I just read a wonderful interview with Hazel Bruce on TextileArtist.org headed Hazel Bruce: ‘Make do and mend’ pieced fabrics connected by repeated stitched pattern blocks” under which is a pic of richly textured hand stitched straight-stitch patterns that really struck a chord with me. Further reading of Heidi Ingram’s interview article, I found more key words and phrases that rang my bell:

• make do and mend – tick – life mantra & recent banner on https://www.liftthesky.com
• repeat patterns – tick – these underpin most of my art
• sampling – tick – I frequently make samples for several reasons, including fabric/thread auditions, learning a material’s handling characteristics, or trying a new technique or stitch.
• repeat lines – tick – seams, stitch lines, applied shapes
• mark making – tick – every stitch is a mark and is placed purposefully
• Hazel said “I revisit my work quite a lot” – tick – and often see things I didn’t ‘see’ before
• Hazel sometimes cuts a piece up when it returns from an exhibition – tick though I haven’t yet… but am thinking about it
• re-working it and integrating it into another piece – tick just thinking about it …
• “I’m not very precious about my work” – I’ve certainly been feeling less so. A few years ago I did cut up set of pieces that formed one work; and might another couple soon: but earlier this year I sold a couple of older works to an important buyer, so it’s something to think about carefully !

When I found this sample today, I was surprised how old it was and how much it has influenced my work since I doodled with these ideas in 2013 …

Every year an organisation I belong to, Studio Art Quilt Associates, or SAQA, has a conference during which donated small quilted textile pieces submitted by members are auctioned in what they call the Spotlight Auction. These pieces are small, 6″ x 8″ so in my opinion are not large enough to call ‘a quilt’… and as I usually regard this small creation as something of an experiment that might lead onto use in a major work, I think of these things as samples, and that’s certainly how I describe them on the customs documentation!

This week I took a morning to make my spotlight piece, and used the exercise as a sample to try out an intriguing fabric I couldn’t resist buying at a JoAnn’s fabric shop somewhere in my trip to the US late last year. I’ve photographed what I made against the background of this interesting fabric – a very fine polyester knit, stretchy, silver-ish but appearing as if it has an oil slick all over it. .. it’s absolutely lovely fabric, I feel every square centimetre is precious.

Such experiments teach me much about the handling characteristics of unusual materials, and in this case, the cut edge tends to roll just a little – as you can see with a couple of cut edges on the left side of the pic. Then hand oversewing fine strips over a very low loft batting in a quilt-as-you-go technique, even using a hoop to make sure I didn’t pull it tight, etc, it tends to sit in such a way as to look solid 3D. My followers know I just love glitter, and I’m happy to no longer need to get hold of some mylar just now, or to save the sachets that my favourite tea bags come in 🙂 which provided the glitter for last year’s Spotlight piece. I have warned the collector that particular glittery material is not really robust and any tension could case the glitter to split a bit, but knowing the collector personally, I doubt that that will ever happen.

In these auctions people don’t need to attend the conference to place a bid – the pieces go online sometime in the next few weeks, and are also presented for live viewing at the conference. Each is covered with a matting board showing an area of 4.5″ x 6.5″, and that whole assembly in a sealed cellophane bag. I’ll post the link to the whole lot of this year’s offerings here when they go online.

Progress is being made, as it seems by completing the top 2 rows now, I am nearly halfway through the process of adding the strips of colour

which I talked about in the previous post.

I did a little sample of the idea I mentioned at the end of that post of a triangular mesh with ‘things’ at the points of intersection of the dotted/quilting lines. Reviewing and considering this, it’s a chicken or the egg kind of question – do I stitch the lines in first than place whatever ‘thing’ I decide at the intersection points, or do I stitch or fuse the ‘things’ in place (and I love the tiny triangles) and then stitch between them? And will the stitching lines be quilting, ie done once the whole piece is layered, or will I make those part of the surface design and do some form of quilting in another operation altogether, closer to the end?

Well there’s no rush for decision making here, as I still have plenty of triangles on which to add bands of colour. A FB friend commented yesterday that the triangles as per the top photo look look lively and happy. I’m glad to hear such a comment – and that feeds into my thinking about the title for this work.