Dreaming Spirals

I have just finished loading some postcards and quiltlets that can be bought through Paypal on to the Pages section of my sidebar - look right, just under the ’subscribe’ box! >>>>>>>>>

There are not many on there at the moment because I need to get organised and photograph and label them properly but it’s a start!!

I’m following the brilliant instructions by Holly Knott and Andy Baird on Holly’s website entitled Shoot That Quilt! so when I’ve got everything together I will have a Grand Photographic Session. Read it - it’s clear, comprehensive and idiot-proof… well, I’ll tell you if it’s truly idiot-proof when I’ve tested it….

Part 3 of the Online Courses series hopefully coming tomorrow with Quilt University, May Day Bank Holiday and kids permitting.

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Susan’s courses are run at Joggles. Joggles’ classes are mainly related to dollmaking, although there are others on ATCs, Mini art quilt books, shipping tags and other things. Sharon at In A Minute Ago had a crazy quilting class there earlier in the year. I did Susan’s Personal Symbols class (in fact, I’m still working my way through it) in the last couple of months and thoroughly enjoyed it. (Have a look under the Painting category if you missed my posts about it).

The way Joggles’ classes work is that you download a class each week for the length of the course. I found it helps to print it out. There are plenty of pictures and clear instructions on what to do. There is also a forum where you can ask questions, look at other people’s work and post photos, so you get the real feeling of being in a class with other people.

Susan trained in visual design and teaching and has been a graphic artist and art teacher. She does a lot of painting, embroidery and embellishment in her work. She is a fun teacher to have and is around a lot in the forum. I appreciated her comments and answers to my queries.

The next class she is teaching is on Monoprinting . It consists of six lessons and includes sunprinting, frottage printing, gelatin prints and shaving cream prints.

This is a photo of some of Susan’s work related to the course. It is entitled “Hard-favored face”

In July is Creative Embroidery This is some of what it says on the website:

This workshop will instruct students how to learn to think in threads. The experience will be a way to search for new way of working in embroidery and mixed media. Organic designs will be the focus of the workshop with a twist…

Here is another of Susan’s pieces of work which relates to this course. This is called “Jupiter’s Flower”.

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I’ve decided to start my mini-series featuring online courses which are available.

The first one is Creative Textiles run by Jill Smith. I haven’t done any of her classes myself but have known Jill online since I was a fledgling textile student in my first year of City & Guilds. She used to run a Yahoo group called Likemindedthreads and has been very generous over the years with her knowledge, offering information freely.

This is what she says about her classes:

Jill Smith has now opened a website just for her online classes she is now doing, so the classes have their own website and you can go and pick a class and pay for it with Paypal as it’s all set up there. If you’re from the UK you can send a cheque as well.
She also has a two part course that is the same as the two part City and Guilds she took and the single classes and like them all they can be taken at your time, no rush and finish when you want but Jill is always around how ever long you take to give advice and help. She also took a teacher’s course as well so you’re in good hands.
There are also some great offers for the Bank holiday; it’s worth checking them out.

Here are a couple of photos of Jill’s work:

Jill has also just started a blog.

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This is just a short post today as I’m feeling ropey with some bug or other that has got me.

I loved looking at the Quilt Art Exhibition yesterday. I can’t post any photos because photography wasn’t allowed but I’ll link to websites where possible. It was really quiet, right at the end of a corridor of the city museum, and it was lovely being able to look at my leisure with no one getting in the way, and to stand back and really have a good look at all the quilts. I had a chance to notice details I wouldn’t otherwise, to view them as a whole seeing things you don’t see in photos, as they are meant to be viewed, at a distance. Below are a few of the ones which particularly struck me.

One favourite was Low Meadow by Elizabeth Brimelow - first picture on the page. If you hover the mouse over the photo it shows a detail. There were hundreds of individual grass shapes appliqued on the silk background and the yellow flowers were printed on, I assume with paint.

I loved Linda Colsh’s quilt too - unfortunately I can’t find a photo on the web of the quilt in the exhibition and for some reason it isn’t in the exhibition catalogue!

Another one I enjoyed looking at was Bente Vold Klausen from Norway. I can’t find a picture of her quilt online but here is a link to some of her others. I had not come across Bente’s quilts before. The one in the exhibition is called Universe.

Susan Denton has a series called Making the World a Safer Place.

All in all, I enjoyed looking at the way these talented quiltmakers built up their designs using surface design, adding layers of colour with paint, dye, stitch…

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Just a quick post to say that I’ve been bombarded with spam over the last couple of days (291 so far just for today) and they are all being moderated…. so if you have left a comment and it hasn’t appeared it is because it has got mixed up with the spam comments. I’ve done my best to sift out the one or two genuine ones among them but if there were any more, please bear with me. Hopefully the number will decrease in a day or two.

Been to Gloucester today to see the Quilt Art exhibition in Gloucester Art Gallery today. Wonderful. More later (no photos, we weren’t allowed to take them but I have various ones of Gloucester itself.

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A friend sent me this and I found a website with it on - have a look, it’s hilarious:

If women controlled the world - go on, brighten up your day!

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It is the middle of the Easter holidays and I haven’t been doing much except stuff on the computer and knitting. It is Barnabas’ birthday soon and he wants these socks to be ready for it. This is what I’ve done in 2 days, which isn’t bad considering it took a year to get this far on the last pair! This is Opal ‘rainforest’ yarn in Owl. So he will have owl socks.

To encourage me in my knitting, I’ve been listening to various podcasts. I’ve decided to start a podcast roll like my blogroll on my sidebar.

This is a wonderful one featuring a fellow Quiltart member and blogger, Melanie Testa. The podcast is called Craftsanity. This is what it says about the podcast featuring Melanie:

Textile designer and fiber artist Melanie Testa struggled at first to find her true calling. But on this episode of CraftSanity she’s going to inspire us with the story of how she crafted her way out of a bad situation.

There is a knitting podcast which I really like, too, called Knitcast. I have knitted my way through all 23 episodes of that one! Marie Irshad, who incidentally lives in Cardiff, interviews a prominent person in the knitting world for each episode so it was a good way of finding out what is going on in knitting and where to buy lots of yummy yarn!! She also interviewed various people during the Knitting and Stitching Show in London last year, run by Twisted Thread, who also run the Festival of Quilts which I spent two days at last year. One of them was Andrew Salmon, the Managing Director, where he spoke about future plans for the various shows, among other things (If you want to listen to this podcast it is here).

Over the next few weeks, I have decided to do a sort of series featuring online classes. If you run one of these, or have taken one and would like me to mention it, email me with a bit of blurb and maybe some photos and I will talk about it!

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I finally finished these quilts which I originally started as possible journal quilts. Both of these are for sale, price £50.

Quandary

This one depicts the confusion I was feeling about what to design and create, with all the abundance of techniques and ideas. It is based on the layout of a particularly complicated motorway junction in Birmingham, nicknamed “Spaghetti Junction”. I deliberately left the thread ends loose to add to the effect.

Circles

This one was me playing with circles, colours and fusing fabric!

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