CLAIRE PASSMORE blog

4 New Quilts: Wiltshire's White Horses                                               27 October 2014

27/10/2014

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Westbury Horse© 2014 Claire Passmore
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Cherhill Horse© 2014 Claire Passmore
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Devizes Horse© 2014 Claire Passmore
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Alton Barnes Horse© 2014 Claire Passmore

Here they are at last - a long time coming, but for me, a cause for celebration. The first 4 of the 8 'Wiltshire's White Horses'.
I have really enjoyed researching the horses, discovering their stories, walking to them and making the quilts. 

The Westbury Horse; famous for being the first of the Wiltshire horses, taking its nocturnal walk to the spring to drink.
The Cherhill Horse; having its glass eye made from upturned bottles stolen over and over again.
The Devizes Horse; a new horse for a new Millennium. Overlooking the site of several mysterious crop circles and a mirror image of an older local horse, known as the 'Snobs' Horse' now lost.
Alton Barnes Horse: the story goes £20 was paid for the horse to be cut, but the man absconded with the money before doing the work. A second payment was required to get the job done.

The complete series will be on show at my first British solo exhibition next year at Midsomer Quilting,  along with my Destination Series and Modition Series. 

'Here and Far' 1st - 15th May 2015 - Midsomer Quilting, Chilcompton, BA3 4RR

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Surface design; Markal paintsticks

22/10/2014

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My home made storage solution for the paintsticks I am currently using

Another product I like for adding color to fabric is made by Markal / Shiva (depending on which side of the pond you sit). They are a little bit messy, but once you have used them once and know what to expect they are another fabulous way to add great intesne (or subtle if you want) colour and shadow to your work.

I purchased a huge box on eBay several years ago for the princely sum of $50. Now that is what I call a bargain. They were a bit old when I bought them, and I have had them for about 5 or so more years - and they are still in great condition. Not quite as buttery and soft as the newest box I bought recently - but still work perfectly, and in some ways are a little less messy.

So what are they?

Basically they are solid oil paint in a stick. They have a cardboard outer wrapping that keeps you from getting messy and heal themselves to create a dry skin on the exposed surface after a few hours, so they don't dry out. You can use them on all kinds of media -  canvas, paper, wood, plastic, metal, fabric... I use them on fabric and they are dry to the touch in 24 hours or less. Left for a few days they dry completely and can be made permanent by pressing with a hot iron. 

Colors can be spread or blended with a brush or  knife and a colorless blender allows you to make them less opaque. They are also completely compatible with any oil paints, although I have never done that. The makers claim that they are non-toxic and hypo-allergenic, and I have no reason to disagree.



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Sample size
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Regular size
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Skinny - not sure if they make these any more
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Jumbo size
If you want to try them out and not spend a lot - start with a sample size pack. Most of my varied collection are of the skinny and regular sized sticks - and to be truthful I don't think they will ever run out - a little goes a long way! I have one jumbo stick - and unless you are a serious user of oilsticks - I am not sure why you would ever buy one of these!

So how do you use them?

There are lots of different techniques I have tried - and I am sure there are many more - just let your imagination go and see what happens.

Before you start you will need to peel back a small section of the cardboard outer tube and then use a sharp knife or your fingernail to scrape away the protective film that forms over the end of the paintstick.

As some of my paintsticks are now very old this protective film is more of a shell - but it is still only about 2 mm thick - so no worries!


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Scrape off the protective film
  • directly applied from the stick onto the fabric
  • use a stiff brush, toothbrush, sponge, Q tip or finger to take paint from the end of the stick and then onto the fabric
  • put some of the paint onto a smooth surface (eg. freezer paper, plastic pot lid or palette), especially if you want to blend or mix colours, and then use brushes, sponge, Q tip or finger to apply the paint
  • put paint onto the edge of a stencil and use your finger to take the paint into stencil's the empty space
  • mask areas of the fabric with freezer paper or making tape and apply the paint as described above

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Scribble some paint onto a palette ready to mix or apply

Cleaning up

As these are oil based paints the clean up is a little different from simply running your equipment under the tap - but it is not difficult. There are a few cheap and easy ways to deal with cleanup. 

Baby wipes: These magically clean up hands and other specks of paint that you may get. If you rub a lot they can also clean up brushes
Aloe vera gel: If you can obtain this cheaply it works really well - just squirt a little into the palm of your hand and rub brushes in a circle to get rid of the excess paint, then wash away with water.
Citrus based cleaner: My favourite. I bought it in the auto department of the supermarket. It is a grey paste - but I think you can get all sorts of colours and types. It smells - well - orangy! And it works just like the aloe gel.
Turpentine: - but what a pain that is! Last resort.


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Citrus based cleaner or baby wipes
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Citrus based cleaner - swirl then wash away with water

Paintsticks on the White Horses

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Masks used to create bottle shapes on the 'Cherhill Horse' quilt
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Bottle shaped masks and stencils applied with a stiff short bristled brush
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New book from Contemporary Quilt Group

22/10/2014

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You can see an online gallery of the quilts 
here
This year's  challenge to the Contemporary Quilt group of the Quilters Guild was to create a quilt, 50cm x 120cm on the theme of 'Dislocation'.  79 quilts were submitted and 44 were selected to hang at the Festival of Quilts, 2014.

A full colour book detailing these quilts is now available for £10 (including first class post and packing) from Hilary Gooding.Click the button below to find out more.

I have a copy of the book and it really is great. The quality of the photography is excellent and it is very nice to see the whole collection together. 


Dislocation Book

The collection is now on tour and can be seen at the following
 venues over the next 6 months:


Open European Quilt Championships, Veldhoven, The Netherlands;  23-26 October 2014

Compton Verney Textile Fair, Warwickshire; 8 November 2014

West Country Quilt Show at UWE in Bristol; 13th to 15th November 2014

Quiltfest Llangollen Museum, Wales; 4 February - 4 March 2015

The Bramble Patch, Weeden, Northamptonshire; 28 March - 11 April 2015

Congratulations to all participants of the challenge and thanks to all those who made the challenge and book possible.
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White Horses and Derwent Inktense pencils                                    15 October 2014

14/10/2014

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Inktense Pencils by Derwent
If you have not come across this product let me leave you in no doubt, I love these water soluble pencils!

In fact, I pretty much love every Derwent product I have tried. I started with the small tin of 12 pencils and liked them so much I bought the tin of 24. I then got tired of carrying them back and forth on the plane, so bought the tin of 72. Now I have pencils everywhere. I also invested (my husband does not agree with my definition of the term 'invested') in a small tin of Intense blocks. I like them, but not as much as the pencils. And recently I bought a small tin of Graphitint pencils - which are also lovely! If I promise to be good do you think Santa might bring me a tin of metallics?


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Yet to be fully explored... the blocks
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My favourite - the full set!
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My new Graphitint pencils
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Dear Santa, These look really cool!

Why are they so great?

  • They are clean and simple to use. You can sharpen them to a fine point for detailed work
  • They can be used on paper, card, fabric, bark, suede...
  • You can use them on dry or wet media
  • They blend well with water or textile medium to give lovely translucent effects
  • When moistened they reveal their intense ink pigment that becomes completely permanent when dry
  • You can draw onto rubber or lino cut stamps, then spitz with water and print
  • Use them for rubbings, stencils, drawing, shading, adding shadows or highlights.....
  • Collect the shavings and use the 'dust' to add colour
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Samples of the brown pencils from the full set of inktense pencils

So this is how I used them on the White Horse quilts; very simply with a freezer paper stencil.
It isn't very sophisticated, but it gave me a perfect, clean edge to the grid reference numbers I wanted beneath the name of each horse. Using the pencils allowed me to carefully apply colour exactly where I wanted it. 
I used the following colours; shiraz, poppy red, chestnut and saddle brown. I applied the color onto the dry fabric and then simply brushed over with a gel textile medium. I chose textile medium as I did not want any colour to bleed under the edges of the freezer paper stencil - otherwise water would have been fine. The pictures below show my process.

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The great thing is that once dry, the ink stain on the fabric is permanent and it can be further worked on and the colours will not mix or blend. 

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Wiltshire's White Horses - sketchbook inspiration                             9 October 2014

9/10/2014

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My 'White Horse' sketchbook

For more information on the white horses click here
Here is the sketchbook I started a few days ago; it is coming along nicely! I have been collecting maps and images for quite a while now in preparation for my art quilt series on the beautiful, (and slightly mysterious) chalk horse hill figures here in the county of Wiltshire, UK.

Just in case you are not familiar with the horses, here is a list of where you can find them.

Westbury
Cherhill
Devizes
Broad Town
Hackpen
Marlborough
Pewsey
Alton Barnes
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Poem by the English poet, Charles Tennyson Turner (1808 - 1879)

The white horses carved into the hillsides of Wiltshire today are not as old as you may imagine. There have been 13 in all, but currently only 8 are visible. The oldest, at Westbury, was first cut towards the end of the 1600's and was vaguely horse shaped, but In 1778 one Mr George Gee decided to have a new horse dug on the same spot, sadly obliterating the original, in a more recognisable 'horse' shape.
This horse is the closest to my home, and, in my opinion, is the best.

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A drawing of the original hill carving in Westbury

White Horses of Wiltshire http://www.clairepassmore.weebly.com
My sketchbook for this series is already bulging
It is not really known why these earthworks were ever created - the oldest in the UK is at Uffington, just over the border in Oxfordshire and has been dated to originating in the Bronze Age (between 1200 and 800 BC!) 
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The uffington Horse as drawn by Wise, 1738
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The Uffington horse as it appears today

Here are the first of my pages..... I decided to start with the horse at Cherhill. The best place to view this horse is from a small layby on the A4. If you park there you can get a great view of the horse and the Lansdowne Monument to its right. If you wish to walk up to the horse you can follow the muddy footpath and enjoy the spectacular views from the top.  

And here a few images of the pages for the Devizes horse. This is also a very easy horse to find, although as the slope is quite gentle it is difficult to get a great view of the horse, as you can see from my pictures. If you follow the A361 (The London Road) from Devizes towards Beckhampton, you need to Turn left onto Folly Road, signposted towards Roundway. When you get to the village of Roundway you will come to a split in the road near an old red telephone box (now transformed into a library!) Take the dead end road to the right of the phone box and the horse will be in front of you to your right. If you want to walk onto the horse you can continue along this dead end road where you will find  parking. Just a short walk into the field and you will meet some friendly cows and the Devizes horse. 
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Could this be the smallest library in the world? Roundway, near Devizes
I am sure you can see I am having a great time, exploring different ideas and trying out different techniques with paper, fabric and thread. 
Next I am going to dye some fabrics and create a few small pieces to explore the ideas further. I will post the results in the next few days.
Thanks for looking!
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A new season, a new series                                                                      6 October 2014 

6/10/2014

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The White Horses of Wiltshire

So autumn is here at last. Happily it took a long time to arrive, but the nights are starting to draw in and I thought about putting the heating on last night!

So, whilst I was sat in front of my sewing machine yesterday, busy quilting a mountain, (more on that in another post) I started to think in earnest about a series I have wanted to make for a long time. The White Horses of Wiltshire. 
I started my research for this series in the spring, when I went in search of a few of the horses.


White Horse at Cherhill
The White Horse at Cherhill
White Horse at Westbury
The spectacular view from the White Horse at Westbury of the chalk downs and clay valley below
White Horse at Pewsey
The White Horse at Pewsey

Being a mostly rural county of England with lots of beautiful countryside, Wiltshire is characterised by its high chalk downland and wide clay covered valleys. Salisbury Plain is famous as the location of the Stonehenge and to the north you can find Avebury stone circles and other ancient landmarks. Personally, I find these ancient monuments fascinating, but I am presently even more interested in some not-so ancient marks made on the earth that seem curiously overlooked - the 8 visible white horses scratched into the chalk hillsides.

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As a child I remember looking out of the car windows, keeping an eye out for the sight of a white horse on a hillside. I remember being very puzzled by them - they made no sense to me, but they were huge and interesting, and sometimes we even stopped the car and walked the hills to sit on the horse's nose. 
Many years on it is still fun, although the steepness of the slope and the slippery chalk is much more of a challenge than it used to be. I was sliding down the nose like crazy in this picture!



Over the next few days I intend to work in my sketchbook, developing my ideas for the series. If the weather is good I also hope to go and walk the hills to a few of them and take some nice photographs to use too. 

There is a fantastic website with lots of great information about these hill figures;
http://www.wiltshirewhitehorses.org.uk/ , but apart from that there seems to be very little else. I must say I am rather puzzled. They are even poorly marked with regard to road signs - I think Wiltshire is missing a trick here, as I am sure I can't be the only person who thinks these horses are worth a visit! 

So - over the next few days I will post some of my sketchbook pages and share the development of this series as it unfolds. Hopefully I will convince others of the beauty of these curious creatures!
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