Friday 29 August 2014

Irene MacWilliam - Sticks and stones may break my bones.


Been somewhat preoccupied by family matters so took the easy way out for this theme. I just played so that I felt I was being creative.
I took some old sheeting and immersed it in some dilute dylon silk paint to give a blue haze to fabric, I was hoping for more mottling. I then used a new thermofax screen to give a feeling of small stones, another screen gave the stick pattern. I then used a home made screen and stencil I cut to make the 3 figures. I tried out nozzle bottles for the text but they were not suitable for this size writing as the uneven blobs are too intrusive.
Text ---- Sticks and Stones may break my bones but names will never hurt me.
I used blue dyed fabric with another abstract line design for the backing. Line quilting in short lines to represent more sticks.
An unexciting piece but it was fun just using so many different screens. I used to think screen printing was so messy that one needed to be doing a lot of it to warrant the preparation of an area for it but I actually find it is easy to just do 2 or 3 prints without making any mess.

Thursday 28 August 2014

Composition in blue

Not a very creative title for this quilt, but that is all I can come up with for now :-). Here is my quilt for the August theme. Background is a mixture of dark blue pieces of fabric. For the lighter figures on top I looked into the field of symbols like earth goddess, stars - ever lasting life, water = birth of new life.


September theme

The random number generator picked this as the theme for September 2014: It's in the bag. Good luck to you all!

Monday 25 August 2014

Summer Blues - an exploration of texture


This started out as an experimental piece trying out different types of free machine quilting. Since it got rather out of hand, it has now become my piece for this month's challenge.
Distressed knitting, felt pieces - my own and a commercial piece, hand embroidery, buttons, scraps of commercial and my own printed fabrics, scrim, silk ribbon, free machine quilting, and bias binding. 
Rather an indulgent piece, since I had a lot of fun messing around and putting it all together. 

Wednesday 13 August 2014

August theme


Feeling bad but I may not be able to do the August theme due to events here, or I might be able to do it at last minute as a bit of relief from things. Sorry but textiles have not been to the fore in my thinking this last month or so. Enjoyed the FOQ as a distraction but not really looked at all my lovely and interesting purchases yet.
Irene MacWilliam