Wilhelmina

Hi everyone, so glad you are all responding to the challenge! I did post my picture last week but for some reason I didn't get it right and it never appeared - I am a technophobe!!!!!

My piece was inspired by wonderful Scottish artist Wilhelmina Barns-Graham, I was lucky enough to have to study her for a piece of work for the Loch Lomond quilt show in 2011 and fell in love with her work.

My piece is hand tray dyed cotton, with attached squares backed with Lutrador to give a 3D effect.

I have attached each square with an individual machine stitched daisy and then the whole was machine quilted. I loved making it and will continue to look at her work on the web for future inspiration.

Ann B

Inspired by -- Wilhelmina Barns-Graham

Gillian's Chickens

Inspired by..... This has been a very difficult challenge for me as I seldom work from images or text which was what the title implied to me. I have been thinking a lot about my friend who is ill and her hens so I decided to do a piece inspired by her hens wandering round her garden.

I first coloured some white cotton with inktense blocks and pencils. I then drew in lots of grasses using, paints, acrylic inks, Derwent Inktense blocks and pencils, Derwent Aquatone pencils and gel pens. I stamped the flower shapes with household rubbish and home made stamps and further embellished them with the same products. I screen printed the straw/sticks of the centre panel.

I then used free machining to draw in the hens.

I thoroughly enjoyed the making of this as using many of these products is fairly new to me.

Sorry for putting this in again but I forgot to include the image to go with the text. Apologies for a repeat of the text.

Irene MacWilliam
www.macwilliam.f9.co.uk

Gillian's Chickens

Inspired by..... This has been a very difficult challenge for me as I seldom work from images or text which was what the title implied to me. I have been thinking a lot about my friend who is ill and her hens so I decided to do a piece inspired by her hens wandering round her garden.

I first coloured some white cotton with inktense blocks and pencils. I then drew in lots of grasses using, paints, acrylic inks, Derwent Inktense blocks and pencils, Derwent Aquatone pencils and gel pens. I stamped the flower shapes with household rubbish and home made stamps and further embellished them with the same products. I screen printed the straw/sticks of the centre panel.

I then used free machining to draw in the hens.

I thoroughly enjoyed the making of this as using many of these products is fairly new to me.

Irene MacWilliam
www.macwilliam.f9.co.uk

Inspired by ....

March last year I made this quilt inspired by the Dutch painter Corneille. I am not going to use this quilt for the present challenge, but I wanted to show it to you.

 What I am making for the present challenge is here:

Okay I admit, it is only the beginning but at least I have started :-)). I am not - yet - telling who the painter is who inspired me. The only clue I will give, is that he is also Dutch. If you can guess his name, you will win a price :-).

Have we the title for the first 2012 challenge?

I was wondering had we the theme/title for our next challenge. It is not that I am ready to start it but I like to have the challenges floating round in my mind. I find it is amazing when dwelling on something how often I come across references or events that seem to relate to it. Ideas suddenly pop into my mind, they seldom evolve from sitting with paper and pencil, my meandering thought processes is how I arrive at my ideas.l

I hope you all had a great Christmas and a Happy New Year to you all.

Having been away unexpectedly for 5 weeks in the autumn I have had a lot of work to catch up on. The main thing being to finish my Events of 2010 as all 25 year quilts go on exhibition from Feb. I am not curating it but I did need to get the quilt completed, normally last year's quilt is not finished until March of the following year. Fortunately once Christmas was over there were not too many calls on my time, and the outside is taking care of itself

I am wondering do many of you display your small challenge pieces, I am presuming that most of you do make pieces to small formats, say under 15 inches square. If you do, how do you present them, do you supply a small hanging rod through a sleeve, mounted on a canvas or how?

All the best Irene MacWilliam

In other words.......

Sorry, I got the title wrong. Mine is rather late due to my telephone and internet being out of order since just before Christmas. Hilary has very kindly let me use her computer to post my quilt.

I have used the phrase "Size doesn't matter". The fabric has first been sponged with Setacolor Opaque, then overwritten using a black marker pen. On top of this I have printed using some children's wooden letters. Over this has been laid a piece of sheer voile which has had free machine embroidered letters added. The voile has then been cut out using a soldering iron. Buttons in all sizes have been sewn onto the surface.