Working intuitively / making it up as I go along ....

With little happening on the house move front I’ve been able to focus on making art and preparing for a period without a studio. I’m focusing on my Shoreline series and my goal for the month of August was to print 20 - 30 metres of fabric and to get two new pieces through the composition and construction process. We’re likely to be spending months in some form of temporary housing without a space to print in and without my big bench and big design wall that are a very necessary part of making my large abstract quilts. At best I’ll have a dining table to put my sewing machine on and the floor to roll / fold my work as I machine quilt my pieces.

The first two pieces in the Shoreline series used breakdown printed fabrics where I drew straight lines of thickened dye on the back of my screens then used the end of a paint brush to zig-zag through the lines distressing them but still keeping a hint of a linear mark. This time I wanted to create fabrics that were more chaotic so I drew swirly whirly patterns on the back of my screens then distressed them by using the end of a paint brush in a swirly whirly pattern …. I know what I mean!

I then printed the screens using clear print paste to transfer dye from screen to cloth. I wanted to create fabrics in a range of values which I did by controlling how many layers I printed. One layer gave very pale fabric, three layers gave much darked value fabrics. As each of my printed fabrics become touch dry I pinned them on my design wall. And made more screens and printed more fabric until I was happy with the collection of fabrics. Some of them looked a bit ugly as whole cloth but I have learnt to trust my process as chopping fabrics up can make ugly fabrics usable.

I never start with an idea of what the finished piece will look like instead I work intuitively. I respond to what is in front of me and adjust my work as I strive to create something that feels ‘right’.

As I was printing the fabrics I thought I would see what would happen if I moved away from my usual precisely pieced rectangles and strips. Would ‘improv’ type piecing work. So once my fabrics had been rinsed and washed I cut some pieces down into irregular strips using a rotary cutter without a ruler. Piecing them together was a bit fiddly ….. and, as I quickly realised, a complete waste of time. The subtle curves were completely lost amongst the busy marks on the printed fabric. And felt too alien, definitely not ‘right’ …. I really am a straight line kind of person.

So I cut irregular rectanges with straight edges. I sewed them together then cut the pieced fabrics into a strips which I then pinned to my design wall. I used my usual random picking process but aimed to have the bluest fabrics at the top and brownest fabrics at the bottom with the light value area weighted towards the bottom (detail photo above).

I used a stitch and flip technique to sew all these vertical strips to my wadding and backing fabric. As per usual I drew parallel lines on my wadding to make sure everything was accurately lined up. And then left the quilt on my design wall whilst I got on with something else.

And today I am thinking that I will quilt sections of the quilt using narrow parallel lines and a heavy weight thread, stitching at an angle. I’ve used masking tape to outline these areas guided by the edges of the pieced fabrics. I think that I’ll quilt the rest of the quilt using a finer thread and parallel horizontal lines. But I might change my mind. I might also chop the quilt down after quilting to get the ‘right’ proportions. I really do make it up as I go along!

(I’ve also printed 16 metres of fabric using an embedded object (sticks) breakdown method. The fabric is in the washing machine as I type. Haven’t started the second quilt. Very annoyed to not have got more done but was diagnosed with Lyme disease at the beginning of August. You could say that I’m ticked off. Still on the mend so looking forward to more hours in the studio over the next couple of weeks).