Many of the shapes I love in repeat patterns are rooted in traditional patchwork, along with the the arrangement of variations into grids. They’re big influences in what I often do.

These two pieces of overlaid sheer fabric shapes with machine overstitching in metallic threads are now finished and mounted on 20cm artist canvases, ready for either framing or hanging on the the wall as is…. And yes, they are available for sale – contact me directly.

I keep saying I’ve been doing these ‘while waiting for my large floor standing frame to enable me to hand stitch or quilt larger pieces’, actually I do now have that frame, and it’s great; but I’m not yet ready to start that large piece. I am still fairly absorbed in experimenting with surface textures just now, and as I plan to use paint on the background of the work but the weather’s still a bit cold to paint outside, I’ll continue with my experimental Very Small Pieces series in recent posts, some of which are also on my instagram page https://www.instagram.com/schwabealison/

The following little piece pattern came from sprayed paint, not fused sheer fabric. Both these little pieces reflect my interest in ‘holes’, one of my Pinterest collection themes. Not all those pins are of actual holes; some are a shorthand way of saying ‘this is an interesting possibility for using holes in my work’.

On October 25th 2013, I wrote “I’ve just realized that I’ve had a love of ‘holes’ for some time, and of course they are the essence of ‘lace’ which I see as patterns of holes, though others might see ‘lace’ as patterns of threads.

A while back I wrote that I intended to do some circles in squares, but didn’t show the result. At 3.25 sq.in. there isn’t really the scope for interpretation in stitch that I had in mind, inspired by the painter Jeffrey Allen Price whose work I included in that post, and I will do something larger with room for stitch embellishment.

But interestingly, quite a few people liked it and commented on the private FB page for the challenge. I think I must have missed something, not being sure what the ‘reboot’ refers to, but if it refers to recharging the creative batteries, well, it is definitely showing in what the challenge participants are doing.

Up to this point, most of my posts have been of circular shapes, but there is one of overlaid squares which might appear in a future post, and I feel I will do something with triangles.

I said right at the start that what I was interested in doing in the challenge was explore samples of textures and stitch with view to some new, larger, work. Several people are working on drawing skills, someone’s experimenting with mono printing, someone else with eco prints, and several doing improvisational piecing. A few are using the challenge to finish off some projects. Several people who began with plans to end up with a quilt at the end of it have reached a point where their daily offerings are now showing what they have in mind to achieve in the 100 days.

Several times lately I’ve had comments or questions along the lines of “I will be interested to see this when you put it all together”… I’ve gently explained several times now that these little pieces don’t belong together, that they are samples only, auditioning ideas for new works. I know I am in the minority, as most art quilt makers do very little sample making, even when trying out something very new. It’s a shame, as making samples saves plenty of unpicking.

Every year Studio Art Quilt Associates, SAQA, hold an online auction of 12in. sq. quilted artworks made and donated by artist members to benefit the touring exhibitions program. I’ve participated every year except one, and this year’s Pandemic Pattern 2 is from the series that I began during the early months of the Covid-19 pandemic.

At https://www.saqa.com/auction you’ll find images on all works and artists, plus details on how to bid when it starts.

While I was making it back in December 2020, I wrote “Against a red background representing danger, the circular shapes of black leather are held in place with stemmed french knots in luminescent green. Those stitches really pop out, almost pulsate, though the drama isn’t apparent in this pic.“

One of the fun things to do as you browse through this year’s 469 items is to assemble your choice of 8 pieces you’d like to see go together into Dream Collections. There’s absolutely no commitment to buy one, though of course one could anchor itself on your wish list! But it’s fun to see how people react to the same image, and several popular images always turn up in what you’d think were totally different, unrelated topics. You decide a theme, and build your collection around it. For example, my favourite colour is green, so soon I’ll be putting a collection of quilts together in which the dominant colour is green. I may do one on birds, and will certainly try to find a group of 8 on Covid… and something else might come to mind as I look through them, too.

Following one of the possibilities I mentioned in my previous post, is one, #19 of a series of little pieces I’m doing as part of the SAQA 100 Days Reboot challenge:

This next one is already posted on the album page for tomorrow, Day 20. At the moment I am posting in twos of threes, and so far am just ahead of the calendar.

Continuing the explorations of textures in the SAQA 100 Day Challenge Reboot, I’m experimenting with an idea suggested by an image I pinned on Pinterest of a highly informal grid layout of a watercolour painting. I searched, but the artist’s name the name was too hard to find, so I’m just posting the link so you can see where this inspiration comes from.

Next, I had to decide the stitch treatment for each.

First, the left sample above – I am happy with the effect, but I didn’t anticipate how the quite light fawn thread would show through the cream fabric when it rested against the white paper coating of the foamcore. I could unpick the little x’s, but on the other hand I quite like their unexpected diagrammatic, star constellation effect, something I could use sometime, maybe.

Second, on the right side of the top photo – definitely one to repeat in several ways:

• the link to the watercolourist’s website includes lines in the composition which could be represented with stem stitch or couched lines
• strong plain coloured shapes could have this kind of halo placed over them and stitched with this or other textures
• on a very large scale, the ‘halo’ itself could have cut or burned holes in it …