Procrastination - a symptom of stress?

So the committee work came to an end late last year, just as the day job workload shot through the roof!  Talk about timing.  After being on our branch committee and chairing the national committee, I was ready to get back to making - after all I have 18 quilt tops to baste and quilt, projects to make for family and close friends and my mum wants two more cushions and another quilt.  When I counted up all the WIP's, UFO's I was at 48, which is nuts! 

So overloaded, I had to have a regroup on all fronts.  I normally just plough on through, say yes no problem to everyone and think about the stress when it's over.  This time though, I needed to press pause, centre myself, say no twice and engage the thinking brain.  So there was prioritising everywhere: family, work, health and the house.   I found a you tube video by Mel Robbins who said procrastination is a symptom of stress. Figure out what you are stressed about to get moving again. 

The Endeavourers May Challenge "Raindrops keep falling on my head"

Somehow, making lots of lists, to do's and prioritising healthful things like de-cluttering the house room by room, buying a new desk and storage for all my lovely fabric and ticking things off as done, pulled my distracted, overloaded brain, back into some semblance of starting to feel like myself again.  The creative brain will want to be fed though, so while I was resetting to centre, I did give a workshop and signed up for a few,  and I had a blast! 

It was joyful play and a great boost to bring me back to my making self!  Spending a day away from it all, with people united by a love of colour and creating crafty projects, good company and good fun is a real treat we all need from time to time!

I started this post in April and now it's August go figure.  So I will have lots to share in the coming posts recapping the year that was in it so far and all the quilty UFO's to be completed in the months ahead.  For now my most recent make is over on the Endeavourers blog.  Our Quarterly challenge is a themed challenge and this time we are sharing makes on "A Walk in the Park".

To read about my fabric dyed, free motion quilted Rose please visit here and to see more from all who participated please visit the Endeavourers home page here.

The Endeavourers August Challenge "A Walk in the Park"

Endeavourers Texture Challenge - Doodle Quilting using the Slate 2 by ISKN

Remember the big trend in adult colouring books?  I have always been drawn to these books, loving the complexity of pattern created with simple lines.  Some of those lines would make amazing quilt patterns.  As soon as I saw the Endeavourer's challenge for February was Texture, I knew I wanted to play with this idea and see what happened.  The idea of using this type of doodle quilting to create texture appealed to me.

For one of my Pictorial Ticker Tape workshops I was asked for a cow so I drew this one on the iPad and thought it would be fun to fill in with pattern.    I got a Slate 2 tablet for Christmas and it allows you to draw on the tablet with a special pen and the image appears on the app as you draw. 

The drawing area is A5 in size and uses magnets to track the pen or pencil across the page.  It doesn't have pressure sensitivity and the app doesn't have a lot of features but it is fun to use, easy to use and it saves all the lines you make and replays it back to you.  I had a lot of fun with this and loved the little video it made of the drawing which you can export as an MP4.  I thinks this will be a brilliant way to play with Free Motion Quilting.

So here is what she looks like after quilting.  I'm calling her Molly and I think she is going to be a cushion or maybe a tote bag.  Not sure yet. 

What do you think?  Think it would be fun to have videos of your quilt warm up?  If you want to see more of Molly in the making or the projects the rest of the group have made please pop over to the Endeavourer's blog here.

The Endeavourers Challenge: Spiral

It's reveal day on the Endeavourer's blog, the results of our latest challenge: Spiral.  I've written about the ideas I had and rejected, and why I chose the one I made for my project over there, so pop over to have a read if you like.  In this blog post, I thought I'd talk about the way I made my piece and some of the construction issues I had!

Didn't make this one but will for myself some day!  The first lines of some of my favourite books!

I had an idea of a quilt in two halves inspired by a Jonathon Haidt TED Talk about what liberals and conservatives and concerned with.  I decided a yin/yang style spiral could be fun, as both are needed to balance the world, but elongated it as the extremes in politics we see from both left and right can cause more harm than good and a circular yin/yang felt wrong. 

My paper pattern blown up to use as a template for cutting my spirals.

I chose shot cottons as I've had these on hand for ages and in a variety of subtle colours that I thought would work well together for an improv background.

I should have starched the living daylights out of them as there is a bit of give in them and improv cutting exposing bias gave me a few problems in getting a flat and square finished quilt.  Lesson learned!

I used freezer paper to make my spiral shapes and pressed carefully to keep flat.  It didn't quite have the impact I was going for and blended a bit too much.

So I thought outlining in white bias tape might give a bit of pop!

I added a cream centre, to represent people coming into the wold as knowing nothing and gravitating to a political position, with time and experience.  Most of us are in the centre with some moving along the arms of left and right!

In the background of the arms I quilted loops.

Spirals in the centre pieces, including a Celtic tri-spiral!

And text in the background to represent the values conservatives and liberals have like Fairness, Equality, Authority, Purity, In-Group/Community and I also added in the names we call each other like Snowflake and all things *ist.

Because of all the bias, what I thought I had trimmed square became a little wonky when bound. 

I entered it for the Irish Quilter's Showcase and it was shown in the Limerick School of Art and Design by Paula Rafferty last month.  Thanks to Paula for accepting my piece and showing a great collection of quilts on the theme of "Culture".

It was a challenge in the making as well as in the thinking and I am very glad to have tried it and pushed my skill levels a bit.  I would have liked a neater finish but in the concept, I am happy with it.  I called it "Snowflake, who me?"  I'm eager now to see what everyone else has made on the Endeavourer's blog!

Change - upcycling a lampshade with embroidery!

This month, the Endeavourer's challenge is Change or Transformation.  I've had that kicking around in the back of my head these past weeks so, when mum was throwing out some old lampshades,  I thought hang on, I'll have a go at upcycling them. 

I snipped the threads holding the pleats together and did my best to iron them flat - quite tricky ironing a curved surface!

I spent quite a bit of time doodling flowers, somehow my doodles are always with quilting in mind so as many continuous lines as possible and a 2D flat surface is always the result.  I eventually settled on a big bloom with some leaves and a fancy centre.

I used a blue water erasable marker to trace around the outside and redraw my design on the lampshade.

I was torn between colour families and settled on the warmer grouping though I think the bright pink I would change if I was making again.  The stitches are herringbone for the leaves, chain stitch for the lines and french knots for the dots.

There was a problem with bleeding of the blue marker even though I thoroughly wet the lampshade 3 times.  One of my work colleagues advised me to try green fairy liquid - swears by it for its stain removing qualities (the shade was a bit grubby in places too so I thought why not?)

It worked a treat! 

I let it to dry in the windowsill and and now I know the blue marks are gone and this can actually be used I'm going to add a little bit of vine stem to it too to lessen all that white.

So this was the inspiration for the make I eventually did for the challenge - a quilted cushion.

To read more about the cushion or the Endeavourer's challenge please visit the blog page here.  My project was a small one this time around as I got quite distracted drawing flowers, making paper flower, framing cut paperwork and adding wallpaper to our hall underneath the dogs hall of fame!  Procrafternation at its best!

The Endeavourers Challenge - Nature

Last year, I answered a call for quilters who wanted to take part in quarterly challenges and push themselves to try new things.  The idea was to have some fun, learning and playing with fabric together, through themes randomly chosen.  I was delighted to see names of quilty friends and those new to me on the groups blog page : The Endeavourers.  There are 14 of us taking part and encouraging each other in our explorations. 

Today is the reveal day for our first challenge: Nature.

I am very happy to share my quilt idea, 'Making Waves'.  Mine is a top only at this stage and not a finished piece which it should be.  As my back issue, though settling and improving, had a bit of set back a few weeks ago and sitting is still no fun at all, I haven't been able to sit at a sewing machine.

The Irish Patchwork Society (IPS) national exhibition theme is Making Waves and this has been on my mind so with a theme of nature and my love of the west coast of Clare, part of the Wild Atlantic Way,  I guess it had to be a wave! To read more about the inspiration and influences behind the idea for this wave, please visit The Endeavourers blog.

I thought here I'd talk a bit about how I made it, in case you were inspired to break out the bondaweb and a big bucket of scraps!

I made this sketch to work from as a pattern, fiddled with it for ages, even though it is a simple enough shape.  I printed it on A4 and taped it all together and then thought now what?  My friend Louise asked if I had seen Shannon Brinkley's collage quilts using animals and cityscapes, so remembering her bear quilt, I looked her up and her website here where she offers an online course and patterns to buy.  I didn't use Shannon's process as I hadn't the materials she recommends but I was inspired by her bear pattern to make the quilt as a collage, and knew I wanted a strong line for the wave and not a broken one with overlapping collage pieces.  I highly recommend Shannon's process as she has multiple ways of finishing the edges and using different types of collage pieces to build up your design.  If you take her course you get to choose a pattern available from her shop so worth having a look!

I had previously made an art collage quilt before, of a boat on the river Shannon, for our branch's Local Landscapes exhibition.  I wanted to try something different for my wave and this feels a little more grown up for some reason.  I think it might be the fabrics; less contrasting colour and more blended maybe?  

I pulled a lot of aquas, turquoises, teals and blues and in the end used mostly scraps and very little from the fabric pull.  Still, creating that palette helped me select from my scrap basket (yes this is all the scraps I have!).

I wanted some strong clean curves in the piece even though it was going to be made of scraps and many pieces of fabrics, so I remembered my quilt friend Paula Rafferty telling me about drawing directly onto fusible bondaweb and not the paper at the back.  This means no faffing about with reversing patterns and I could stick pieces directly onto the fusible paper.  A pencil was no good as it's hard edge caught the bondaweb but an embroidery transfer pen was perfect and glided over the fusible smoothly.

I traced the whole pattern and then some of the smaller elements separately.  I used some parchment paper between the pattern and the iron to prevent my iron getting all gunky when fusing down the fabric.  I have a silicone A3 sheet for just this type of thing but I couldn't find it anywhere- it has to here somewhere in my kitchen/sewing room but no luck finding it when I needed it, so parchment paper it was!

The paper stuck to the fusible around the pieces and instead of pulling it apart which might dislodge the fabric pieces,  I simply cut around the shape I wanted and the parchment under the fabric just fell away. There are loose spots where the pieces overlap but I'll be quilting it all down at some stage so I am not worried about raw edges or un-fused pieces.  This little wave is not intended for washing!



Then using some photographs of real waves from a google search as inspiration for fabric placement, I built up the collage keeping the lightest sections at the top left hand corner of the wave and adding my curved pieces where I liked.  I used some backing fabric as a cushion for the iron to press onto and kept on building.

Finally I had a finished wave.  Next decision: background fabric.  I tried patterned, solid baby blue for sky, black for high contrast,  and eventually settled on a graduated blue that seems to fit the highlights of the piece just right.

 

This is where I have gotten to as the next step involves basting and quilting and that means sitting at a sewing machine!  I do intend to face it when quilted so there will be no visible binding and hope it will look something like this. 

I always use the Silly Boo Dilly's tutorial for facing a quilt - it is a very well written tutorial and super handy to have when you don't want binding to show on the front.  So even though I didn't get her finished I certainly feel like I have lived up to the spirit of The Endeavourer's group challenge.  This was a great first theme and I am looking forward to seeing what nature themed projects are being revealed today.

If you want to see more from our group please visit the Endeavourer's blog and my fellow group members below:

Catherine - http://www.knottedcotton.com  
Janine – https://rainbowhare.com/
Nancy – http://www.patchworkbreeze.blogspot.com/
Carol – http://beadsandbirds.blogspot.com/
Barbara – https://theflashingscissors.blogspot.co.uk/
Ruth – http://benandcharlyscorner.blogspot.co.uk/
Gwen – https://textileranger.com/
Martha – www.weekenddoings.com
Julie – www.pinkdoxies.com
Maureen – https://josephinaballerina.com/
Tonia – http://allthingzsewn.blogspot.com
Kay – http://thecraftyyak.wordpress.com
Soma – http://www.whimsandfancies.com/
Fiona - http://celticthistlestitches.blogspot.co.uk/