501

Posted on 21/04/2013 by

Hello! Have you missed me?

Just thought I’d pop by with a couple of administrative announcements:

1. My domain name will delete itself (in 89 days, WordPress informs me) – so the address of this blog will no longer be stitchinglife.com but stitchinglife2.wordpress.com. You might need to amend something on your feed if you don’t want to lose track of anything.

2. I have finally relented and made this blog public again, after having withdrawn it for private circulation. I will see how it goes. If I find my images ‘pinned’ or shared all over the place, then I’ll think again.

scraps quilt 2

scraps quilt 2

On a non-administrative note, life is good. My academic research is going well, and I’ve made a start on the writing: 11,500 words so far, so about 10% done. Long way to go, but I’m enjoying it.

The quilt you can see is the one I started here  – it’s now finished and enjoying life in its new home. Same technique – paper-pieced, quilt as you go, different coloured backs – very easy and a delight to make.

front detail

back

back

Until next time! Maybe this year, maybe next year… you never know.

This brief fly-past does NOT mean I will be regularly blogging from now on. I may never write another post, then again I might just post pictures of work in progress, but will do so very infrequently. I’m sorry but I just don’t have the time at present to get back on the blog treadmill so I will not be regularly visiting other blogs or reading blog posts. Hope all is well with my friends and readers.

Thanks for stopping by.

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500 and out

Posted on 09/08/2012 by

I did promise something spectacular for my 500th post, and here it is:

Not quite what you were expecting.

I’ve been quietly making some spectacular changes to my life. During my blog break in June/July I researched, wrote and submitted an application to study for a PhD in English, and have recently received confirmation that my application was successful.

This means that from September I’ll be a full-time student for the next three years. At my age that does sound faintly ridiculous, but there it is.  Clearly, a PhD is going to involve quite a lot of work – 100,000 words and a bibliography the length of a football pitch. I aim to give it my full and undivided attention, which means that I’m withdrawing from my online and blog-related activities.

Writing a blog takes a surprising amount of time and effort, as those of you who maintain blogs will know. Keeping up with the blog circuit also takes a lot of time and effort.  Art doesn’t pay enough; at least, not in my case.  Admittedly, gaining a further qualification also isn’t going to pay the bills, in the short term, but in the longer term at least it has some reliable earning potential. I hope that this period of study might lead eventually to further work in research, publishing or undergraduate teaching.

Obviously I will continue to stitch in whatever spare time I end up having, but only for my own amusement. I’ve already closed my flickr account and will be making a decision about my facebook page in the coming weeks.  I still have a few pieces of work for sale here on the blog (see the tab at the top of this page). I have course fees to pay, and, frankly, I need the money.

So, there it is – my 500th post is also my last.

It’s been a lot of fun: I’ve met some incredible people from all over the world, some of whom have become real, true friends and will (I hope!) remain such. Most of you have made me laugh at some point; all of you have made me think. It’s been good to show my work here, and to write about it, and to read your thoughts about it. It’s been very satisfying to know that my work lives with some of you in your homes; little stitches on cloth witnessing the passing of time, the living of different lives.

But mostly it’s been good to travel with you on this brief passage through my life – your life, our lives – and I thank you you for it.

This is it!

Thank you.

:-)

Posted in Uncategorized | 96 Comments

Untitled

Posted on 02/08/2012 by

Well, I can’t carry on calling it Beardie Quilt, can I? And every artist, at some point in their life, produces something called ‘Untitled’.

It turned out all right in the end. I like the back, too:

I’ve added this to the ‘work for sale’ tab at the top of this page.

WordPress informs me that this is my 499th post.

Better start working on something spectacular for the 500th!

Posted in art, quilts, textile art | Tagged , , , , | 18 Comments

Keeping calm

Posted on 30/07/2012 by

Still quilting

Still embroidering

Still bearding.

Keep calm and carry on.

Posted in art, In progress, quilts, textile art | Tagged , , , | 9 Comments

Scraps Quilt 2

Posted on 25/07/2012 by

This is Scraps Quilt 2, which will be a gift and should be finished by the end of the year. This one will be very slightly different from Scraps Quilt 1:

This time it’s 7″ blocks. I didn’t like the even numberedness of the 8″ block, which was prone to dividing itself rather too neatly into four equal quarters. A block made of odd-numbered inches seems a little more interesting. This time, as you can see, each block will have a little accent of something else in the centre(-ish).

They won’t be going together in this order; this is just the total number of blocks completed so far. I hope that the whole quilt, when all 110 blocks are pieced together, will read as effectively in real life as it does in my imagination. Bear in mind that these are just scraps, and this is just evening-and-spare-time work, and it really is surprising how much you can achieve with a few spare minutes here and there. To date, 8 down, 102 to go.

However, I think it’s more like task avoidance, since I’d rather be making these blocks than working on beardie-quilt. Tomorrow, I keep saying. Tomorrow I’ll tackle the tough beardie quilt. Really. I will.

Posted in art, In progress, patchwork, quilts | Tagged , , , | 6 Comments

the spirit of perseverance

Posted on 20/07/2012 by

I wondered if embroidering this quilt might be easier than quilting it.

It wasn’t.

Embroidering cardboard is just as difficult as quilting it.

Posted in In progress, patchwork, quilts | Tagged , , | 17 Comments

Revisiting

Posted on 18/07/2012 by

On the table today, an unfinished quilted piece that I rediscovered recently while tidying. Sometimes it can be interesting to revisit something from the past, just to see the difference between then and now.

This is from several years ago and was based on a woven paper collage:

Unusually, for me, the cloth version is machine pieced. Hand quilted, of course.

Most of the fabrics are commercial prints masquerading as hand-dyes, though some are actually hand-dyed. I quite like it, and it took me a while to realise why it remains unfinished. Having spent a few hours with it today, I know exactly why I gave up.

Usually I prefer wool batting, or occasionally 20/80 poly/cotton blend. The batting in this one is 100% cotton, the first time I’ve ever tried it.  Quilting it is mostly like trying to quilt cardboard, but the worst thing about it is this:

Non-stop, relentless bearding. I will persevere this one time, but I will never use 100% cotton batting again. It’s quite possible that there will be more batting on the lint roller than there will be remaining inside the quilt.

Posted in art, In progress, textile art | Tagged , , , | 15 Comments

Completion

Posted on 14/07/2012 by

Begun on 1st January 2012; finished on 15th July 2012.

Ninety-nine 8″ blocks, hand-pieced from scraps, hand-quilted, joined and bound by hand.

Originally I was not going to use binding on this quilt. Many historic and traditional English quilts do not have binding; the front and back are simply stitched together around the edge. Binding is mostly an American innovation. However, it just didn’t look right without binding of some sort. In the end I went for a very narrow (half-inch or so) binding, just to finish the edges and to provide a boundary that unifies and frames the patchwork.

The back is almost as interesting as the front:

You can at least see the (admittedly, fairly minimal) quilting better on the back.

I estimate that this has taken somewhere over 600 hours from start to finish, which equates to about a month of my life. Given that I am likely to spend a total of around 26 years of my life asleep, I think this is a pretty good achievement.

And, of course, my next question is naturally, ‘what am I going to do now?’

Since life provides me with a seemingly endless supply of scraps, the answer is – well, another quilt. The next quilt will be a gift.

It has been an enjoyable and productive break.

Posted in patchwork, quilts, textile art | Tagged , , , | 23 Comments

Looking

Posted on 02/07/2012 by

No, I’m not totally here yet… but today I belatedly turned over the new page of the Paul Klee calendar that hangs in my workroom, and I couldn’t help thinking…

…wouldn’t this make a marvellous quilt?

Posted in art | Tagged , , | 6 Comments

busy shopping

Posted on 28/06/2012 by

The shop is now as full as it can be. I’ve listed all the fabrics I currently have available, and these will be the last for some considerable time. I do try to keep prices reasonable, and the current packs of hand-dyes – in greater quantities than previously – I think represent good value.

I also have a few copies available of the current issue of Sew Somerset, in which I was very happy to be featured.

This too is in the shop, at approximately half the usual cover price. I’ve only added UK postage options, as I understand it’s quite easily available in the US. If you live outside the UK and want to purchase a copy, please contact me for a postage estimate – but it will be quite expensive. Royal Mail has recently made large increases to overseas postage costs.

In the meantime, I’m still sorting, sifting through, looking, thinking. I hope to be back with some stitching before too long.

Posted in dye, fabrics | Tagged , , , | 11 Comments