Do you remember last week, we were continuing with the indigo dyeing? You can imagine that by now, we’ve dyed quite a bit of yardage! It’s been rinsed, washed, pressed, and naturally, we’ve admired our favourites and given them a little stroke. The dyeing is huge fun, but the challenge now comes of what to do with all that fabric.
There’s only one thing for it – cut it up and sew it back together again! I’d overdyed all sorts of odd shaped offcuts so I took out my rotary cutter and ruler and cut them down to a standard size. I went for 7″ squares which made the most sense out of the pieces I’d got. My plan is to make a patchwork quilt. You know I love half-square triangles. That simple little unit has so much scope for interesting designs.
So I’ve stitched up most of my indigo fabrics together with plain white to make lots and lots of half square triangles. I’m using a quick method of piecing which produces eight units at once. Have you tried that? If you’d like a video tutorial on how to do that let me know!
The colours make me think of blue and white china so what else but… Broken Dishes! You’ll have to wait until next week to see how they are coming together. I’ll try and get it all sewn up to show you how it looks!
Meanwhile, Linda’s been busy in her studio too. She’s been working in her moth book, recording new finds and also adding more colour and detail to earlier pages. We have videos coming up soon on some exciting mixed media techniques that she’s been using, but for now here’s a little look at some of the pages…
Above: This is a decorated pocket holding photos of recent moth finds.
Above: Linda’s also doing some observational drawing. This one is simply done in pencil, but on a page textured with gesso.
Above: These moths have been stencilled with spray paints before details are added with pen.
New Video Workshop – Flight of Fancy
In this week’s workshop on DesignMatters, Linda’s showing her latest quilt Flight of Fancy. She’ll show you how she’s completed the quilt with machine and hand stitching. The quilting is just as important to us as any other part of the process and she’ll talk you through the design decisions that she made to try to help marry the stitch to the piecing and printing.
DMTV Members can view this video now, if you’re not a Member why not consider joining us? You can check out our free videos to give you a taste of what we offer and sign up for access to over 30 videos for just £12.
Thank you for reading our newsletter this week. We’ll be back again soon with more.
Love Linda and Laura xx