Music... With a Touch of Red

I realised that it's been two months again since I updated this blog. The days run like rabbits. Soon it'll be Festival of Quilts in Birmingham again, but I'm not going this year either. I'm hoping to get a chance to go there next year. Until then, however, I did the next best thing: I sent in an entry for the European Quilt Association's annual challenge, and it was accepted as one of the 16 quilts that are sent to Birmingham from Finland. Some of you may remember that I participated and was accepted last year too, and that quilt is now on a two-year tour around the world with the rest of the quilts in the exhibition. The theme last year was The Seasonal Garden, and spring was the season given to Finland. Here's a link to last year's quilt, Wake-Up Bells, as well as an image to remind you.

So, last year's quilt celebrated spring, light, warmth and budding new life, but this year's quilt turned out to be the exact opposite. The theme is Music... With a Touch of Red. First I was at a complete loss how to interpret it. I like music as much as anyone, but for some reason the theme didn't speak to me. So I started focusing on the red bit, and though that music with a touch of red hints at some form of drama or tragedy. And then the idea came to me: I would interpret the myth of Orpheus and Eurydike.

For those of you who don't know the story, Orpheus was a legendary musician who could charm even a stone with his music. On his wedding day, his beloved Eurydike was bitten by a snake and died. Crushed by grief Orpheus travelled all the way to the Underworld to play his music before Hades himself, in the hope of softening the god's heart so that Orpheus would get his wife back. The plan worked and Hades agreed to let Eurydike return to earth on one condition: Orpheus had to walk in front of her and could not turn around to look at her before they both had reached the upper world. Everything went well until Orpheus stepped out of the Underworld. Then he forgot that the condition was that they both had to be in the upper world, and he turned around, and Eurydike vanished and was lost forever.

I felt very excited about this theme, and decided that I wanted to depict the very moment when Orpheus turns around and realises what he has done. I used photographs of my own face to help me with the facial expressions, and Wikipedia to help me spell the words in Greek (Orpheus, Eurydike, tragedy and music). Here's the whole quilt:

I painted the fabric for the faces with a silk paint I mixed myself: a warmer tone for the living Orpheus, who's just stepping out into the upper world, and a paler and duller tone for Eurydike, who's fading away into the Underworld. The facial features were filled in with a permanent pen (as a guideline to where I was going to machine stitch the features) and fabric paint.

I covered the raw edges with black chiffon and machine stitched outlines and features, as well as text in Greek, which I eventually filled with metallic fabric paint.

The quilt was started a little too close to the deadline, so my first plan was to keep handstitching to a minimum to save time. However, after I had machine quilted part of the background I didn't like the result. It looked dull and lifeless. I realised that just because the theme of the quilt is death, the surface itself needn't be dead. So I tried some handstitching in another spot, loved the result, ripped out the machine quilting, assumed a comfortable position and started handstitching. I stiched for hours and hours several days. Crazy, but it was so worth it in the end! I love the texture.

A touch of red. Eurydike has to return to her Underworld prison. The strings of Orpheus' lyre form the bars that lock her in and separate them.

Despite the sobre theme and slightly manic last-minute work process, this was such an enjoyable project. And I'll tell you what: I have plans for another pictorial quilt. And I have to start working on it soon, or else it'll be another manic last-minute work process. ;-)

Thanks for visiting my blog!

Breast Pocket Update

I just realised that it's been two months since my last blog entry. Time has flown, and I've discovered that Instagram has taken over some of the role that this blog used to have. I find that I spend less and less time on writing blog entries and reading other people's blogs, and I've wondered if it's the same for others too, or if it's just me. I think I'm searching for a new direction with this blog, to make it feel more worthwhile. In the meantime, Instagram has swooped in and is carrying the torch. My Instagram alias is annika.c.lund, if you'd like to visit me there.

You may remember that I've talked about Melanie Testa's Breast Pocket Project several times before (click the label 'Breast pocket projcet' in the list, or follow this link). It's a project to raise awareness about breast cancer, and in particular about women like Melanie, who choose not to have reconstructive surgery or prosthetics after a mastectomy. She wants to turn the repressive body image pressures off for women. Women should be allowed to feel sexy, strong and beautiful whether full, flat or half flat. So she started the Breast Pocket Project with the aim to gather in 1 000 breast pockets for an art project.

In the October/November 2014 issue of Quilting Arts Magazine there was a Reader Challenge that called for breast pockets in honor and support of all who are or have been touched by breast cancer. The challenge was connected to Melanie and the Breast Pocket Project, and all the pockets that were submitted were to be donated to her project. 

I participated in this challenge, and imagine my joy when I discovered that my breast pocket was among the 40 pockets that were included in the magazine (April/May 2015 issue)! A total of 250 pockets were submitted. Here's a scan from the magazine (don't you just love the embroidered cloth they used for the background?):

The pockets that weren't included in the magazine can be seen online as a free eBook, if you're a member of the Quilting Daily online community (it's free to join). Check it out by following this link.

And if you haven't already, check out Melanie's Breast Pocket Project, and send her more breast pockets! Here's a link to her blog. Click the tag 'Breast Pockets' for more information.

Thanks for visiting!

Happiness In A Wash Tub

I'm sure a lot of you have tried Dylon dye, but did you know that you don't have to use the whole sachet at once, and that you can mix different colours and play with the application of the dyes? I've been having fun with Dylon hand dye lately, in preparation for a class I'm teaching at the local adult education centre. I'll show you the results soon, but until then, have a look at this:

It's not often the wash tub fills me with such happiness. <3

More images soon! Thanks for visiting my blog!

Use Your Treasures Part 3

I fell in love with the pink and yellow colour scheme of the pouch that I showed you in my last blog post, so when it was time to finally make that tablet sleeve that I've been meaning to sew for months, I went with the flow. I combined my hand dyed and hand printed fabrics with linen - I love the contrast between rough and neutral coloured linen and smooth and colourful cotton. I used the same pattern that I've used for mobile phone covers, only bigger. Now I'm ready to carry my tablet around in style!

And just as a reminder, this is what it looks like as a mobile cover:

Thanks for visiting!

 

Use Your Treasures Part 2, and Quilt As You Go

I joined our local quilt guild fairly recently, and yesterday the guild had its monthly meeting, which I attended. There was a special theme this time: to learn a 'quilt as you go'-technique. I brought a bunch of my hand dyed fabrics that were basically just samples of different techniques, which have accumulated over the years. Some of them were pretty unsuccessful as a whole, but had potential if cut up. And I'm on a mission to reduce my stash! I was reminded again of how nice it is to dye your own fabrics, because by using and mixing the same dyes you always have a collection of fabrics that automatically go well together.

The technique was a form of foundation piecing, where you sew down your fabric piece onto batting and a backing fabric, and quilt it before you sew down the next fabric piece, which you then quilt before moving on to the next piece. This means that the quilting will go in different directions, and disappear under other fabric pieces in the process. I was tempted to free-motion quilt different patterns and colours, but felt it would have been tedious and time-consuming to keep changing presser foot and thread, so I stuck to straight lines and one thread colour. But with two sewing machines you could have a lot of fun with this! One for piecing and one for quilting. I'm sorry that I don't have any process images, but I was on a roll (and in a hurry) and forgot.

At the guild meeting I made a quilt sandwich for a pouch, which I finished at home,

and later in the evening I couldn't resist making a pot holder too. But that one is foundation pieced first and quilted after the piecing was done.

Here are a few more shots of the pouch:

I think a cover for my tablet is coming up next. The poor thing has been very neglected since I bought it this last autumn!



Thanks for visiting my blog!

Use Your Treasures!

I was inspired by a recent blog post by Melanie Testa, where she writes that she's been printing cloth for years, and now wants to use up her stash completely instead of stashing and storing fabric. I can relate to that. I have loads of my own fabrics in my stash too. Some of the cloth is ugly, some is precious to me. But the point is: there is no point in storing it. It deserves to be used! "Using the things you have and make causes you to make more, doesn’t it?" Melanie says. And she's right! Whatever fabric I've dyed or printed - I can make more of! And if there is one that is exquisitely special and unrepeatable, well, why not use it for something I use every day so that I can enjoy it all the time? Why should I keep it folded up in a box? And when I make more fabric, there will be more exquisitely special and unrepeatable fabrics to use.

So, as a warm-up, I decided to make a coaster set from some of my hand-dyed fabrics that have a Japanese feel to me. I combined them with linen as a backing fabric, as I love the combination of printed cotton and plain linen.

The techniques that have been used to pattern the fabrics are: low water immersion dyeing, shibori, direct dye painting and printing, soy wax resist and discharge. I was quite surprised by how many techniques I'd managed to tick off!

Thanks for visiting my blog! Go forth, my friend, and use your fabrics. And then: make (or buy) more lovely fabric!

Softcut December

By the end of last November mixed-media artist Julie Fei-Fan Balzer announced that December would be 'Carve December', i.e. that she would carve a stamp every day that month. Months ago I'd bought Julie's book Carve, Stamp, Play: Designing and Creating Custom Stamps, and I'd been eager to do try the techniques she describes in the book, but hadn't found time for it. When Carve December was announced I decided to take the opportunity to finally do some of the exercises in the book, and to develop my stamp-carving skills. I vaguely aimed for a stamp a day, but suspected that I wouldn't be disciplined enough to actually reach that goal. December is, as you know, a busy month. And I didn't reach 31 stamps. However, I did carve 20 stamps, which I'm really pleased with, because some of those stamps were quite complicated and time-consuming. Here's the whole collection:

I followed Julie's instructions very closely in the beginning, because obviously there was a reason why she'd included each exercise, and I didn't want to miss some important point. And I'm really glad I did because quite frankly, I was really surprised by the scale of the stamps - they were much smaller than the stamps I'd carved earlier on my own. When I reached the butterfly, I was appalled by the size: 2,5 x 2,5 cm (1 x 1 inches)! That's impossible, I thought. But I decided to give it a try, and not give up immediately, even if it proved to be as difficult as I thought. And here's the result:

I was amazed by the detail I'd managed to capture, and my confidence soared. I was using a linoleum-like material called SoftCut (Speedy Carve is the material that Julie uses, but it's not available where I live), and so far I hadn't been completely sold on it. It's very difficult to draw on the material, and it has a greasy surface which defies any pencil, pen or marker. This means that it's difficult to both transfer images and to make them stay on the surface without rubbing off. I developed a method where I started by washing the material with soap and warm water, and then rubbing the surface dry with a paper towel, and thus removing most of the grease. I transferred the images by drawing with graphite on a piece of paper and then rubbing the image against the surface. I then used an alcohol marker to make the markings more permanent. They would still rub off, but they were a bit more permanent.

My method of mounting the stamps that I've carved is to use an acrylic block, to which I've attached Tack'n'Peel by Tsukineko. Tack'n'Peel is a sticky film, which you glue onto a block and can use over and over again. You just attach the stamp to the sticky surface, and after you've stamped your image you peel off the stamp and your block is ready for the next stamp. That is a great space-saver!

Here I've played with the triangular knot stamp to create a pattern:

 I tried a self-portrait, a lace pattern based on something that I crocheted many years ago, a leaf set (filling and outline) and several Christmas-related stamp.

I love this stamping technique, which I learned from Julie's blog.

Word stamp ("Merry Christmas"), and the beginnings of an alphabet set with Celtic-style letters:

These swirls are simple, but took a long time to carve since the lines are so thin. I removed a lot more material than what was left on the stamp.

I very much enjoyed making these stamps, and I appreciated the fact that you don't need a lot of materials and tools to do this, and there is wery little cleaning up afterwards. A lot of the things I like to do demand a lot of organisation and tidying up afterwards, so this was definitely fun for a change! These exercises gave me a lot more confidence, and I know that it'll be much easier to pick up some SoftCut and make more stamps now that I've developed a technique and seen what is possible. I hope I've inspired you to pick up a piece of rubber or linoleum, and to give it a go too!

Thanks for visiting, and see you again soon!