Another Recycle Quilt

A time for experimentation and challenge of not having nice tidy edges something I still find difficult from years of stitching in the traditional, “approved” manner. All the components in this quilt are recycled. The background is strips of old jeans woven together and later free machine quilted to help hold the weaving in place and to add texture and contrast. The doiley is a foil for the printed image on a foil coffee packet - a process I was playing around with at this time. The black and red windmills are actually large buttons from an old coat that have been embroidered through with red embroidery thread. The burgundy vertical is an old satin table napkin stitched with a koru design for renewal and the two diamonds consist of sweet papers sandwiched with decorative threads between organza.

This piece was made shortly after the Christchurch earthquakes and was a considered phase of renewal and letting go of the old but not ignoring the past. The colonial cottage in the foil print reminds us that our forebears lived simply and economically in cabin like accommodation with hard physical work and resilience part of normal life. This would be a theme i would revisit at later stages also.

The whole of tis small quilt hangs from a broken bough - broken but given new status as a support for the wall hanging. It is not a “pretty” quilt but there are layers of meaning within its construction.

The Gingko Are Falling

I like to push processes and mediums to the nth degree. This little quilt began as an experiment in dying teabags (blue) with procion dyes. They blew away a couple of times when I was trying to dye them but eventually I got there. Once the teabags were dyed and laminated to a background substrate, I over printed them using a gingko stencil and black ink.

The gingko leaves are real autumn gingko leaves sandwiched and stitched between two layers of white tulle (net) and then applied in a random manner. It never ceases to amaze me how well leaves treated in the manner hold their colour and substance. Finally I free machine quilted the piece using a white thread and a random stipple patter, making sure I outlined the stencilled leaves and the applied leaves and only quilting in the negative areas.

The vibrancy of the golden gingko leaves against the blue background is especially pleasing.

Covid angel wings

And then came Covid. We were in lock down for several months and businesses struggled and many people found the enforced confinement difficult to deal with. It changed the world and how it works forever. For me it became a glorious treasure trove as many of the textile artists I admired were forced to provide on line courses to create an income so artist who I might never have had the opportunity to study with became so accessible right here at my computer. And even after lock down the ability to learn textile art on line has continued to be a treasure trove of ideas

So what about this little quilt. This was an experimental quilt from a tutorial of Merrill Comeau. Merrill works on large installations and to reduce the weight she uses net as the substrate for her work. This piece is assembled and sitiched on net.

At the top of the quilt is a mask and latex gloves - all so familiar in those early days of lockdown. They are perched on top of some angora paper that I made. This “Paper” is not perfect it has holes in it to represent those who fell through the gaps - My husband’s mate was one. He didn’t die of Covid but from not getting medical attention in time for a secondary infection following a bout of pneumonia. We all had our bubbles of restricted contact and Owen was outside of ours. He was a bachelor and lived alone and by the time I broke the rules and took him to emergency the infection was too strong for his constitution. I was in trouble for breaking the rules but as I said to the medical people “was I supposed to let him die in his house alone?

The bulk of the angel wings are used teas bags (we drank a lot of tea during lockdown) sandwiched between layers of net and free machined in a figure of eight design using variegated thread.

The Japanese anemones were flowering at the time and provided a ray of hope at the bottom of the garden when I looked out the window. In fact the leaves are actual anemone leaves stitched between layers of black tulle. The flowers are made from parts of an old shirt. These flowers are symbolic of hope so they seemed appropriate to add as a focal point.

The whole is extremely light and was an interesting and different treatment of substrate.

Kahawai Run

This long runner quilt began its life as a piece of eco dyed fabric that was too wet in the steamer so the leaf imprints became blobs of colour instead of printed leaf shapes. I never throw these “disasters” away because they can often be reinvented in another manner. Such was this case in point.

The fish, again a precursor to the Reef quilt , were printed using the gyotaku, Japanese method. A kahawai fish was applied with grades of light acrylic paint and then the fabric was wrapped over the fish. The fish was kept stable by “inserting “ it into a roughly shaped piece of foam. The fish imprint was transferred to the fabric. Each print can be slightly different according to the colour of the paint used. The outlines of the fish, their eyes, tails and fins were enhanced with machine stitching and the background free machine quilted with a random stipple stitch. In printing yhe fish I have tried to slightly overlap and have some fish swimming into and out of the picture to make it more like a kahawai run. Kahawai are a common fish off the New Zealand coast and delicious smoked but it is always difficult to get a smallish one from my husband for art work so, in the past I have purchased a small one whole from the supermarket. I have tried mullet as well but the shape and definition of the kahawai make them an excellent choice for this type of printing. When I had finished painting, the fish was consigned to my vegetable garden as fish fertiliser as I did not want to eat the fish after it may have absorbed some portions of paint.

I have sold several individual fish prints done in this manner, framed for wall art.

Save Our Fisheries

The fish in this little quilt were the fore runner to the reef fish in yesterday’s post. For their silver anniversary, Aotearoa Quilts called for quilts in a specific size octagon in predominantly silver colours. My husband is a keen recreational fisherman and he has major concerns about the trawler catches off the coast netting all sizes of fish and hauling them in. This little quilt portrays the random fish caught in a Seine net being hauled into the surface and references that concern and the need to protect our fisheries for the next generation.

The fish were created individually using silver fabric and white organza. they are slightly padded and their fins are elongated sequins. They are trapped between a white net fabric and the silver substrate. The outline of the net is a silver cord that comes together at the top. so this quilt is both decorative and has a social message

The substrate was made separately from coffee bag liners with textured yarns sandwiched between white organza and the coffee bag liners. This was free machine quilted in a figure of eight pattern before the hexagon was cut out.

The idea of the hexagons was so that all the different mini quilts could be displayed as a unit. The display was quite amazing with different people’s ideas harmoniously brought together by the colour pallette.

The Reef - Hoffman 2021

Quite a fun shape for this one. It was longer but I had to fold over the top to keep within the 1 metre limit. The challenge fabric is the fungus print which I have reinterpreted as growth on the tocks of the reef.

The bakground was hand painted before beginning and is actually brighter than this photo suggests. The large fish were created using gyotaku, a Japanese printing method where the fabric is printed off actual fish. This is a traditional method that Japanese fishermen used to measure the size of the fish they caught. The fish are gutted and dried and the openings stiuffed with kitchen towel before beginning. Amazingly there is no fishy smell to the prints - probably the acrylic paint takes care of that. The eyes and gills were further embellish with stitch. These images were cut out and appliqued on. The small reef fish were made using shiny fabric embedded in organza so the fins and tails are semi transparent. They are lightly stuffed to sit out from the quilt.

If you look carefully on the rocks you will see some beaded sea anemones dangling down. And the background weeds are textured yarn.

The whole quilt is free machine quilted in a wavy horizontal manner to repicate the movement of water. This quilt travelled with the collection for the year

Tuatara Tropicana

The Hoffman 2019 fabric was multicoloured oranges and lemons on a white background. This was my submission for that year.

Turning some of those edges was not easy but it was awarded best modern quilt at the Quilt Symposium in Auckland. I don’t do these challenges for the awards but for the stimulus of the challenge and working within the parameters of the competition. I do have to say that this quilt came together very easily and I was very pleased with the result. I start with the outline drawn onto a cotton substrate and then begin the collage process. Once all the fabric is in place, I free machine the edges and then go over the whole with free machine quilting. In this case I have used a small figure of eight pattern to replicate the scales on the tuatara - a survivor from an earlier age.

A Beginning to Collage Quilts

I guess with a new technique you have to start somewhere. With fabric collage, I started with an online course with Susan Carlson. it was all about using multiple colours in very different fabrics to achieve this result. It is not one of my best quilts but i did learn a lot and when I look at it now with fresh eyes I find the colourways interesting. The palette of the spiral moves from black to green but there is no blue fabric in the piece - maybe I needed to coil in further to lead the eye from green to blue. A lot of the lighter background fabrics and from my own printing whereas the spiral fabrics are mainly scraps of commercial prints. I do note I used a lot of African and native prints. I collected quite a few of these over the years but haven’t really used them in my work. I love the African Savannahs but am more drawn to take from my New Zealand heritage in most of my work - that and my travel dialogues. Maybe one day I will get to Kenya and see the savannahs for myself.

The koru form is all about growth and unfurling so as a subject for where I was at at this time it was probably appropriate. Susan glue tacks he fabrics initially and I have modified that system to better suit my own needs. Over the next little while i will show some more of my collage quilts and where they lead

Tea or Coffee, Jane

A colleague I worked with was interested in my use of recycled materials. At Christmas she gave me some little stencils with NZ themes. I decided to use these to create a quilt in standard blocks using teabags as the substrate. The used teabags were laminated onto a cotton base and then the stencils were applied using black ink. Each block was free machine quilted with a figure of eight pattern. Some additional stitching was added to enhance the images. For example around the wings of the birds and between the fronds of the foliage. The pieces were squared up.

For the sashing I used the inner foil coffee bags joined in strips with textured yarn and an overlay of black organza. This was also free machine stitched in a figure of eight pattern. The blocks and sashings were joined in the traditional way and the quilt was finished using a facing technique.

Jane had given me the stencils and the quilt included coffee packets and tea bags so i called the quilt “Tea or Coffe Jane”.