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.