Posts Tagged ‘samples’

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An Art Quilt In Wool

Friday, January 10th, 2025

I’ve been making samples this week in preparation of putting my ideas into an art quilt using wool for the ArtQuiltAustralia 25 call – if I enter two, one must be wool with at least 60% of the surface showing on both front and back being wool.

Later today I’m visiting fabric store that’s new-to-me, and their location, website and prices suggest it is possibly a bit outlet-ish, which would be great. I’m looking for wool, and they have some 100% at about US10/m which sounds reasonable. They also have listed some black cotton which I’d give my right arm for at the moment, but might only have to give about $3/m. Quality’s not really relevant for what I plan to do with it 🙂 It sounds like the kind of place that might have a remnants table…. and they have haberdashery / merceria. I am always on the lookout for the large but fine needles I prefer to use surface stitching and hand quilting, or stitching in combination with machine stitch.

This morning I came across this image, made for a teaching gig a few years ago. I keep a file of the grid/blanks squares on my computer to print off and pencil ideas into sometimes, though I do tend to go back to my favourites, and there are some old friends here. My regular readers know how I love grid-like layouts and how many of my designs feature lines and defining those layouts, or dividing the whole into parts.

Simple but potentially striking patterns formed by solid lines, dots and dashes and fillings.
The little hand stitched square (top right)might not feature in this one, but I love the potential of this favourite S.D. element in metallic finish polyester.

Making samples can teach more than just what a chosen technique and colours will look like. From handling just this one sample, I now know that (1) I’m open to ditching the metallic and using another fabric to show behind the top wool layer (2) Whatever fabric shows through those holes, it really needs to be a complete layer between the front and the back as in reverse applique, the finest examples of which are the molas of the Kuna people of San Blas Is., off the coasts of Panama and Colombia.

Wool? Rayon? or both?

Though the metallic fabric is pewter finish, it looks gold here, and both the wool thread and the rayon thread actually tone well; but in keeping with the look I want to convey, the wool might come out as the preferred thread. It partly depends on what I find in this shop later today.

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Very Small Pieces, 14

Sunday, November 7th, 2021

I expect this will be the last post on this little series, as I’ve now finished and posted the last few samples of the 100day challenge that ends in three days’ time, on Nov. 10th. I made them all the same size, mounted most of them over 3.25sq.in squares of foam core, lacing them as shown in this photo –

Two 3.25sq.in samples, one showing mounted fabric laced at the back.

There are a few set in or on heavy duty clear plastic, so l now have what might be described as a set of 100 mis-matched drink coasters. However, they sit nicely in several re-purposed handy see-through plastic containers which contained certain foods from our supermarket.

Stencilled squares, cretan stitch. 3.25sq.in
Leather arcs, hand appliqued in orange neon thread. 3.25sq.in
Fused silk organza, hand stitched with gold metallic thread. 3.25sq.in
Stencilled squares, hand stitched with gold metallic thread. 3.25sq.in

Most of the other participants in the challenge are nearing the end of a quilt or other project they’ve been making in this time; several have made a few small projects, one or two have approached and practiced fabric dyeing methods, and there are a few who’ve used their time to sharpen up drawing and photography skills. Several times in the last 3 months I’ve been asked by someone what I am going to make out of all these little pieces? Each time, I’ve answered that in effect I’m not making any ‘thing’, explaining that I always intended these little pieces to be a set of exploratory samples of materials and techniques, a more orderly approach than I have had to sample making in the past. (and which it would be a good idea to maintain, too) I found as time went on that they also reflected my developing interest in several design motifs for textures and larger features of a couple of new works I now feel very keen to start. This combination learning and planning project may in time have an additional bonus – if I ever have another in person workshop teaching opportunity, at least some of them will be handy to take along for reference and inspiration.

I’ve been excited by some of the results, and others have shown that they are, at least for the moment, not something I want to pursue further. Because these samples are not meant to go together, I won’t even try to take a photo of all 100 of them; but if you’d like to see more of them, go to my Instagram page

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Pandemic Pattern 3 – Auditioning Colour And Stitch

Thursday, December 31st, 2020

The pandemic pattern on my mind at the moment is that miniscule unit of the highly infectious corona virus that emerged in China late last year, swept through Earth’s human population and turned our normal lives upside down. Everyone has already experienced at least some effect of inconvenience and anxiety, and the illness itself is causing pain, death and sorrow. The majority of patients recover, but some of those people are left with residual physical and/or neurological effects.

Thanks to the wonders of electron microscopy we’re all too familiar with what the virus looks like. The particles of virus are not molecules or cells but virions, represented everywhere as a round thing with spiky bits. I have always intended to represent this PP in some shocking colours to convey the severity of its threat.

Colour+black is always dramatic. I love colour on grey, too, but the effect is softer.

Thinking about colour and the virus, I googled and found my way to an interesting article on how the colour in those graphic images is completely due to artistic licence.  Electron microscope images of the virus are seen in shades of grey only, as the virions’ particle size is many times smaller than what can be affected by light waves to appear coloured. Adding colour to the images draws our attention, making them more scary, so my instinct to use flourescent and bright colours for drama was spot on.

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Auditioning From The Scrap Bag

Monday, August 3rd, 2020

I’m starting a new larger piece, aiming to submit to Quilt National. Entries have been open for months, but I’ve only just focused in the past few days. Most of the times I have been selected for QN, I’ve made my entries in the last few weeks before closing, so I’m more or less on my accustomed schedule 😉 With the book club and my mahjong group in recess for the duration, there’s little social activity to interfere with it !!

Auditioning from the scrap bag

Late last week I began dabbling with samples and fabrics, but for one reason and another, none of these urged me to continue in this vein.

Left – strips of pieced stripes; Upper right: what can I say; Lower right: segments oversewn with (a) cream and (b) flourescent red – too much wrong with this idea.

At first I thought cream background with cream thread would be great … but the result is quite blah, though it took me 3 different samples to be convinced. I do think that would look lovely in greys or gentle sunset/sunrise colours, even though ‘soft colours’ aren’t my thing. Never say never. Slices of pieced strips aren’t ‘it’ this time, either, though I sewed one piece with cream, another with gold and the third with light silver/gold. Metallic threads definitely need a dark background to literally shine. Finally, the upper right hand sample needs more experimenting: there’s no drama, although there could be, and this idea needs more work, which would take time I don’t have.

Late on Sunday afternoon, I found some marvellous overdyed fabric that I thought a whole lot of red and purple/darkish shapes would look great on. I assembled the reds, called it a day and was all set to start stitching today. But in the shower early this morning, a different image came to mind; one with serious meaning and an apt title. The result was I felt I had to totally change my fabric ideas again, for the third time. I think this might be the first time I have ever had a title for a quilt before the quilt is actually under way.

The fact that I found some fabric I’d completely forgotten about, and by sheer fortune had a reel of matching thread, convinced me I had done the right thing by changing the fabrics/thread combo yet again. It took several hours to put the previous lots of fabric away, and then turn out the scrap bag to pull pieces of the things I now needed: hand dyed fabrics in warm earthy colours, with no commercial prints and, interestingly, no commercial plains this time- they just won’t work, even though I normally mix them all. However, I found lots of scraps of hand dyed fabrics plus some yardage of several colours, so now I have plenty of ironed fabrics gathered ready to do a sort of mosaic type of design using the oversewn technique that I’ve recently found so agreeable.

This quilt has a dark theme, one to do with this dreadful pandemic, so there will be no clear bright colours, and nothing with any white in the fabric. It’s not that I’ve become stricken with depression or anything, it just wouldn’t be appropriate, given the title and imagery.

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Continuing Miniature Landscapes

Monday, March 2nd, 2020

My work always references landscape in the process of change, and the landscape of much of my native Australia has recently suffered the onslaught of ravaging bushfires. I have some things to say, which have begun to appear in my recent work.

My next work will incorporate miniature landscapes, following on from those about which I recently posted, https://www.alisonschwabe.com/weblog/?p=5480

Miniature landscape samples c. 2014.

A few years ago I was thinking about these again, took photos of course, but for various reasons I was sidetracked from this idea. The 2014 samples (above) were very quick, totally improvisational, and worked directly from the scrap bag! as there is no ‘pattern’ for this kind of thing. Without being backed (stabilised) they were pinned onto the fabric and sewn down, so are not very robust samples. I think of them as sketches, and therefore very important, as a little fabric piece is the most powerful aide memoire of all. So then we come to this week’s samples:

Mini landscape samples, March 2020. 6-7cm longest measurement.

From these three the following notes are important to me:

  • On the left, the black backing (with misty fuse showing) has yet to be trimmed away like the other two.
  • Considering the size, it seems unnecessary to form the more distant landscape elements of miniature patchwork – see the difference in the 2014 samples. At this size, simplify to clarify.
  • The skies in the right pair are a bit too much for that scale of landscape, perhaps even not abstract enough. I realise I prefer a simpler, plainer neutral sky, not necessarily blue, either, just ‘light’.
  • Foregrounds – I will need to be much more selective of the fabric here: the middle one in particular is far too big a print for that role.
  • My next move must be to go through my scrap bags again, selecting only plains, subtle textures, hand dyeds and hand dyed look alikes in Australian landscape colours, and light coloured neutrals.
  • This means most of what is already out on my table can be bagged up and put away out of sight, less overwhelming.
  • These take very little fabric.
  • Consider gold, silver, pewter, black or red for the ‘framing’ of these pieces …

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