For some time I’ve had the urge to do some proper patchwork and had been looking at the big Nancy Crow book for a while – so on Saturday – having dropped my mum off at the airport and resisted the temptation of lunch and watching Bromsgrove play rugby at (cold) Burton on Trent with my husband – I warmed up my cabin studio and picked out some hand-dyed and started strip-piecing – very fast and intuitively.
Of course this was only the beginning. Some time ago I made a lovely thermofax screen from some photocopied very old finely crochet squares, borrowed from a friend. This was a good opportunity to use this screen. I first printed my piece with discharge paste and left it to dry.
On Sunday I ironed it with my steam iron and the colour came out differently out of each different fabric. Grey out of the black, white out of the red hand-dye and yellowish out of the indigo dyed cotton. Next I ironed some wadding and backing on and started quilting in simple straight lines with plain black thread, changing direction every so often. My Pfaff Grand Quilter races along beautifully – just love it.
It always amazes me how quilting changes the whole outlook of the piece.
During our walk on Sunday Morning I took this picture which reminded me a bit of what I was working on – it could well be the inspiration of my next piece.
If you like what I’ve done above – then you might enjoy coming to my Summer School this summer. I’ve got 3 days planned full of dyeing, printing with all kinds of screens and if there is time left you can use your fabrics to create something similar. The dates are 17, 18 and 19th of August, just before the Festival of Quilts – have a look at my website www.inekeberlyn.com for more info.
Isn’t it amazing how the quilting changes things? I think the idea of doing something quickly is a great one sometimes because we can free up and not be afraid to make mistakes.