Mouse and Raven

Callifabric

I've always loved writing.

Not writing, like poetry, or a writer. I've given it a go at times but I'm terrible at it. My poetry is trite and saccharine, or miserable and clunky. My prose is nothing more than bad Mary-Sue-ing that I've never been able to move past.

No, I mean handwriting. The verb *and* the noun. I remember borrowing books on calligraphy and flourishing and embellishment as early as year 7 in high school, and when I went to get fitted for braces, the orthodontist asked if I had a doctor's light in my pocket, but it turned out to be my beloved calligraphy pen, which I carried everywhere. Just in case, you know.

I taught myself basic calligraphy the same way I'd taught myself fair isle, crochet, embroidery and so many other skills: by poring over as many books as I could get my little hands on .

Then, at about 19, I enrolled into a calligraphy course at Newcastle TAFE with the wonderfully talented and sweet Kaye Frost, whose books are sadly out of print. This allowed me to really grow and expand on something that I was naturally good at, despite my everyday handwriting being hideous.

I spent a few years doing small jobs - Kaye would get me to do simple work like certificates/awards as a stand in for her when she was on holidays, which I considered a great honour, and made me feel like a Real Artist. I did wedding invitations and barely broke even, but did it because I loved writing.

It didn't take me long, however, to realise that working with brides and their mothers on a daily basis was going to drive me completely mental. I did a few commissioned pieces but these were an enormous amount of work, and before the internet and digital photography came along, involved multiple meetings and prep/progress drawings, and after a customer refused to pay me for a final piece because it wasn't what she'd imagined, I decided to just let it go.

I did the occasional piece as a gift, sometimes even for myself, dabbled in bookmaking for a while, did things like the pretty covers for our choir's 125th anniversary songbooks in black and gold foil. I did a couple of evening classes just for the motivation and social contact when I moved to Canberra, but didn't gel with the group of older, privileged women.

For the past few months I've been thinking of ways to incorporate text into my quilts. I have bought quite a few text fabrics but they're not really what I want. I finally decided last night to just starch up a piece of scrap fabric and copy out a poem on it. No planning, just... write. No worries about outcome, just playing.

Turned out pretty ok ;) in fact, despite a few layout issues which could easily be tweaked with a bit of planning, I'm happy with it. I moved on to a bigger piece and scrawled up my favourite sonnet with a bit of randomness on the edges.

This.

Is.

FUN!

I'm using two different types of pen - one is the fabricolor twin, which has a 2mm round end and a brush end, the other is the Pigma Micron01 0.25mm. I tried the Nikko marker but it has dried out already and is all but useless, having hardly been used.

I've ironed up the first piece (I'm still adding to the 2nd) and it's now in the wash. Hopefully the writing will still be there when I pull it out... ;)

 

  

 

Leggings conversion for thunder thighs

I'm the heaviest I've been in my whole life. I guess this is what turning 40 does to one's physique.

Unlike the rest of my life, however, I'm pretty much at peace with this. I struggled with self image for much of my first 30 years, and even when I was tiny with all my ribs sticking out, I thought I was fat and unattractive, my bum was big and my thighs were thunderous. Having a size 6 petite mother and a bunch of friends with self esteem and self images issues which they regularly vocalised didn't help either.

I didn't meet a bum man until I met my exhusband. I didn't even know they existed. All this time with my flat chest and my round butt, all I needed was a pushup bra and a bum man. Well, I never.

Turning 30 was awesome. I know for a lot of women this is a bit of a crisis, but for me it was great. Maybe it was just my own shift in perception, but it felt like I was taken more seriously, dismissed less, and less of an expectation to look or be a certain way. I cut ties with a couple of friendships (one particularly toxic one which, in hindsight, had been emotionally abusive), embraced my oddness, and started hanging out with other odd bods who didn't expect me to be anyone except myself.

The weight thing took longer. The most I'd ever weighed was 72kg. I gained it, I lost it, I gained it, I lost it. I have tried most mainstream diets (have always eschewed extreme choices like atkins, paleo etc) - weight watchers, lite and easy, etc.

If turning 30 was great, I had no idea how wonderful 40 was going to be.

Despite tipping the bathroom scales at a neat 73-74kg depending on the day, I'm happy with my body. It's got all the weird droopy bits and bumpy bits and distended bits that you'd expect on a 40 year old. Again, a perception shift: it's ok to have these bits. I'm still going to wear fun clothes that I like, from op shops and ebay stores and market stalls. (this is a fashion choice as well as an ethical and environmental one). I've discovered, finally, that faking "I'm shit hot and I know it" (fake it til you become it) totally trumps weight loss.

Well. That was a long lead-in to my little tutorial for today. Part of having a big arse and thighs is that leggings are a stressful experience. I love leggings, but I have so many problems with them - firstly the current fashion of low rise pants means that I've got nothing to tame the previously mentioned distended tummy-bits. And believe me, they need TAMING. Haha.

Most leggings come with the attached lie "one sizes fits..." BAH. There's lies, damn lies, and leggings, apparently. When you have honking big thighs and butt, these use up most of the fabric in that area, effectively shortening the rise and back area, so no matter what you do, you're gonna flash your sweaty 40 year old crack at whoever is sitting behind you unless you carry some sort of modesty scarf at all times. Now I know there's a fetish for everything, but most people aren't going to appreciate said crack. I mean, I know that with my not-quite-A-cups it's the only cleavage I'm ever going to have, but it's just not the same. Even if the poor sucker behind you *is* a bum man.

Ooops. Off I go again. Anyway - wanna see how I deal with having gorgeous leggings that I'm too fat to wear? Watch and learn. You're gonna LOVE this.

Step 1: Cut those nasty tiny-thighed leggings to pieces. Specifically, chop them off so you've got about 3 or 4 cm from the inner crotch seam. Straight off. I used pinking shears because I love those zig zaggy things.

Step 2: Overlock (serge) some 6mm elastic along the inside edge.

Step 3: Fold it over once and use a stretch stitch. You could fold it twice if you think the exposed overlocking will aggravate your skin. Oh, that's my thigh by the way. Sweet huh? That baby, along with the other bits of my legs, can run me through a half marathon, no worries mate ;)

Step 4: Measure around the part above your knee where your lower legging will sit. Cut your 25mm elastic to the tightness you want this to be. I have it *just* tight enough to hang on - the suspenders will keep them up - because I don't like the muffin top type fat thing you get when you squish your squishy thigh bits with elastic. Stitch the ends together to make a loop (just enough to hold it steady) and pin it around the outside of the legging. Make sure the legging has been turned inside out (the white in this pic is the inside. You'll have to do some stretching in the pinning and sewing, as in these pics:

Step 5: Overlock (serge) along the edge. You can see I'm stretching it between pins to make sure it's evenly done. It'll be slightly distorted when you're done but don't panic. It's meant to be like this, and if you've measured your thigh correctly it'll stretch out to be *just right*.

Final step: fold this over the elastic (again, once or twice is your call - I just did once) and stitch two rows of stretch stitching to finish it off. Ta da! Attach suspenders/skirt lifters, and you're off. Here's me modeling them with black stockings underneath. I'll likely wear a just-on-the-knee skirt with these. Yay!

Flight of the Phoenix: Flying off to the U.S.!

I dithered a long time on the little geese down the side. I quilted the middle bits, the phoenixes, the poem, but I just baulked on the little geese. I didn't want to do smaller phoenix units - it seemed wrong and just unnecessarily "busy" in terms of design. I put it aside, and worked on other things.

Finally one day I pulled it out some weeks later, sat down, and improvised a flame motif. Like the phoenix motif, I ran it single line from the top triangle right down to the bottom. It was simple and elegant, and complimented the design. A slimline binding in orange, and voila. Done.

This was a really special gift for a really special friend. Long story short, "Friday's Child" and I have been online friends for a long time. I started blogging in 2003, and shortly after that became an active member of the blogdrive community along with quite a few others including Friday.

We blogged side by side and chatted regularly online. We lost touch. I stopped blogging. We found each other again on facebook, and started chatting again. I found out her real name. She found out mine (gosh! LOL)

Without going into detail about someone else's life, my friend has had some tough times recently. Really tough. She's always been an inspiration for me, not in the "up there" type of inspiration, but the "walking with you"type. So I made this for her. The timing of handing over the gift was either perfect or awful - I haven't really worked out which - but the whole not-blogging-the-process was because I'd wanted it to be a surprise for her. Not to mention if it had turned out shite, well, we'd get rid of it quietly and never speak of it again. ;)

My only regret is that I couldn't give this to her in person. Luckily for me, wrapping yourself in a quilt is a lot like wrapping yourself in a hug. Friday I hope you feel hugged every time you're wrapped in the quilt, or snuggled under it. Love love! :)

The BBQA post. It's long, but hopefully worth it! ;)

At the start of this year, I still considered myself a novice.

The general agreement for the "novice" label in quilting is that it's the first two years of practice. Funnily enough, it's the same with running. I can see why. It's been the last month or two really that I've stopped thinking of myself as a novice, and thinking of myself as just a "quilter". Certainly not artisan or "experienced" status, but I've definitely thrown off my novice's cloak and I guess in old fashioned terms I'd be considered a journeyman. A P plater? ;)

Part of that progression has been this piece: the Building Blocks Quilt Along (BBQA) run by the wonderful Leah Day. I started this with great excitement and anticipation at the start of the year, and I've been running with it on and off since January. At times I've run ahead with it, more often than not I've run behind. Part of this was due to the nature of the time differences in Australia: Leah posted the videos on Sunday/Monday there, which meant they went up on Tuesday here.

What I discovered in this is that my motivation is a fragile little beastie. I'd look at other people's updates and photos while I struggled with my long workdays (8am to 6pm on Tuesdays) and generally be way too tired to do anything until the weekend, when by then I'd missed the boat for posting with everyone else. A shared quilt-along, it seems, relies on you being able to really join in. It felt like I couldn't.*

So I didn't. I fell right behind. Way behind.

One of the best things about this quilt-along is that Leah has been sharing a lot of herself in this - her own learning experience, her struggles, her doubts. I stop so many times and shake my head at her courage in opening up and making herself vulnerable, in order to share her learning as a quilter and as a person. Another thing I discovered along the way is that when I'm thwarted, and my (cognitive and emotional) resources are low, I become buried in a deep sense of personal failure.

I don't work like other people. I have some issues around intensity and focus - a tendency to get obsessed with something for a while and then move on to the next thing, huge amounts of energy at times, sometimes stupidly focused to the exclusion of all else, difficulty doing what I "should" when I want to be doing what I "want", high levels of frustration when thwarted. I had to learn frustration tolerance early, and I *can* do it - but it's often a fight. And when I'm tired, sometimes I lose that fight. Something I've discovered this year, with the BBQA, is that I just don't suit regular, spaced out workloads. I have to run with the energy when it comes, so that when it's *not* there, I don't feel guilty, or like a failure.

Sound weird? Maybe. But it works. And, like I've been encouraging others to do, I'm not punishing myself for who and what I am any more - I'm making the decision to work to my strengths. My strength, it seems, is working in short intense bursts, followed by rest (which may include the mental workload of planning and designing the next project, so isn't necessarily unproductive either, but is definitely low key, relaxed, unforced and restful).

Last weekend I went all out, got out my big pile of mouldering fabric, and decided to go for broke. I completed the squares and the piecing in a matter of (several very frantic and intense) days. I quilted like a maniac. Some of it is good, some of it's not so good.

This isn't how the quilt was meant to be done, but this was the only way I could do it that didn't involve guilt, misery and frustration. I'm sure Leah would agree that this isn't the point of quilting!

The other thing I discovered was a technical discovery about myself and my work. I have a very very VERY different style of quilting to Leah. I've been working on a few designs - the phoenix quilt, the Tula Pink Moxie quilt (aka the peacock feather quilt), and it seems my style (for the moment at least) is all about sweeping lines, open designs, mostly unstructured and improvised. Even the peacock feather has only part of it marked, the curls and small curves down the main feather shaft are all just made up on the spot. Not much in the way of circles, pebbling, echoing, or other classic quilting designs/patterns. I found that the squares which I slavishly copied in design were stilted, wobbly and uncertain. The squares which I just ran round with the machine and made up myself (designed or improvised) were smoother, better quality work.

I'm guessing I know what Leah's input here would be: "Great! that's exactly what I want you to do - find your own way of doing this!" (am I close, Leah? hehe) So even though I ended up doing much of the later squares completely differently, I was still learning. Take the plunge. Find your own style. Find your own way. Fly! :D

Finally, I have decided that quilt as you go (QAYG) is just way too wasteful. Today I've been trimming the squares back to their 8 inch ready-to-assemble size, and my heart sinks every time I look at my waste bin and the staggering volume of wasted fabric and batting. I know this is the nature of QAYG as a technique, and I knew it was coming, but it's still hard to process. Considering the ease with which I baste and quilt a full sized king or queen, I have no doubt that this will be a one-off for me.

So this one's almost in the bag. I still have to do the putting-together of all the squares, and the binding. I don't like it much at the moment. It might be that it's too traditional for my tastes, which isn't a criticism of anything here (not the pattern nor traditional quilts), so I'm thinking I might auction it and give the dollars to Beyond Blue. 

My sincerest thanks go to Leah for the countless hours she puts into her teaching. I would never have progressed in the craft the way I have if not for her inspiring talks about loving and accepting your imperfections, and just diving in and going for it.

 

* I want to point out here that this post might come across as negative in places. It's not! This is a whole lotta learning right here, and that is HUGELY valuable to me. This isn't a criticism of Leah Day, who I admire and respect greatly, nor of the Building Blocks quilt pattern. These are judgement free observations, and I'm sharing them with you as part of my own learning journey. I approached this in the spirit of curiosity and openness, and I learned SO MUCH. I'm hugely grateful in particular to Leah Day, whose generosity and warmth has given me enjoyment of an experience which could easily have turned into a chore.

Flight of the Phoenix 4

Finally it was time to do the rest of the quilting. I often put in vague guide lines when quilting, as I find I get smoother sweeping lines if I go with speed and grace rather than stilted precision, but this design needed to be fully sketched out each time. It's too complex to use a tracing template, so I sketched each one freehand one at a time as I went. I mark a couple of key spots like the half way vertical line and would alternate sketching and quilting, one goose/triangle at a time. Each row of flying geese/ rising phoenixes is a single continuous thread.

Flight of the Phoenix 3

The next step was the all important test run. I don't do a whole lot of test work or visual diary work, as I don't have the time to spend on this level of meticulous work that a professional artist might - time is usually of the essence, and so far I've been pretty happy with the results of holding an idea in my mind and then running with it. I know the visual diary process would be of major importance if I ever wanted to take my work to the "next level" but for now, this is where I am.

So the test run work tends to be fairly light on the ground. A few rough sketches, a square or two to try it out in the colour and fabric I'm thinking of, and off I go.

Flight of the Phoenix 2

This is where I talk a bit about my design process.

I always struggled with the keeping of a visual diary. The problem with having limited energy resources is that you have to think a little bit like a miser - you only have a budget of *this* much energy and you need *this* much to do whatever you want to do - and these two amounts often fall short of what I need.

The issue then with maintaining a "real" visual diary, is that if I do this, and plan my work in a diary, I'm done. I'm out of energy, I've used it up planning and don't get to the doing. The other issue is that it's hard work then, because I also use up all the "fun", and it feels like doing a piece twice over. Unlike a professional artist, my work is for me, for the process, for the fun of it. I understand perfectly why a professional artist would need to keep a visual diary, but for us recreational artists, it feels like too much work.

There has been some really interesting stuff coming out online, however, about the sharing of "process". People ask me where I get ideas from, how I come up with a design, etc. The answer is a little fluffy. Sometimes you can chase inspiration, and sometimes it just comes. This one I definitely chased.

I wanted to quilt the geese to stand out, and leave the patterned background as simple as possible. When I tried to imagine it in my head, which is usually my first non-visual-diary step in my process, I couldn't.

I pulled out pen and paper and sketched a few ideas. I had decided to use the poem titled "Fly" and so I tried putting the word into the triangle, making a flying goose shape, etc. Nothing. I didn't like any of it, it all looked twee, forced, basically crap.

I mused on it a while. I left it for a day. I went for a run. I thought about it on the run. I thought about geese, and flying things, and phoenixes. I looked for a few images of phoenixes on google images. And I noticed that the phoenix was a triangle shape but the other way round from what I thought of as the flying goose right-way-up. I went for another run, images of flying phoenix in my head, tick tick tick went my feet, tick tick tick went my head. I saw it in my mind.

BOOM. There was the idea. I literally sat down, pulled out pen and paper and drew the phoenix as a single line drawing in a triangle. I then shifted it to match the dimensions of the triangles and adjusted the proportions. I was ready to stitch a sample.

Flight of the Phoenix, part 1 :)

I started this quilt some months ago.

It started firstly with me buying a few sets of fat quarters in oranges and navy from a friend who was de-stashing. I liked the way the orange and navy seemed to change somehow when paired together - I don't tend to go much for either colour on their own, but together... yum!

I wasn't sure what I was going to do with them, so I thought I'd start with some flying geese. At this point I'd never used spray starch (OMG, the revelation!) but I was keen to give triangles a bit of a go. I'd not enjoyed them a whole lot because I hadn't heard of this little thing called starch, so I could never get them quite right; they were always just a little wriggly and warped.

As I played with them, I found it becoming very traditional-feeling, which isn't really my style with my quilts. In an attempt to pull it back from the edge of tradition, I threw in a couple of yards of cream solid and suddenly the dynamic shifted again. Perfect!

I put them aside for a while. I still wasn't sure what I was doing with them. I put the basic top together and started to muse on ways to quilt it. Stuck for an idea for the geese (I don't dig feathers either) I thought I'd put some script on the cream strips, and googled some poetry. At this point my friend Friday had recently moved into a new place and I'd been thinking I might give it to her as a (late) housewarming gift. Nice!

Now, Friday and I have been online friends for about 16 years now. Amazing, I know! We "met" on blogdrive, when we were both on the favourites list, getting crazy numbers of hits and writing like crazy things. I wrote about knitting, she wrote about life, and coming through adversity. I thought a phoenix theme would suit her, would suit what I know of her as a person. And maybe those pesky geese could becoming phoenixes... hm! So, on went the poem. I got the author's permission and I was in business.

I marked the fabric with a couple of basic lines separating the sections into thirds, but the writing itself is entirely freehand with no marking. Pays to have a background in calligraphy - all those years dealing with brides and their mums finally reaps some benefit! ;)

The Modern Medallion Quilt, Tula Style

I was plugging away at this lovely quilt top for a while there, when I got distracted. There are times when I bite off more than I can chew, and this seems to be one of those times. I clutch at my imaginary pearls in horror every time I look at my diary for August. Seriously.

So this has stalled for a bit. I'm up to the "cross my heart" border, but decided to switch to my little art quilt (which I still haven't blogged yet, oops), and to finish it off. FO number one, boom!

Then I felt so good finishing a project that had been sitting there for a while that I thought I'd finish off the Secret Phoenix Quilt. Again, I haven't blogged any of this, because I'm pretty sure its intended recipient reads my blog. And has NO CLUE that I'm making them a quilt. Muahahaha! This makes me unspeakably, delightfully happy. So I finished it off too. I even hand bound it (gasp!) which is like a little miracle for me... maybe I'm overcoming my aversion to hand sewing. My hands are pretty good lately too, and I only ever do small stints, so I suspects that helps.

And then... then I basted the Moxie quilt, and it's sitting there just waiting to be quilted up, and I basted my Nightshade quilt. It's like a veritable Tula vs Tula Pro Wrestling Quilt Fight in my sewing room right now, with all the Tula-flavoured quilts needing attention.

....and I haven't started the Michael Miller challenge piece. It's only due, ya know, on Thursday. 5 days, 4 of which are work days. Ummmmm.

So here's my most recent progress photo, half way through the Waving Not Drowning Border. In the interest of the Tula Fight, I'm going to leave it at this for now. But watch this space. Soon, my dears... soon. :D Until then, I'm taking the hint from the lovely Crystal, and linking on up! :D

Art Quilting at the guild sewing day

My wonderful guild (Canberra Modern Quilt Guild) had a sewing day today. And it was FUN! I turned up a little late, but that was ok because it meant I actually got a spot on the tables to sit and sew. This is what I worked on today. I did the fabric painting last year at a workshop with the utterly fabulous and talented Sue Dennis, and it's been a slow process getting it moving. I did a little of the orange a while back and ran out of oomph, but made great progress on it today, adding purples, greens and pinks into the bird of paradise.

The photos at the bottom show the detail of the inital laying down of small pieces of fabric, some a mere 2mm across, some up to about 9mm. I have copied this basic idea from an artist called Kathryn Harmer-Fox who does incredibly detailed pieces and puts down this layer and then "scribbles" over it with the free motion foot before she finishes it off with a ridiculous amount of thread painting and layering. Freekin seriously beautiful stuff. I'm hoping that as I find my feet with art quilting (this is my second ever art quilt, I might remind you) that I find my own style and my own techniques. I'm really grateful to Kathryn in particular for being so incredibly generous in sharing her progress shots and some close ups so us poor plebs can emulate her and grow in our own craft and skills.

This pic is an overall - sorry for the blurriness, I think the iphone has been dropped on its head a few too many times. I'm planning on doing the right hand side in machine fmq in purple and white only on the black.

 I laid down the basic layering of colours today. The pinks and purples and greens were so much fun after spending so long on the orange/yellow stuff.

Detail of the pink and purple with *just* enough thread to hold it steady for now.

Started the thread painting over the top of it with a yellow/orange thread. I'm enjoying this SO much!