Today and Coming up

A variety of textiles happened today  - abstract design, coil pots, JQ's,
50 shades, strip piecing and lots of free maching. Good to see every one
and have a natter.

There are a couple of events happening at the end of  November involving
two of our group. Follow the links:
Cosgrove Village Hall - Jill Stillman
 http://www.popularpatchwork.com/events/default.asp?county=102

Ivinghoe Community Hub
http://alimesley.com/news/
and for more info
http://www.jennysmith-mconie.com/#!exhibitionsrepresentation/c20n5

December
A 'do your own thing' session.
Lunch - bring your own butties and something sweet to share.

January
Whole cloth mark making - a painting session.
Lunch - bring a main course to share and your own pud/cake!

November 10th meeting

There is a change to the planned session as the person who planned to lead it has to be at work!

This will be a "Sit and Stitch" session with whatever members are working on.

It's also the anniversary of our constitution and Associate Quilters Guild membership so we will review the document and pay our annual £5 fee to renew this membership.

Drawing to stitch

Draw - one word to strike terror into some.

But today we had some fun. We drew objects with our right hand,

left hand, without looking at the page and for one or two minutes. 

After a break for lunch we translated our

drawings into stitch using free machine stitching.

Drawing with the machine but not looking

at the fabric was another twist- a little scary but gave

 some great results.

Lots to think about............

Thank you for the biccies.........................
Hope you all got home safely.

Art work to book cover

Art work to book cover:

Monday 8th September 2014

This is a simple and quick method of finishing off a book cover without the bulky seams that some methods produce.

Should take around and hour to do.

This cover is for an A5 quilted book cover and you will need:-

A piece of quilted fabric 20” x 9.5” with or without backing but with thin wadding, be as decorative as you want to be according to your needs

2 strips of matching/contrasting fabric 10” x 2” to edge the ends

A piece of fabric for the lining 10” x 10”, this can be contrasting or matching.

There will be a small amount of trimming of edges so we will need a couple of cutting boards, long rulers and rotary cutters

Several biggish pins

Your sewing machine and the appropriate thread.

 

There will be a few basic A5 books for sale which are very suitable for this technique at a cost of £1.50 each.

If you have any book cover ideas that you would like to share please bring them along.

See you on Monday.................

 

50 shades - the results

Finishing ends, garment making, stitching strips and creating barge ware in fabric all happened today as well as 50 Shades Revisited.
The results of todays challenge:

 

 



The next challenge is to think about how to quilt pieces like this............

We also discussed what we'd like to do over the next few months:

August (3rd Monday not 2nd) - review of FOQ, bring judges comments if you have any; show and tell and quilt 50 shades; own work.

September (back to 2nd Monday) - art work to quick book cover.

October - drawing to free machine stitching.

November - painting.

December - own work.

See you all at FOQ................

Updated details for Mon 14th July

50 Shades – revisited! Monday 14^th July 2014

(aka ‘Design with intent’)

This exercise is to remind you about the basics of design with some random elements to take away your control.

The original idea to use shades of grey means that you do not have to think about colour but instead concentrate on design choices. It is your decision whether you choose shades of grey or a colour. It may depend on whether you have done this exercise before.

For this session you will need a split personality! You will be 3 people at the same time, therefore producing 3 pieces of work.

Requirements:

Fabrics: You will need to make a decision – grey or a colour….

Either GREY

3x 10”x18” in grey, a self patterned fabric (one for each of your personalities! But not too similar)

scraps/offcuts, variety is good – black/white, white/black, black/ grey, white/grey

accent colours – your choice, use the same accent colour or a different one for each personality

Or a COLOUR

3x 10”x18” in a colour, a self patterned fabric (one for each of your personalities!)

scraps/offcuts, variety is good – all with your colour as the main colour

accent colours – your choice, use the same accent colour or a different one for each personality

It may help to separate each personality’s fabric into a bag

and label 1, 2 and 3 before you start to prevent confusion.

Machine thread to work with your fabrics

Fusible of your choice

Sewing machine kit

Sewing Kit - rotary cutter and cutting mat, notebook

Protective sheet to use with fusible and iron

Iron and board

FYI: Elements and Principles of Design

Elements: the nuts and bolts used to create a design.

• line, texture, shape, scale/proportion, tone or value, colour.

Principals: are the rules to guide successful combining of elements.

• focal point, balance, symmetry/asymmetry, repetition, rhythm,

Fifty Shades - going a step further!

The next meeting of the group will be on Monday 14th July at Kislingbury Village Hall.

Following the successful session of Fifty Shades using greys and a zinger in groups we have decided to try the technique with a limited colour palette and for each of us to create three. Working on our own, making our own choices of fabrics and contrasts.

It has been suggested that we work with rectangles of approximately 8" x 15" and choose a range of colours to work in.

So........ We will need:

Sewing kit

Machine

Cutting mat, ruler and cutter

A selection of fabrics ( such as bluesy greens plus a zinger, yellows oranges and a purple etc)

The cards determining what to do each round will be provided .

Watch this space for an update of additional information in the week before the meeting.

Useful links

Had a good day today being 'hearty'.
Sorry no photos.

Just a couple of links you might find useful:

https://www.abakhan.co.uk/  
There are several shops in the north west. They sell fabric by weight as well as on the roll.
They also sell knitting yarn, card making and other craft supplies.
I bought a piece of linen, light to medium weight, it weighed  kilo and cost £11.90 and was about 3m in length. 

http://www.wovenmonkey.com/
A Derbyshire company that will print your designs onto fabric.
They will even print a fat quarter. Check out the prices and instructions.
The colours are perhaps a little dull so you may need to adjust your images to compensate. 
The turnaround is probably about 10 days.

Happy stitching!!!

Embellishments

Fabulous day led by Kath looking at techniques for making tassels, buttons, beads and more. Here are a few of the pieces made.

Monday - embellishment exploration day

Requirements list for Beads, tassels, cords, braids and ribbons Day

Please bring any or all of these depending on what you have to hand.

Bondaweb 

 Small beads 

Viscose embroidery threads, including variegated if you have any Thicker threads such as perle /wools

  Medium weight card and scalpel 

Sewing machine and feet including free machine embroidery foot 

Knitting needle or bodkin 

Glue stick 

Thin wire, if you have any 

Irons and extension leads, parchment paper or Teflon sheet 

Usual sewing kit

if you would rather continue with a project of your own, do bring that instead

There will also be an opportunity to add further layers to your Soy Wax pieces or start one if you missed out last time.

Soy wax pt. 2

One of our members has been continuing to layers up Soy Wax designs. Here is what has been achieved.

Soy Wax pieces

Olive and Ann led us through the Soy Wax process. Here are three finished sets of pieces:

By Kath

By Ann B

By Jill

Hope everyone will bring their completed pieces to the next meeting.

April meeting

Monday 14th April
This meeting will now be a bring your own work session. Our Soy Wax experimental workshop will be rearranged for a later date.

June Meeting

Our June meeting will be a making day towards the Quilters Guild Tombola at Festival of Quilts. The theme this year is HEARTS.
This can be anything with a heart on it it, using fabrics with printed hearts or heart shaped items.
Bring ideas, patterns, fabrics and trimmings plus your sewing kit.

March meeting

Our thanks to Debbie and Jill for a really good day on Monday. We were introduced to a design exercise devised by Jenni Dobson titled "Fifty Shades of Grey".

Armed with a selection of grey fabrics we each started with a rectangle of grey fabric and worked in groups of three or four.

Through four rounds of adding a shape and making a cut through all the fabrics we ended up creating these.

Four very different effects.

Our conclusions were that one needed to add larger shapes at the start; include multiple elements and more than one cut at some point.

Love your sewing machine

Happy Valentines Day ....... to your sewing machine!

Just a follow up to Monday, some links about cleaning your machine:

http://www.nobigdill.com/2012/06/friday-feet-clean-oil-your-sewing.html

http://www.makeit-loveit.com/2012/09/how-to-cleanoil-your-sewing-machine.html

http://amyscreativeside.com/2010/05/13/basics-tutorial-cleaning-a-sewing-machine/

Remember - clean before you oil.
Check in your instruction manual to find out if you need to oil.

Future meetings.

These are the plans for the next few months meetings. Members are free to choose to bring their own work to continue with or join an activity.

March:  A design workshop called  "50 shades" details of what to bring have been emailed out.

April:  Soy Wax technique workshop materials needed will be sent out in March.

May:  Exploring embellishments on our quilts.

Early warning that the August meeting will be on 18th August rather than the usual second Monday because of the FOQ.

February meeting

We had a great day yesterday. Working on our own projects and getting lots of tips and guidance from members on machine quilting. Thanks for the very generous sharing of ideas and techniques.