Flower Power

I started this QU course last weekend. As usual Susan Brittingham gives full notes about all the processes and good illustrations. The homework for week one was to try free cutting for an applique flower. I wanted to do a rose that I had traced over, since I had the right fabric for it, and thought it was reasonably straightforward. I traced the b and w drawing onto freezer paper and numbered and labelled all the small pieces. I had a piece of fabric that was stripes of rust to tan all merging into one another. One end of it was dark reddish brown. The only other fabric I needed was a deep yellow, and a touch of lime yellow. All fabrics were solids, but it didn't matter for this project, which is small - less than journal size.

I spent all afternoon at the ironing board, cutting sticking the pieces for each petal separately first, and then assembling. Pretty well worked out which pieces needed to underlap - only two places I had to adjust. I got back ache, but keept going in the zone, and totally forgot the time. I looked at the clock at 5.55, thinking I was hungry and what would I have to eat, when remembered that I was going to a cooking class and needed to meet my friend at 6!

When I got home from learning how to make slow roasted lamb in pomegranate molasses and spices, with saffron pilaf, and rosewater panna cotta, I fused the whole rose to a piece of purple McKenna Ryan fabric. It looks pretty real.

I am not sure if I want to finish it, by stitching and quilting etc. No hurry, as I must finish my flower shop first.

Movies, opera and sketching

Art quilt-wise, at the moment I am working on my house for the slice quilt our online group is doing. It is harder to keep going than I imagined. That might be partly because we let the timescale drift a bit. I did numerous samples for the windows, and I wanted to include something you could see through the glass, like a cat, a blind, or a vase. But the scale is so small, that I abandoned that idea. Next I tried several methods, upside-down applique, piecing and fusing. I preferred the fusing, because the UDA distorted the corners the most, and the piecing gave too much bulk. Would probably be fine on a larger item.

At the moment I am doing the decorative relief plaster that is on my sample photo of a large building on the waterfront in Willemstad, Curacao. I will do the flower shop part separately and attach it at the end, in case of disasters. I have some great fabrics with flowers on, which I hope I can fussy cut. When I get my embellisher back tomorrow I will also try attaching some using that. Oh my god - MORE samples!

Despite my best intentions of starting stitching at 8.30 this morning, I have passed a couple of hours looking at a DVD I rented of Fitzcarraldo. I saw this Werner Herzog movie years ago, and it had a huge impression on me. Since my boss is going to Manaus in a few weeks, I looked for it to check out my memory. Instead of watching the movie, I watched the interview with Herzog et al on the making of the movie. Honestly you get to see all the pivotal parts of the story, plus his tales of the making of it are actually more amazing than the original story. If you don't know the story, a manic Irish guy in Peru decides to build an opera house in the jungle, and that involves dragging a steamboat over a mountain to a different tributary of the Amazon. To make the movie, it took them 3 years to build two identical boats, one to drag and the other to sail about. Their camp, which took a year to build, was razed to the ground by hostile natives. Money was a constant worry and only came in dribs and drabs. Everyone though Herzog was crazy and it would never happen. There was only radio contact from the filming site to Iquito, and all supplies had to be brought from there. They used native Indians from logging areas to act and actually drag the boat (using winches and stone age wooden cranks). They used dynamite to try to improve the gradient from 60 degrees to 40 (plus a caterpillar machine that they shipped in). Half the time there was a drought and no water in the rivers, and the rest of the time there was too much. In the final scenes where the boat goes through rapids and gets damaged, they actually sent the boat through twice, once with a few people on, and once with none. They had to carry with them a few ladies of the night, to avoid problems with the crew and cast having to spend 8 months in the jungle. They had tense relations with the native Indians as it was, without incursions into their villages looking for women. There were lots of near accidents, and a few actual ones. One Indian got bitten by a very poisonous snake, and not having time to get to the antiserum, and knowing his heart would fail in less than 3 minutes, he cut off his own foot with a chainsaw! He survived. Kinski, the lead actor, was almost impossible to work with, having serious tantrums every day. He was certainly mentally unstable, which made him perfect for the part of Fitzcarraldo.

The interview was one of the most interesting I have ever listened to.

A lot of it was shot as in nighttime, with low level light, which had amazing effects. The native Indians have very prominent bone structure and I tried to sketch one man, who was wearing a headband with a few blue and orange bird feathers incorporated into it. Their faces would be great for a portrait quilt.

Now, it really is time to stitch!

Stitching to dye

I bought June Barnes' book when I was in the UK (well it was my birthday present from my Mum, but I ordered it!). I have read it from cover to cover at least 3 times already, and I was excited to get to start playing with her ideas.

Her initial colour and dyeing exercises are based on blocks like logcabin or stars, since the focus is on the effects of different fabrics' take-up of colour. I couldn't think of a project where I wanted to do that, but I was experimenting with bark effects on trees, so I thought I could base my first attempt round that idea. I played with rectangular and random wavy blotches, and went for the semi-abstract rectangles and triangles, with a selection of natural coloured and printed fabrics. I bought several new FQs and some white on white ones, at Spotlight on Monday. I was very diligent and washed them all first. I also had some velvet for dyeing that I bought from marjie McWilliams, but I can't remember the composition of it now.

I did straight stitch round each scrap, though maybe I could leave out that step if I used glue or fusible web. Actually it took quite a long time. I was using the walking foot and swivelling at corners. I tried FMQ, but I didn't like the effect. Next I tried her granite stitch to secure the raw edges. I don't think I did them anywhere near small enough, but will play some more. I filled in the gaps with more circles and a few wavy lines. My impression is that the stitching and especially the garnet stitching makes too much of the gaps and detracts from the fabric patches.

I was supposed to be using cotton thread, but I only had cheapo white, with no writing on it, so couldn't tell. The blob test was inconclusive. Transpires now that most of it was cottonish, but when that ran out, I used polyester, which didn't take up the dye.

I mixed what I thought would be a yellow-green, but it turned out apple green. Looks OK. the velvet took the brightest dye, the linen the most yellow, and the attached calico the darkest bluest green. The neutral printed fabrics all turned out much the same colour.

I thought about colouring the threads with paint or crayons. Tried out 3 inktense colours on the back, but they migrated right through to the top overnight. I think the batting was the cotton and bamboo one. Nothin remarkable there, except the price.

I might use it to try low immersion dyeing and overdye with a turquoise, or I might start a new one with the white on whites. I had fun, and it didn't matter what happened, which was a good outcome.