Feathers and Ferret

Great day on a free machine quilting workshop taught by Ferret who is one of my quilting heroes! I'd been looking forward to this workshop for ages as I did her Machine quilting part one workshop about 18 months ago and learnt a lot on that. Once again we were shown a whole range of patterns and while encouraged to try them all were also reminded that we all have our preferred designs that suit us and that we feel comfortable with.
To start off with we stitched flowers, hearts, pebbles, and then leaves and mussel shells.

We then moved on to the notorious feathers! We were shown a number of ways of sewing these and warned not to expect results first time. This was when I began to feel rather embarrassed as mine went well from the start!

Apart from not managing to fill a square I found feathers in general fun to do and enjoyed trying out all the different versions we were given.

I love the peacock feathers at the bottom and I'm now thinking about how I can get feathers into my next quilt.

At this stage Ferret announced to everyone else about me that "It's official, I hate her!" I feel so proud!!!

Baptism, birds and bank holiday

Well I have finished the first of the bank holiday tasks I set myself which was to work on the design for the Baptism stole my sister has commissioned. I had spent a long time trying out different ideas, googling images for Baptism symbols before realising that I was in danger of over complicating it and that my sister had given me my starting point when she talked about watery shades of blue.
My first idea was to use a technique I used a few years ago when I made a purple stole for a relative's ordination present. Shades of blue fabric, cut into random and variable width strips and layered up using a rough edge technique before stitching in vertical lines with a metallic thread.

I still wasn't happy and then remembered the technique I learnt a month or two ago using layer organza and which I used to make this picture.

I felt this would work very well as I love the way you can layer up and then stitch back the organza to reveal different shades and that I could achieve the shades and movement of water using this technique. I think what also prompted me to pursue this idea was that this time I was designing for a Woman Priest and so I felt that organza would also produce something more delicate.

As I was going to use organza I decided that instead of using paints or coloured pencils to work out my ideas I would use a tissue paper collage to explore they way the layers of colour work with and change each other.

I then added small seed and bugle beads in blues, greens and silver to add texture and also to suggest light sparkling on the water. - Though this has not photographed quite as well.

In the actual design the beads at the bottom are darker and well scattered and they gradually get lighter through to silvery seed beads at the top which are also closer together.

I now just need to see if my sister is happy and then work out my shopping list/costs.

As for birds well I made 4 sets of small fabric birds in jubilee themed fabrics and sold them all at school on Friday for £5.00 and I have requests for more as well as for a cushion in the same fabrics so I need to get busy on some more to take in next week.

Well at least I have plenty to keep me busy indoors as with the weather as it is I don't think I'll be out gardening tomorrow!