Is it a good sign in life when it feels like only yesterday that I wrote a newsletter, when in actual fact it was a week ago? I read somewhere that our perception of time speeds up as we get older. Those long, lazy summer holidays are a thing only for the young. I think it’s a good thing that the week has gone by quickly, it’s a sign that it’s been fun! It’s school holidays, so there has been egg hunting and painting, plus quite a bit of time in the studio sewing, printing, even a tidy up. Amelie was given a basket of blown goose eggs by one of my kind students. We all settled in while the Sunday lunch cooked to paint them.
We used Posca paint pens on the eggs. Really easy to work with, I think they probably are one of my current favourite art media. I’ve been using them in my sketchbook, my monoprinting, on fabric and quilts and now eggs!
While we’re on the subject of eggs I have to share with you a photo of one of our girls living her best life…
We’ve had four of these white Leghorns for a year now and they are such a delight. Never in their run, always roaming around the garden, digging craters in the flower borders, bickering with the jackdaws and doing their level best to get in the house if a door is left open. They’ve not missed a beat when it comes to laying, we’ve had perfect white eggs every day.
Meanwhile the sunshine beaming in through the windows catching on the dirty marks and glistening on the cobwebs was more than a hint that it’s time for a spring clean. I am a big fan of a furniture rearrange and a change of what’s on the walls. This quilt had come back from the exhibition and I’ve never had it up on the wall at home before so it’s having an airing for a while.
I do love how a quilt on the wall instantly makes a space more cosy and colourful.
This one is called Starlit Poppies and I feel like I’ve shown it to you before, but when I looked on my website, convinced it was there in the Portfolio, it wasn’t. I will put it on my jobs list to add it asap! I sometimes like to use a bit of piecing in my work and this quilt started with those four ‘star in a star’ blocks. That’s one of my favourite traditional patchwork designs. It’s so strong and effective and although it’s traditional I think it still looks really contemporary don’t you? The fabric is some very lovely (and for that read expensive) cotton sateen that I hand dyed. It took the dye so beautifully and was lovely to work with. I will have to research where I can get some more without breaking the budget. I do sometimes find it difficult to dye a red - they can look too pink, or on the other hand, too orange. I dyed this piece twice to try and get it just right, the perfect goldilocks red. Overdyeing can give a lovely depth of colour, that’s something we’ll have to talk about more in the Dye Like an Artist series of posts.
Anyway, back to the quilt, once those blocks were pieced, I added more of the red fabric left and right to make the quilt up to the size I wanted. Some of the poppy seedheads that you see there were then monoprinted with dye and then the whole thing was freehand quilted and bound. It stayed in this state for a while, completed I thought. But upon review I felt it needed more contrast and more poppies so I reworked it. I added the white painted stripe. This is done with a combination of what I had to hand at the time - a layer of matte gel medium, gesso and white acrylic paint. I’d done such a good job of dyeing that intense red that it was actually quite hard to cover! The paint kept turning frustratingly pink as it dried. So there are layers and layers of paint.
I tried to paint it on carefully though, so as not to totally obliterate the quilting stitches. I wanted to try to keep that texture and those marks and not fill them up with a flood of paint.
Finally I cut new poppy seed heads from dark grey hand dyed fabric and appliquéd them over the top. As, hopefully you can see from the photo above, I used a bright orange thread to secure them with top stitching. I’ve said it before and I’ll keep on saying it - your thread choices can never be too bright! They really give a lift if you opt for something punchy and colourful.
I guess because this quilt evolved somewhat, the processes I used weren’t really as you might have done if you’d set out with a clear plan in mind from the beginning. I like that though, that there’s room for manoeuvre when you’re making things, that ideas can shift and develop and that technique-wise, there’s always a way to get something to look how you want it to.
Online workshops
Thank you all for the lovely feedback on the new course that we launched last week. Single Sheet Sketchbooks is still open for enrolment and we’d love for you to join in.
Here’s a link to the new course if you’d like to find out more:
And here’s what some of the students who’ve already signed up are saying:
“So quick and straightforward. I’m going to make my first one now.” ~ Dianne
“Wonderful, can’t wait to dive in.” ~ SW
“Easy to navigate. Really enjoyed this course. 5 stars!” ~ Ruth
We do so appreciate you taking the time to review our courses. We know that word of mouth and the recommendations of others means more than anything else when making a choice to sign up, so thank you.
We’ve had a few new subscribers here to our news and I realised that maybe not everyone knows about our online courses and what’s on offer. If you’ve not yet wandered over to our courses website please do take a look. We have lots (and I mean hundreds!) of online courses and workshops to choose from. Some are short classes that will give you a bit of inspiration for an afternoon of activity, some are much longer and more involved, suitable if you’re looking for a guided course to work through.
We have classes on all our favourite things. We love to paint, draw, print and stitch and so we try to cover all those topics and share our experience and ideas with you. All the classes are filmed in our studios and we hope you’ll find that it’s just like being here in the room with us.
Here’s the link to take a look at our workshops.
Classes start at £2 and you get to keep access to anything you buy, so you can feel comfortable to work at a pace that suits you and revisit the videos any time you like.
What’s on the work table?
I’ll finish up with a sneak peek at my next side project1. You remember that piece of hand dyed fabric I showed you last time? It was pretty bright, very patterned, lovely, but probably best in small doses. It was a huge piece and while I will most likely use some in a quilt, I have cut up part of it for lining a new jacket. I keep seeing quilted jackets all over the internet and I’m coveting one for myself. In these situations there’s only one solution and that is to make it yourself!
I have cut out the outer pieces from some black fabric that’s been in my stash for a while. I’m not entirely sure what it is, maybe viscose and, judging by how crumpled it was when I dragged it out, maybe some linen too. It’s going to be a jacket that’s sensible on the outside, party on the inside.
I’ve marked out the pattern piece shapes with chalk, layered them up with batting and the hand dyed lining and now I’m quilting them. I am torn about how much quilting to do. I don’t want it to be rigid when I wear it so I don’t want to go too closely spaced with the quilting lines, but yet they do add such lovely texture….
It will take a while to get the pieces quilted and then the jacket sewn up. I am already thinking I should probably have made a quick mock up one in some scrap fabric to check it’ll fit, before investing all this time in quilting. But my motto is that it’ll fit someone, somewhere. I just hope this time it might be me!
Thanks for taking the time to read our newsletter this week. If it’s your first one, then welcome, and we hope you’ve enjoyed it. A new, free newsletter will find its way to you every week, usually on Thursdays unless we get sidetracked.
In the meantime, if you want more, you can subscribe for access to all our content here on Substack. It’s £5 per month and you can unsubscribe any time you want. Of course we hope you’ll stay with us and tell your friends about us too. This week Linda’s writing about block printing, watercolour painting, and there’s a post from me on gelli plate printing too. Sign up and you get full access to our archived posts on Substack, we post at least twice a week and there’s already quite a lot to read.
We’ll be back soon with more ideas, inspiration and news from the studio. For now, I wish you all the best for a happy, healthy and creative week ahead.
Love Laura x
Side Project - the project that you start when you should be finishing all the other projects that you’ve already started.
Thank you so much for allowing me to co tinue reading free of charge, I do enjoy it. Love the chicken, egg and side project especially.