I had a lovely surprise yesterday morning. As I ate my breakfast and browsed through my news feed  I saw a post from fellow SAQA member Heather Pregger, http://www.heatherquiltz.com/ in which she mentioned that her quilt 'VOLCANO' features in the August/September edition of Quilting Arts magazine. Her fabulous quilt, along with 23 others is part of the SAQA exhibition Textile Posters and I am very proud to say that my quilt '3 Wise Words' is one of those quilts selected by the juror, Joseph Lupo, and also features in the magazine. Thanks for passing on the good news Heather!.

I am even more pleased that the message contained in the quilt is being spread just a little bit further. 

The cover of the August/September edition of Quilting Arts features Cat Larrea's fabulous quilt named 'Shiprock' and you can see images of all 24 of the posters im the exhibit on the SAQA website by clicking here. 
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​I wrote a blog post about the '3 Wise Words' quilt back in February 2017 when I found out it had been selected for the exhibition and you can read that post by clicking here. 

The quilt features a BIG water tap and the words: 'refill, not landfill'. Back in early 2017 the whole issue of plastic waste, and in particular single use water bottles was beginning to be widely discussed and more recently we frequently see the most terrible photographs of mountains of plastic bottles washed up on beaches, floating around in the oceans and inside the stomach's of dead sea animals. It really is intolerable.
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Here are a few more images from the sketchbook that I used in the planning of the quilt that I thought might be interesting to share. My sketchbooks are my way of making sense of ideas, seeing what might work and keeping things organised; I hope you enjoy the glimpse.

The sketchbook also serves as a nice place to store the left over bits and pieces from the quilt - stencils, lino print blocks, unused fabrics etc. Earlier this year I had a request to make another quilt for someone (on a different theme) and I was able to go back to that particular sketchbook and 'raid' it for leftovers - and was able to create and ship a brand new quilt within a week. I was amazed (and so was she!)

​A very high quality catalogue to accompany the exhibition is still available on the SAQA website by clicking here.

​Thanks for reading. 

I've been working on a new quilt for a while now, for the SAQA 'Made in Europe II' exhibition. I am hoping it will be selected to hang in their gallery at Festival of Quilts later this year. It isn't what you would call a 'pretty' quilt, but it is part of the ongoing work I have made this year in terms of its style and inspiration. 

The quilt itself is of fairly simple construction, (much like the others) being made from irregularly sized rectangles pieced together, so nothing much to write home about there. The fun in this quilt has come from creating a particular effect on the fabric I used. I was aiming for a very specific visual texture, the look of iron metal that has been painted and then blistered by rust beneath the surface. The process of creating it was an interesting journey, so I thought I would share a little of the process I used to create it.

I decided to start with a large piece of commercially dyed black homespun  fabric and then remove some of the colour from it. In the past I have used both formusol and discharge paste to remove colour from fabrics, but neither was readily available to me here, so I got out the bleach did some experimenting to find the best way to get the results I had in mind. As it turns out, it worked brilliantly - so much so, I may never bother with the smelly formusol ever again!

Interestingly enough, here in New Zealand bleach is comparatively expensive. I have no idea why! In the UK it is dirt cheap. I sought out the least expensive bleach I could find - it turned out to be the thin watery stuff - and tried various ways to thicken it so it would be more controllable.

I started with manutex - the sodium alginate seaweed based thickener I usually use with dye: Sadly it was no good. The bleach completely destroyed the viscosity.

Dharma Trading sell a thickener for bleach made by Jacquard (click here to go to their website), but I would have had to import it from the USA and I didn't want to wait for it to arrive, so my search continued.

I found out about fumed silica (click here to find out about this interesting stuff) which would apparently work very well (maybe that is what is in the Jacquard stuff??), but again I would have to order it.

So I decided to try plain old starch - cornflour in water. I mixed two big spoonfuls of cornflour into a little cold water to make a slurry then added another half a cup or so of water and and popped it into the microwave. A few seconds later I had a very thick, gooey transparent paste. I mixed in some thin bleach and gave it all a good stir. It stayed thick and allowed me to draw, dribble and stamp the bleachy paste onto the black fabric.

For a cheap and practical solution to my needs the cornflour paste was perfect!

Note: Interestingly, the left over bleachy paste did break down overnight and became thin and runny - so I recommend mixing the the bleach and paste as you need it rather than making a big batch. 

There is some debate as to how much damage bleach does to fabric when used to remove colour (discharge) in this way. To be honest, I have used bleach to remove colour several times in the past, and never had any problems. The fabrics still seem to be in good condition and I see no problems on the horizon. Maybe in 20 or more years there will be - but so far so good. However, in the interest of being thorough I researched how to neutralise the bleach and stop any potential damage.

There are a number of methods various people recommend. The one NOT to do is to dip the discharged fabric into a mixture of vinegar and water. The (faulty) logic goes like this: bleach is alkaline, so neutralise it with an acid. Apparently it is not quite as straightforward as it seems (is anything???) Paula Birch has a very good  explanation of the different methods on her website, which you can find here: www.pburch.net/dyeing/FAQ/neutralizingdischarge.shtml

I opted for the hydrogen peroxide as it was the cheapest and easiest to obtain, not to mention that it seems less noxious. Paula Birch recommends 3% peroxide, which translates to 10 vol if you are more used to that measurement. 

(As a long term experiment I have kept 3 pieces of the discharged black fabric. One has not been neutralised at all, just rinsed in water, the second has been neutralised in the dreaded diluted vinegar and the third in peroxide. Time will tell if there is any difference!)

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By this stage I was pretty happy with the effect. To me it is beginning to resemble a section of painted iron. I have since added some further fabric and begun the process of hand stitching various knots over the surface to give it even more texture.

The closing date for entries to the 'Made in Europe II' SAQA exhibition is 31st May - so I had better get on with it!

http://saqacallforentrymadeineurope2.com/

​Thanks for reading.
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 I can hardly believe it is that time of year again. 

Last year I made the small 12" x 12" quilt entitled 'innocence'. It was a simple printed and painted wholecloth of a little boy I once met whose wonderful name is Spinach.
Each year SAQA (Studio Artist Quilt Associates) put out a request for members to make and donate a small quilt which is put up for sale at a huge auction they host in September. Last year over 430 quilts were donated which raised over $80,000. The money raised is used to support SAQA's extensive exhibition and outreach programs. 

Here is a random selection of quilts from the 2016 auction. Spinach is down there at the bottom somewhere. You can see more of the quilts by visiting the SAQA site. Click here to visit.

For this year's quilt I decided to revisit Spinach and make another very similar quilt - but showing how he has grown and altered. He now goes to school and I think of him often. 

If you are interested in SAQA you can find out more about who they are and what they do here.  I have been a member for just about 2 years and have met some great people and learned a lot about quilt making, exhibiting and lots more through my membership. 

Thanks for reading.