With the quilting completed – see previous post –
and the binding sewn in pinned back for finishing, this piece is virtually finished. The coverage by gold quilting is enough, I think, so don’t need to fill in small gaps with black quilting.
Archive for the ‘General’ Category
Bungle Bungles 3 – Quilting Completed
Wednesday, April 29th, 2015Bungle Bungles 3 – Quilting
Tuesday, April 28th, 2015With the piecing all done, and layers in place, this afternoon I began the quilting treatment. Double lines of gold stitching have begun to appear on the piece, and I’m not sure where that will lead, and some of it might be black, but there is a fair bit more quilting required. This is an area about 4″ x 5″.
The dots I used on the fist piece are really too big for the shapes on this one, and so the bits of glitter provided by gold stitching seem to fit better with the smaller scale shapes.
Textile Exhibition Montevideo August 2014
Tuesday, April 28th, 2015Last August I visited a wonderful textile show at MAPI, the Museo del Arte Precolumbino e Indigena. A lovely small museum, on Calle 25 de Mayo in the old city; you can easily find info on line at http://www.mapi.uy/informacion_de_interes.html 
It was not until I found those photos today, that I realised why I hadn’t written anything about it at the time: late last August, several weeks before scheduled surgery ‘they’ suddenly brought the date forward – no emergency on my part, but there must have been a vacancy or something. In the flurry of suddenly dropping everything, and the aftermath of recovery and rehab, this excellent exhibition was forgotten, and I’m sorry as it would have been nice to post it while the show was on. Worse – and even though I remember the works – now I have to research some of the names and match them up with their works I photographed, as not all had a swing tag placed helpfully as this one!
This first exhibit is by one of my favourite textile artists here. Siv Goransson produces wonderful garments and objects of felted wool. Her work is found in the Manos del Uruguay shops and in the several artisan market galleries – one on the Plaza Cagancha and the other in the basement of the market building on San Jose near Ejido, probably in other places too. Some very special people have received one of her scarves that I buy from time to time, and mostly in typically glorious colour, and you can find lots of images here http://tinyurl.com/qy5hzvc. This poncho however is in very dramatic black and white, with a lovely tasselled edge. Very elegant.
As I now have some research to do for the others, I’ll make this into a series, the next post in which will appear in the next couple of days.
Bungle Bungles, 3
Thursday, April 23rd, 2015
This afternoon I have been piecing – that is, cutting out different shaped pieces of fabric and sewing them together, which I know puzzles many bystanders around those of us who make ‘patchwork’ things including quilts. Fabric is just a raw material to some textile artists, and thus no different from a skein of wool, a tube of oil paint, a block of wood or stone, all to be worked by people with appropriate skills. I’ve always loved sewing, and love piecing as a technique for surface design, which produces contemporary patchwork that despite appearances does in fact have connection with the traditional geometric patterned designs that most people think of as ‘patchwork’. Patchwork, traditional and contemporary, is often backed with a layer or two of fabric and quilted by hand or machine to hold it all together in a completed object, usually bedding or clothing for warmth.
This pictured segment continues some piecing I began a couple of weeks ago, before undergoing surgery for a shoulder prosthesis. My doc did say use the hand as much as possible, and this activity is well within the restrictions – of holding nothing heavier than a cup of tea, and not to try to raise the arm above shoulder level – well just now I can’t get it anywhere near the shoulder so there’s no danger there. All the newly constructed left arm has to do is some gentle holding of small pieces of fabric as the machine slowly sews, and my other (good) arm whips out the pins, flying back and forth from the pin cushion as the machine gradually sews around the curved edge. It’s all rather like setting in a sleeve. Even as I was doing this today, a brainwave came for another piece in this theme, inspired by what I read recently about the structure of the sandstone karst formations in the The Bungle Bungles. So as soon as I finish putting all these pieces together, I’ll start another to incorporate my new idea. However, right now its time for a change of activity to include arm swinging and shoulder shrugging followed by a cup of tea.
Bungle Bungles Quilt, 2
Tuesday, April 21st, 2015Series Concept Marks left by human activity in and on the landscape in some regions date back many thousands of years. By painting chipping, and sctratching on rocks and cave walls, the ancients left marks and patterns, some of which may have been messages or information which is now lost to us. Some meanings we can guess at, others we have no idea; but whatever they say, we are in no doubt they were man-made, and most of us feel in awe in the presence of such ancient signs and symbols found on every continent that Man has occupied.At least one quilt on the Kimberley theme is finished, and I have been reading various articles on the Bungle Bungles to help crystallise why I personally am drawn to these ancient, emblematic sandstone karst landscapes.
I hadn’t realised how fragile they are inside, protected as they are by an outer coating layer of cyanobacteria just millimeters-thick that stabilises the surface of each unit of the formation. Hidden beneath are the layers of soft rock – white or light coloured fresh sandstone alternating with conglomerates. For millions of years these sediments have been carved into by water erosion in the monsoon wet, being divided into round topped towers separated by steep sided gorges, the sides of which display the characteristic orange and charcoal grey bacterial bands that appear to wind around each tower.
My goodness I’ve learned a lot this morning, and unexpectedly, one of the most interesting and informative sources I read is the Western Australian Government’s nomination document supporting the inclusion of Purnululu or Bungle Bungles National Park on the World Heritage List in 2007. Far from being dry and boring, the very readable text is beautifully arranged and includes some lovely art from the region, plus some brilliant landform photography. An hour just whizzed by, and you can dip into it here – http://tinyurl.com/knsrme8