A few days ago I cut a stencil from the several metres 180cm wide piece of neon orange nylon I have, and used white to print on a piece of faded black:

I intend to add ‘something’ and work it up into a 40sq.cm piece, which is a nice size for the smaller works I’m currently interested in making. At the same time, I hand painted some squares of gold paint onto another piece of black – a slightly disappointing outcome, but who knows what might come from it, and painted some gold squares onto some plain light grey:

I am thinking of quilted or mixed media textile works, and possibly one might be useful as a base in the upcoming Stitch Club workshop with Jessica Grady over this week and next. From what I can see of her work, at first glance most of them look like exciting party platters – lots of brightly coloured bits of stuff – but her work is compiled of lots of material embellishments made from various selected and discarded materials, reminding me somewhat of the more formally arranged mandalas of Susan Lenz who both retrieves discarded objects and at times actively breaks down into component parts something complicated like a piano, in which there are so many repeat parts. I haven’t watched Jessica’s tutorial video yet, but I do know we’re going to be making our own embellishments and can already see that has a lot of potential… for now, or sometime.

Before I tackle that workshop, though, I want to finish the 40cm piece I’m currently working on. I fused lemon citrus coloured shapes onto light grey, hand stitched the edges with some of the neon-lemon-green thread (of which I still have about 1400m) layered it, finely hand quilted around each of those shapes with toning grey, and am currently auditioning how I’m going to quilt cross the grey areas:

Another of my quilts is going somewhere I’ve never been, and I’m pleased to announce that “Pandemic Pattern” is one of five works chosen from the Quilt National 21 collection to be displayed at this year’s Modern Quilt Guild show, QuiltCon, at the Phoenix Convention Centre from February 16^th – 20^th (full information https://www.quiltcon.com/about-quiltcon/ )  

The Quilt National booth is #214, so if you’re going to that event, do stop by and hi to the Dairy Barn people there; give “Pandemic Pattern” a smile, and, if you can get away with it, a gentle pat with love from me. 

In October this year, “Pandemic Pattern” will be on exhibition at the San Jose Museum of Quilts and Textiles, October 16, 2022 – January 8, 2023. I’ll mention this again, obviously, closer to that time.