First and Last

It was a pleasure to be a part of the First and Last series of articles in the British Patchwork & Quilting Magazine. My contribution can be seen above and it was published in Issue 281, June 2017.

It is about quilters showing both their first and their last quilt. Looking at the pictures right now I am starting to wonder if people can tell without reading the article which came first?

It took time to get my first quilt out from under all the other ones (we are still working on the house so they are not stored in their usual place) and although I had a picture of the overall piece I needed to photograph the detail. It had been a long time since I last saw it and I must admit to feeling a sense of satisfaction at seeing how well it has stood the test of time.

Also, I fervently hope my last quilt will only be my latest. It would be nice to think that it will be some time yet before I make my last.

Interview with Nathalie Kalbach

Today you can find a fun interview with me on Nathalie Kalbach's website. I have been working with Nathalie's stamps and stencils for quite some time now and you can see details of some of the spreads above in a Picmonkey collage.

She contacted me recently to ask if she could interview me for her site in a series of interview with artists called Nice to Meet You and of course, I was delighted. The interview is up on her website now and this link will take you straight to it!

Thanks so much to Nathalie!

Published in Today's Quilter

My recent wins were celebrated in Today's Quilter magazine, issue 12, published recently. I like the name of this magazine as today's quilter can be contemporary, modern, traditional, art or whatever she wants to be. Although I have never been a traditional quilter I have made work that would fit in any of the other categories. It's great to have a magazine that covers it all.

New York Memories

The latest issue of the British Patchwork & Quilting magazine is out (Issue 270 July 2016) and in it is the article I wrote for them about our wonderful trip to New York back in April.  Most of the pictures shown are also by me. This magazine ran the Stars and Stripes competition to celebrate their 30th anniversary which I won and the New York tour was my prize. 

It's great to look back on what we did and saw during our time in NY and remember the fantastic time we had. I hope to revisit this amazing city again some time soon.

In the same issue you will also find an article, written by Joanne Kent, the editor of the magazine who was on the trip with us, about our visit to the Brooklyn Quilters Exhibition, held in no less a place than the Brooklyn Marriott Hotel. They do their quilt shows in style over there!

And finally to top up the joy you can also see my small quilt La Linea d'oro as part of the review in the magazine of the Quilts UK show held in Malvern a few weeks back where this quilt won the Small Wallhangings section.

Definitely an issue to treasure!

Published in the Financial Times

Today two of my photographs were published in the Financial Times in an article about Craigieburn Gardens. Those who know me might not be too surprised to hear I'm not a regular reader of the Financial Times but I must admit to really liking their weekend edition. So much to read and much of it non-financial. And that pink paper is great for collage.

The photographs they used date back to our visit to Craigieburn Garden back in August 2012 and here is the link to the blog post I wrote at the time.  The gunnera was my blip that day. It's a beautiful place near Moffat and looking back and searching out the pictures for the paper has made me long to revisit. I'll wait till the spring and then I will go back there!

Gelli Glory Win

The latest issue of the British Patchwork and Quilting magazine is out. It's Issue no. 262, November 2015. And it has the results of their New York 30th Anniversary competition Stars and Stripes published in full. That means I can now share the entire quilt with you too on this blog. The quilt is sized 30" square as per the requirements of the competition and as you already know I did win! And will be going to New York in the Spring of 2016. So super exciting and you can expect to hear and see much more about that.

For now I'll tell you that all the background fabrics were painted using a gelli plate and acrylic paints, as well as many, many stencils. I employed those fabrics in stripes to make the background which was then hand and machine quilted.  Then 33 stars were raw edge (using Bondaweb) appliquéd on. The stars were made out of plain fabrics and heavily hand embroidered and embellished. 30 of the stars are positioned in rows of 10 on the left hand side of the quilt to represent the 30 years the magazine has been in existence while the 3 stars randomly added to the right hand side represent the 3 decennia. They also form a nice balance for the row of stars.

The name Gelli Glory was inspired by the name Old Glory. This is the name  the American Stars and Stripes flag is sometimes also called.

This is a detail of the quilt in the magazine issue. Definitely a better picture than I managed to take originally. The weather hadn't been kind to us here in the Scottish Borders so I had to photograph it indoors which is never a good option and the light wasn't great at the time either.  I shall try and do better once the quilt returnes home but that won't be for quite some time. It will be exhibited at the British Quilt and Stitch Village show in Uttoxeter Racecourse in April 2016. 

Featured

It was slightly overwhelming yesterday to receive not one but two publications in which my work is featured. I knew they would be coming but it was still a lovely surprise to have them arrive on the same day!

The first one is an article I wrote about the 52 Journals exhibition for the magazine Fabrications, Quilting for you, May/June 2015 issue . And to my great delight all 52 Journal Quilts are featured. I had left the option of which ones to choose to illustrate the article to Sally Stevens, the editor of Fabrications, and she managed to squeeze them all in over 6 pages, starting on page 84. If you are interested in buying a copy you can find it on newsagents' shelves here in the UK but you can also buy a copy here where ever you live. As you can see above one journal quilt even made it to the cover (bottom right)

The other publication that landed on my doorstep is the book 1000 Quilt Inspirations; Colorful and Creative Designs for Traditional, Modern and Art Quilts, by Sandra Sider.

It features two of my 52 Journal Quilts as well as 2 other journal quilts made in 2013 inspired by themes on The Sketchbook Challenge site. This is indeed a very colourful publication, simply featuring the most stunning array of small quilts. There is mention of the techniques used in the Image Directory in the back but mainly it's simply eye candy. I'm so pleased to be part of it. You can obtain this from Amazon UK here.

As you can see above one of my JQs even gets an entire page to itself! I had a little party all by myself in the studio yesterday in celebration. It's not often days like that come around!

 

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Published in Popular Patchwork

It was a wonderful treat to open the April 2015 issue of the Popular Patchwork magazine and see a review of my 52 Journals exhibition in there, written by Gillian Cooper. You can find it on page 23. Gillian and I have know each other for quite some time now and we had a great discussion about my work and the exhibition when she came over to visit it in Peebles, and before that at the Loch Lomond Quilt Show (sadly now no longer!)  where the work was originally shown in 2013. The picture you see of me in the article was taken there.

She is one of the few people I know, who is as enthousiastic about textile art and everything related to it as I am and it's always a pure pleasure to talk to her about it. She "gets" it! Not an expression I'm that keen on but I can't think of a better way to describe it. It was also very interesting to see which journal quilts she had selected to picture in the article. Even at the exhibition itself I was so fascinated to see which people liked which journal quilts. It varied it amazingly from visitor to visitor. It is a very thoughtful article and although it may seem strange, it gives me more insight into my own art.

So a big thank you is due to Gillian and also to Popular Patchword for featuring it so beautifully! THANKS!

Bluebell Picture in Roslin Park video

Later on this afternoon  I had very lovely news. Some of my photographs including the above one featuring bluebells in Roslin park have been featured in one of their videos to publicise the park and will soon be on the Roslynn Chapel website too. Here is the link to the video on YouTube.  I must admit I'm quite proud. The whole video is a beautiful representation of that wonderful place. Spot my name in the credits of the video.

 Already I'm looking forward to the bluebell time this year.

Having fun with the gelli plate

I should really have said plates in the title as a friend came over this morning to be introduced to gelli plate printing, so I had two plates out as well as a selection of papers and fabric. My papers were cut to exact sizes as they will be used to produce another folding book. It was fun seeing how someone else uses colours and as a result I even tried to be a bit more subdued in my colour usage too. But it's very difficult to go against your own nature and very soon I grabbed the brightest acrylics again. You can see stacks of the resulting papers above and below.

We used a lot of different mark making tools such as stamps, stencils (almost all from Stencilgirl) as well as Catalyst tools, old thread spools, top of bottles etc.

Both of us were very much into circles!

Beneath an example of one of my more subtle colour schemes and I have to say I do like what I have produced here.

But the best page of the session was this final one below.The colours just sing and it has ended up a wonderful mix of different patterns.

It was a very successful morning. I have the feeling that someone might well invest in a gelli plate very soon and we made an amazing amount of pages and fabric in a very short amount of time. That's what I love most about this method of printing.

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SAQA Interview

I was interviewed recently by Clairan Ferrono for the Studio Art Quilt Association's blog and you can read it here. Being interviewed is a good time to stand still for a moment and take stock of how and why you do what you do, and Clairan's questions sparked a lot of thoughts.

Art Journal Kickstarter

Yesterday I received my preview copy of Art Journal Kickstarter; pages and prompts to energize your art journals. Edited by Kristy Conlin. I received it as I'm featured in the book on page 42 with my journal page: Beat the Winter Blues. Well, receiving the book certainly did that! You can see more of the page here in a previous blog post.

It's always wonderful to have your work featured in a book. But this one is extra special as my main art form is quilting and that's what I have been doing for over 20 years now. In that time many of my quilts have been published in a wide variety of books and magazines but I'm a relative newcomer to art journalling and mixed media so it was amazing to be accepted into this book with one of my art journalling pages.

The book is not yet available but you can pre-order it from Amazon in the UK here. They show a release date of 30th January. I would say it of course,  but truly it's a lovely book published by North Light Books, with a wealth of illustrations. 151 Original art journal pages are included as well as dozens of journalling prompts, advice, inspiration, mixed media secrets and lots of techniques. I'm going to love working my way through it all and I'm very proud to find myself in among so many amazing artists.

The Big Red Barn

After our lovely tea at The Big Red Barn last Sunday we decided to take our friends (and neighbours) to the place to have lunch today. It proved to be a great decision and we had a most enjoyable time as well as a delicious meal. Of course I took my camera too to take that all important daily blip but managed to include myself too on the first try. Not so bad as this is still the week for self portraits on my photography class so I'm showing it there in our Flickr group.

For my blip however I took another picture this time with no distractions from that very red barn. This by the way is how you recognize where the place is (on the A702 going south just past Dolphinton) but not where the restaurant is located. That is in a modern building right next to the barn as you can see on their website.

And finally, I discovered that I am featured on the Studio Art Quilt Associates Europe website at the moment.

Here is the link.

 

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A Sense of Self

,

I did sneak in the information that some of my work was going to be published some time ago but recently came the official notification that the book is in production and will be out early next year. You can see the cover above and 4 of my quilts (all journal quilts) are going to be in there. According to Amazon UK where it can be pre-ordered,  delivery will be on the 5th March 2015. Here is the link if you want to place an order. I'll post more about the book here and show pictures of my pieces once the book arrives.

It's always very pleasant to be included in such publications and it enhances the sense of self as an artist.

Self was also the subject for my photography class this week as it was all about taking self-portraits using different methods. The above picture was taken by photographing my reflection in a very old mirror (beginning 20th Century, the mirror that is, not me!). The old glass is what gives this portrait all the texture so no playing with Photoshop here. This is just as it came out of the camera.

For the other two photographs I used the timer on my camera set to 10 seconds which gave me just about enough time to put myself into position. I decided I wanted to take them in my studio as that is the place above all else that defines me best. Here I'm seating at my work desk where all the hand stitching takes place.

And here I am seated behind my trusty Bernina sewing machine. Like our tutor Susannah Conway I'm far from relaxed about taking selfies but with her encouragement I experimented away today learning much about my camera in the process too. Needless to say the fast majority of pictures taken were quickly deleted again but I'm pleased with the three I was left with,  and that I'm showing you here.

In the Museum

It was great to get my subscription issue from British Patchwork & Patchwork magazine for October 2014. There is an article starting on page 32 about my 52 Journals exhibition, written beautifully by Jane Rae. It is accompanied by a lovely selection of pictures chosen by Joanne Kent, the editor of the magazine. To Lenna and my mutual delight we discovered the same issue for sale in the Newsagents in Peebles so she could buy a copy to take back home when she departs, sadly on Monday morning already. The time seems to have flown past.

We spend most of the day at the exhibition as I had a bus full of quilters and embroiderers coming from Dumfries so the museum stayed open till 4 pm and I gave them a talk/gallery walk. These are some pictures of me in action, taken by Lenna .

The other good news is that during this week when I was mainly absent from the exhibition, a piece was sold and then to my intense delight I discovered that another one of the journal quilts, the one called Shelter, is going home with Lenna to Florida.

As there were many friends present we prevailed on one of them to take our picture together!

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My Favourite Things

My Favourite Things is an ongoing regular feature in the STITCH with the Embroiderers' Guild magazine and it was a pleasure to be asked to contribute my own favourites. It has just been published in issue 89, June-July 2014 that you can see above. You can also find STITCH on Facebook.

The Favourite Things feature is always on the last page of the magazine and you can catch glimpses of my page in these pictures. You won't be surprised to hear books are featured but once I started writing I was quite surprised myself to discover how much I love my photography (specially  my daily blip) and my online presence. But there are also purely practical items without which I would find life far less pleasurable, such as Big Eye needles and my gelli plates.

By writing I discover things about myself that I must have know already subconsciously  but that drift to the surface once I start to think about them properly. Thanks to STITCH and it's editor Kathy Troup for featuring me. I love the resulting article.

Exciting Stuff

We've had quite a lot of excitement in the last few days. First of all some of my work has made it onto the StencilGirl blog and you can see that here.

Then I had an e-mail form the German quilter Gudrun Heinz who organizes travelling  exhibitions featuring small quilts, on a theme, every few years, the latest one on Boredom. She wanted to let us know that the exhibition is featured in the Spring 2014 issue of Burda Patchwork, a magazine that is published in both French and German. I managed to lay my hands on a French version online but in the meantime Gudrun was good enough to provide us with a picture of the spread. Above right is my little piece featuring my father and our cat Roxy. I wonder what he would have made of the fact that he is featured in a magazine now. The exhibition has already been to lots of places, starting at the Festival of Quilts in Birmingham last year, followed by outings to St. Petersburg, Moscow,  Murmansk and Riga and will be going on to Prague, Solothurn, Karlsruhe and Bremen and no doubt many other places. Gudrun is very good at finding venues to exhibit as well as keeping us informed.

The next excitement concerned the annual 2nd hand book sale held in Peebles where I found a veritable treasure trove of books. A set of 3 wonderful books about Venice, a book with a beautiful red/gold cover about Scallops (which I will take apart to use that cover), images (copyright free as published in 1919) in a book about Saint Francis, a guide book about Venice (in which I discovered postcards and a map after bringing it home, oh yah!), some old maps (all for collage fodder) and a French book with a gorgeous cover that I will use to alter. All for the princely sum of £16. 

The final excitement was felt by John (well, it was about time he had a treat too!) when we discovered a massive tree felling in operation on the Shiplaw road going home. The sight of so many trees was almost too much for him! It will be my blip for the day so I got something out of this too!

Love the patterns of those stacks and I know I'm not the only one!