Quilts in progress

 "Memory Maintenance" has become three quilts, sizes medium, small, and large.

 I've spent the day stitching the blocks of the large one to the background - black wadding covered with a gold semi-sheer. It's about 80cm x 45cm, and will be cut round the edges of the blocks once they are all attached -

Not that the smaller ones are completely finished yet. Soon.

"Suitable for nuns"

The final panel of a tapestry made in Germany about 1490. The tapestry depicts a woman in a fashionable dress undertaking a spiritual journey. After prayer, confession, washing her heart in Christ's blood to purify it, and taking Holy Communion, she finally enters a convent. "Such subject matter was seen as suitable for nuns," says the label, "and this may even have been made in a nunnery."

The entire panel, with a statue of St Francis, displayed in the V&A's medieval gallery -

Felted

Was it only Monday when we were having lunch at the Orangery cafe in Amsterdam's botanical garden? It's so good to be home - while we were enjoying the snow and the raspberry pie, we didn't know about the looong journey that lay ahead.The felt that lines the walls of this otherwise-echoey room is wonderful, and was installed mere days ago. It was commissioned from Claudy Jongstra, who has used silk, wool from her flock of rare Drenth heath sheep, and dyes from plants grown in her garden.
Called "Capitulare de Villis" after a proclamation of Charles the Great (747-814) on the cultivation of herbs and food plants, the work incorporates dyes from plants listed in the declaration.

Rescued from oblivion

This "long piece" was made from scraps of silk, years ago (last century, even). Tony thought it would be a good idea to have it on show somewhere, and we found this little corner. The hen who laid the magic egg, made as an offshoot of a sculpture project, regards it with wonder.Here's a closeup - a the pictures inside some of the little "houses" started as photocopies of drawings, from my V&A sketchbook - this bird was on a tile. I painted the photocopies with transfer paint, then ironed them on to synthetic fabric. The colours transferred, but where there were black lines on the paper, the transferred image was white.

The "treasure houses" grew out of scraps of silk -- I do love to use the smallest scraps ...
Some of the images transferred rather faintly, and I'd planned to go over the faint lines with stitch, one day ... but that day is unlikely to come, it's time to move on.

I've just realised - with some excitement! - that these little glimpses into the treasure-houses fit right in with my "imagined interiors" theme for the summer homework.

"Blown Away"

In 2001 or so, new to the internet, I joined AlternativeQuiltList, a yahoogroup. This was in the good old days when there was lots of discussion in the discussion groups - that sphere of action now seems to have been taken over by blogs, which has its pros and cons.

Anyway, AQL had a "painting challenge" where you chose an artist and wrote a bit about them on the list, then made a quilt based on their work or something that arose from your research. My choice for the first round was Elisabeth Vigee Lebrun, who painted aristocrats around the time of the French Revolution. More about her another time (maybe).

For the second round I wanted something completely different - so, why not Australian Aboriginal art? I chanced on an online photo of a "desert garden" on the Art and Australia magazine site. It's no longer there, but looked rather like this -

and turned out to be by an artist named Gloria Petyarre. I loved the flow of the shapes, and did a sample, and then pulled out all sorts of yellow, orange, red, brown fabrics, and it evolved into quite a large piece (44 cm x 100 cm).

Each of the seven sections has a different combination of colours. The "leaves" are about the size of a thumbnail, built up in layers to cover the background, and then the different sections are applied to a piece of black fabric -Here are a couple of details - More recently, Gloria Petyarre has been painting Bush Medicine Dreaming -

Tapestry - Banners of Persuasion

In early December this show, Demons, Yarns & Tales, will be in Miami; it was showing in London at a venue (near King's Cross) that until seven years ago was used as a dairy - not for milking cows but for dispatching the bottled milk on those funny electric milk vans that are now becoming rare in London.

In the distance, "Vote Alan Measles for God" by Grayson Perry; nearer, "After Migrant Fruit Thugs" by Fred Tomaselli.
Shazia Sikander's "Pathology of Suspension" and inthe distance, Gavin Turk's "Mappa del Mundo", global packaging and labels.

A closeup of Grayson Perry's tapestry - which is needlepoint, not woven. And much if not most is petit point - lots & lots of stitches!

In Gary Hume's "Georgie and Orchids" the greenery was in a heavier thread that stood out from the background.And even further out from the surface, collage elements in Ghada Amer & Reza Farkhondeh's "The Bugs and the Lovers" -

There's lots more information about the 14 artists and works on the exhibition's website. The artists who designed the tapestries worked in various media; one commentator was "overwhelmed by [the finished tapestries'] fidelity to the original artwork or, where mimicry was impossible, by their inspired interpretation of the source material. This process of translation requires enormous skill. From the original artwork, a full-scale weaver’s graph has to be produced containing an outline drawing of the design, annotated with precise colour references for the [anonymous] weavers to follow."

Footnote: "The inspiration for the project came from Christopher and Suzanne Sharp; they felt it was time to broaden their remit from rug design and chose tapestry because of its links with painting – because both canvases and tapestries hang on the wall and because, throughout the long history of the medium, artists have played a crucial role in making designs for tapestries."

Under the needle

The Ginkgo piece is getting its leaves stitched on by machine, and then it will get some hand quilting or big-stitch embellishment --And the elongated "heartbeat" piece is systematically getting its grid, with a lustrous reddish rayon thread in the bobbin --
The rest of "life" feels a bit frantic at the moment - it's good to switch off by doing some sewing!

At such times I find I need something that doesn't require much thinking - carefully following straight lines is perfect (and knitting is good too). I drew the lines onto iron-on stabilizer, along the direction it would tear off easily. The vertical lines have been stitched, the stabilizer torn off, and another layer of stabilizer added for the horizontal lines. The next stage, adding the ECG tracings, will be tricky -- but thanks to Cathy C-M and Debbi, I know now to get the T wave looking perky. A little knowledge of why ECgs look the way they do would be helpful -- it's like using a foreign language, you don't want inadvertently to say something inappropriate.

Thanks also to Sue and magsramsay for ideas on how to "drown" the gold in the Gingko piece - that got me thinking.

Neither abandonned nor forgotten

"Ginkgo" went up on the "design wall" this morning. I'm adding more leaves, and wondering whether that gold panel is too bright, and where the sparky contrast is going to come from...
Here's a detail, showing the metallic organza leaves that were appliqued onto the squares before the squares were sewn together:This landscape has been hanging up since the workshop last week, and is collecting miscellanea that turn up as I gradually make order in the workroom:
The WIPs pinned to the design board include something A3-sized that really should be abandonned [could it be recycled into a bag??], a dotty fandango inspired by a Howard Hodgkin painting, a nearly-ready journal quilt from last year's "rain" series, and a discharged piece done in Bob Adams' workshop last year, which got some added stitching:
The motto, couched onto pink velvet, reads: Snatch the eternal from the desperately fleeting.

Spooky forest

A detail showing the use of poppy petals (pressed between two sheets of bondaweb, then covered with tulle and stitched round the edge of the petal). The uncurling ferns are printed with metal type with paint brushed on. I think the lutradur takes the paint in a way appropriate to this theme - it wouldn't work so well in fabric.
And those angled leaves are suitably spooky too...