23/09/2009 by Anna.

 Summer course with the WI 

Part of my Sue Belton award was spent on a residential course at

Denman
College this summer. I thought you might like to hear about the college, as I found it a wonderful base and the teaching facilities and my tutor were amazing. The course I choice was called overlocker magic, not exactly patchwork I know, but I have used it already, in a piece for a loosethreads exhibition in 2011!

Denman
College is run by the WI and set in the most beautiful part of Oxfordshire, from fleet it took less than an hour to drive up. If you can’t drive they will pick you up from the train station with no charge as part of there green policy. How fabulous is that.The main house and 17 acre’s of garden dates back to Georgian times. The bedrooms in the main house are mostly for shared accommodation as most of them are substantial in size. (Single beds only by the way and all rooms have ensuite.) This is also were we have our meals and drink in the comfortable bar.The rest of the bedrooms are set in houses surrounding the teaching block. Each bedroom is named after a county and is looked after by the WI of that county and therefore each room has a different personality.The teaching block is very impressive; our room had plenty of room, light, machines, cutting mats, rulers, along with plenty of sewing books you could borrow.All in all it was a fantastic break. If you want to check out Denman college  www.theWI.org.uk/college they are open to all –members and non-members, men and women and run short residential courses and day schools.I have all ready booked my next course with Ray Slater doing machine Embroidery with water-soluble fabrics.  

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12/06/2009 by Anna.

Myself and Erica met Liz on Wednesday for coffee, she was on a quick tour of England and her home in Portugal. At the moment living in India, (we can call ourselves an international group.) It was great to see her looking so well, she left us with a sewing challenge, bowls that fit into each other which we will get our teeth in to as a group workshop.Later in the evening we met Mary at her place and at last have set ourselves another challenge to produce a finished piece of work by september with the view to show at our next exhibition in Feb 2011.So my summer looks busy with my C&G work, Loosethreads and the transatlantic challenge that I have entered with Christine Porter. I have also started teaching a new garment making class which has got me making clothes again, sitting hear writing in my new shirt that my neighbour picked up the fabric from a charity shop for 50p.  She is going to be green when she sees it, funny that the title of the transatlantic challenge.  Going Green.

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25/03/2009 by Liz.

It has been some time since last writing on the blog, fortunately there is more e-mailing between the Loosethreads group. I have managed to complete two wall hangings, average 38” by 25”, the blue cockerel using up scraps of indigo fabric, that should really have been thrown away. And the Arabic Blue Camel also using fabric dyed by me.Pakistan has been difficult to adjust to with respect to shopping, food and heat. However, I came prepared, packed all of my procion dyes, fabric for dyeing, wadding, sewing machine and cottons. There has been a trip to the Lahore Fortress, a couple to Dubai, good for stocking up on essential items from shopping list that one would not care to survive without. Then there is John, my 10 year old who still is chaperoned by mum when he has football, tennis, swimming and school pick up. So between cooking meals, and recovering from avoiding near death mishaps with Lahore traffic, I have time for my patchwork. I’m now working on my next project, a fantastic perspective of Lahore Traffic circling a round-about including donkey and horse carts.

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02/03/2009 by Kevin.

I earlier stated

“As an ‘outsider’ to the patch world – I am totally amazed about how the perception of patchwork is so different to the reality.  The public perception of patchworking is a woman sitting in a rocking chair, cutting up old shirts and sheets with scissors and sewing them together to eventually make a quilt.”   

In continuing this viewpoint I would like to talk about the cutting up of material. The vision of using scissors is very outdated.  Today’s patchworkers use rotary cutters (a glorified pizza cutter!) to cut up material and do so on a calibrated cutting pad - as a precision paper cutter would use.  On top of this to help make the right cut an acrylic template is used.  This help to get the precision in the sections used for patch. However don’t think it is just a single acrylic template.  Any patchworker will have a large library of these acrylic templates.  In fact the collection of these templates seems to be a standard obsession among patchworkers.

So scissors are not used? Hmm - not sure where scissors are used, but there certainly is no shortage of scissors in my house.  In something that looks more like a scene from some horror movie - scissors seem to be everywhere I look in the house.  Strangely, it seems, none of these scissors can be used for anything other than material (all 100+ of them) - so if I want to cut a piece of paper I apparently have to tear it by hand, rather than use these specialist instruments (that don’t seem to be used in any case!).

Will I ever understand this world?

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13/02/2009 by Kevin.

As an ‘outsider’ to the patch world – I am totally amazed about how the perception of patchwork is so different to the reality.  The public perception of patchworking is a woman sitting in a rocking chair, cutting up old shirts and sheets with scissors and sewing them together to eventually make a quilt.  How different it is in reality.  The low-tech impression is much more high-tech.

Take the old shirts and scraps used as a basis for the quilts.  I wish it was the same in the new world.   However, rather than oddments and scraps, it seems my wife spends a fortune on by purchasing ‘fat quarters’ of exotic patterned fabrics. (Fat quarters are quarters that are square, rather than a running quarter metre off-cuts).  In reality even these seem to be the cheaper option, since sometimes the material is hand dyed.  And although there seems to be a large variety of different ways of doing this, most seem to involve a large purchase of plastic buckets, various dyes and other specialist material, that then seem to fill up our kitchen and garage. If this wasn’t enough – each time a new technique is used, not only does it require the purchase of more buckets, etc – but normally involves going off to some specialist place for a training day, and also the purchase of a book.

I suspect even on material cost alone – you would be far better off just buying a completed quilt – when all the associated cost are taken into account I think people would be very frightened with the real total.  I certainly am.

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27/01/2009 by Kevin.

I have just been sent a press release from Village Green Quilters regarding their highly successfull quilt raffle in Farnham Maltings.  They raised over £900.  I have enclosed the press release. Village Green Quilters Press Release Jan 2009 Or go to their website  

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29/06/2008 by Debbie.

Here is a photo of the Missenden Abbey City & Guilds Patchwork & Quilting Diploma group 2008. That’s me sitting in the front row next to Barbara Weeks (her left) Course Tutor. Well Done Erica for finishing at Dorking too! Come On Chris you can do it… A big Thank You to everyone who supported and encouraged me throughout. Phew!

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22/06/2008 by Anna.

 This is what I have done with some of my shibori fabric from the other weekend, I have mixed it with some denim and will cover it with big stitch, hopefully to go into our exhibition in November.

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19/06/2008 by Debbie.

18th June -  went to Windsor (East Berkshire College) for their end of year textile exhibition.  It was brilliant,  so worth a visit,  especially if you are studying textiles at the moment as all sketchbooks are available for browsing. It is on until Saturday 21st June.  What was interesting for me was I met the embroiderer who made a piece called ‘Cockerels Flying Feathers’ which I purchased at an exhibition in Guildford a few weeks ago.  Dorle Dawson is a student at Windsor and I look forward to seeing more of her work.  Watch out for Ascot traffic though!

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16/06/2008 by Debbie.

These workshops organized by the Guild are such good value, £15 for the day with ex president Janice Gunner.  My samples have been on the line today and I am rather pleased with them.  This could be very addictive.  This was my second attempt, I feel another one coming on… I enclose a picture of Anna wearing a Japanese garment (centre) and my indigo blowing in the breeze.  The day was hard work but well worth the effort. Also photos of before the Shibori before dyeing and Anna standing over her enormous bucket  I have spared you the photos of us wearing masks.

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