A group of internet artists from all over the place who have decided to give each other a challenge every few weeks, on a theme chosen by each in turn. We have different ideas and styles, but share a love of textiles, and want to have some fun.


Tuesday 23 October 2012

Next Challenge

Hi everyone

It's my turn to choose the next challenge and I haven't even started the last one! I'm afraid I'm having a major creative block, at least for quilting, at the moment.

Anyway, the next challenge theme is Reflections (or reflection or reflecting, or however you want to interpret it).  Shall we say 30 January for the deadline, since Christmas is getting scarily close?

Wednesday 17 October 2012

Memories of Bumpsteads

Following on from the little note I put up on 1 October I can now show you what I have been working on for this theme and what inspired me to choose 'Memory' for this challenge. 






This is the not-quite finished memory piece which I have titled 'Bumpsteads'.  I do not normally make pictorial quilts but I have had this piece in my head for a long time so it was good to get it out of there and explore the process.  The fabrics are a combination of commercial fabrics and my sun printed fabric and all the pieces have been bonded.  I have so far added some hand stitching to describe the grass edges to the garden and field.

From the age of 9 to about 17/18 I spent as many of my holidays as I could manage staying with a family friend on their pig farm.  In the garden was a huge pear tree with a tree swing in it and a rather rusty metal seat encircling it.  I spent many happy hours swinging, feeding the pigs, playing with the farm cats and helping to look after and play with the children of the family as they came along.  I have a very strong visual memory of making a picnic in the garden with the daughters of the family to be shared with their dolls and teddies with the sound and smell of pigs happily grubbing about in the field across the road.  The scene in my mind is flooded with sunlight and my 'Aunt' heavy with her next child.  The children, as with all children, had lost interest in the tea party and gone in search of other entertainment.

The piece comes from a naive style painting that I made of the remembered scene several years ago when I was painting.


Sunday 14 October 2012

Memory Fragments

Hi everyone, sorry for the delay in posting my entry for the Memory Challenge. Everything conspired against me to get this quilt posted on time.

Have to say that the theme "Memory" threw me a bit, was racking my brain for a good bit to come up with a satisfactory entry. But that's the good thing about themes, they really make you think sometimes....

So my piece is time is a bit free-form.

No-one really knows how the brain works and how memories are formed. So my piece is about memory fragments, the little snippets of colour and events that make us who we are.



The piece is made from hand-dyed fabric, net, organza, snippet of net curtain etc. which has been machine quilted.


Monday 8 October 2012

Memory by Luitgard Moeschle

It seems we have a new member - without a own blog, so I have the pleasure to post in her name ;-))

Please say hello to Luitgard Moeschle, a well-known quilter from Germany! She says hello to the group and is very happy to become an active member. Her first quilt for our challenge group is "Deiva Marina 2012, Italy":

It's 50 x 50 cm, painted and printed, hand-quilted, machine-embroidered. It is a memory about a recent holiday at Cinque Terre / Italy.

TO REMEMBER & TO FORGET!

The opposite of remembering is forgetting & I completely forgot about posting the 'Landmarks' Challenge after doing the work!  Sounds daft but that's me!
Pictures & details of that Challenge & the current one will appear in the course of the week.
Apologies.

Thursday 4 October 2012

"Memory"

When the theme "Memory" came up, an older quilt came to my mind. It was done in 2009, and it is FULL of memories of my childhood and my mother (who passed away in 2005). The finished quilt never made me happy, it was done, but ... well, I was just not happy with it. The fabrics are scraps from the clothes of my mother and my own hand-dyed fabrics; the bigger rectangles and squares were cut from a picture I took with my very first camera on a walk with my mom and our dog.
Here's a picture of that quilt before I took it apart:

It was not quilted, just tied with buttons from the button-box of my mother. I got rid of all the buttons and separated the layers. Added a border (from a fabric I inherited from my mother in law) and enlarged the back.
Than, I quilted it - finally I had an idea how to quilt this one (and the ability to fulfill that idea!):

Next came an overlay ... done on organza, with help of a tear-away-stabilizer on the back. I got a scan from the verse my mother had written into my poetry album when I was a child, enlarged it and stitched it by machine onto the organza.
Now the organza is mounted on top of the quilt. And I have finally a quilt that I love and that puts a smile on my face.
The verse is German ... and it speaks about what my mother wanted for me and my life. She wanted laughter (that word appears three times in that verse!), she wanted happiness and sunshine for me. I'm pretty sure that most mothers want these things for their kids, of course - but when I read that verse again after she passed away, it meant the world to me. And it helped me to get along with my sadness.
Here's a detail shot:
Thanks for the opportunity and the nagging to made this quilt finally into a piece I love ! It will live on the wall in our bedroom ;-))

Proudly presenting

Finally finished, here is Memory #1, The Game :
From the beginning I  had in mind to use the idea of this game. In germany it is very popular (mostly amongst children) and known as MEMORY. The cards are lying upside down in the beginning, and one has to find the pairs of the same pictures.
First i collected pictures and fabrics wich said "memory" to me to use them for the cards.
Do you find the pairs? :-)
For the first time i used photoprint on fabric, it worked very well, but i think, it's not my medium. But here it was really usefull. My "memory"-items are
- a recipe from my grandma, written down by my mother for me (she still uses this sütterlin-font)
- some heritaged laces and cross-stitched fabric
- pictures from a wonderful day at the Rhine 
- a handmade print showing leaves from my garden
- a fragment of one of my to-do-lists (very helpful memory tool...)
The pairs are not exatly same, because even memories are never two exactly the same. 

The cards are loosely pinned to this background:
The background is more about loosing memory, memories are fading, get lost or mixed up. There are leftovers from the fabrics I used for the cards, parts of loved and wornout batic pants and grey woolfelt where memories are lost forever due to Alzheimer and others.
 At the moment it's hanging in my sewingroom without the cards pinned to it, and I really love it this way. I could imagine to produce more cards and play with them, changing the design from time to time.
If you visit my blog, flicKwerk , you'll find more posts about the process, labeled  "memory"




Monday 1 October 2012

More Apologies...


Oh dear, I'm late too.  We just got back from creating memories on holiday in Cornwall and my piece for this challenge is started but not finished.  I will make a proper post about my progress to date as soon as I can.  The image above is the manipulated photo of a painting I made of a memory from childhood that I have been working from.  More soon!

Sorry, me too...

I have to confess, i'm not finished with my memory piece. Actually i've got some days off and hope i can show it to you on wendnesday. In the meantime hop over to my blog, where i've recently posted some thoughts and pictures about the progress. (here, here an here)
And i'm anxious to see what you all will show us!