice.   

Light weight iron on vilene.