Greetings from Montevideo, from Alison Schwabe, Aussie quiltmaker

On my most recent visit to the sunday markets I found this table display of watch faces and empty watch cases - I wonder what happened to all the hands, though? Maybe those were what the stallholder had originally wanted and had no use for the rest of the stuff....

I'd have bought some if I could think of anything at all to do with them.... feel free to make some creative suggestions - I am sure he will be there again when we go in the next few weeks.

But these blank expressions of time having departed are a reminder of how much I still want to achieve, and have photographed, before my next trip away ...this past weekend we spent a couple of days with friends down in Punta del Este - divine weather, wine, seafood, lovely pool in garden/parkland setting - and although I took the current work (blogged in the previous post) now all layered and pinned, I didn't actually do a single stitch!!! But never mind, the company was good and the vinos excellent... but then having spent today meandering across the country on the way back, via a drill site to be checked by DH in the course of his work (and an hour's reading done out there) in effect tomorrow will need to be a serious quilting day. I think the quilting I have in mind, over the size it is, it could all be done in one day. I might even get to start cutting out the myriad of bits, small, I have in mind for the next, large, work. Not much leather punching this time - although its perhaps a pity to waste the callouses worked up in the course pf the prep work for the current one, though!

Labels: quilting, Time

Currently my quiltmaking continues exploration of the ground between traditional quiltmaking and my interest in lace and leather. Readers who have been following this leather thing since I began samplising over a year ago will have also seen various old lace samples I have put up at intervals over the period of the blog, and some intriguing pieces of handmade lace from various sources but especially my trip to Paraguay about a year back. Lace has two aspects - the textile stuff and the holes between the bits of thread, and I realise I have been very interested in the 'holes' bit for years - I have a lovely pair of silver earings, very modern with holes punched out, and a more recent gold pair of round-ish organic shapes, slightly concave, with holes of various sizes randomly punched out: all these things plus the challenges of a piece of leather set me off on a track where I recognise leather can look lacey. Laciness lightens up a solid shape....and lighter solid shapes can appear to float.

So now these roughly triangular shapes have been glued down, I will be doing a lot of hand sewing behind the scenes today, and may even get to the quilting stage. It is about 1m square, so not too overwhelming.

I haven't yet decided whether it is to be hand quilting or machine, but I am already planning the next quilt in this series. I want to make it very big with lots of little pieces on it ... mad or brave... but it's there and has to be done.

My client J has accepted my suggestions of colours, (blogged a few weeks back) selected the design and paid her deposit, so that will also be under way very soon.

Labels: lace textile, methodology, punched leather

New work is proceeding well, and I am finding that I can actually work on three (related) things at once.

The background is a commercial print containing touches of turquoise green and very dark purple/brown along with a whole range of tan shades deep and light.

I'm machine quilting this one, although I know hand stitch looks great with leather, I am interested in trying some other effects, and so doing so on this small piece, 1.25 m x 0.3m At first I though I would do an allover group of circles like pebbles (I first used this way back in 1994 in "Hannan's Reward" and really haven't much since) It is luscious especially in metallic, of which I had some suitable thread here, but somehow it seemed to overwhelm the natural quality of this particular leather, so going with this natural quality then, I felt that some plain minimal quilting would be right. Of course, once it is finished and has been exhibited somewhere I will put the picture of the whole quilt up, probably on the website. It may go into my July exhibition here in Montevideo.

Leather - yesterday wandering through the markets I visited The Leather Man as I call him, I don't know his name but will ask some time, and will certainly take him an invite to my exhibition. He has no idea what I do with the leather I buy from time to time. I have told him, but I think he has no concept really - and there is no spanish equivalent for 'quilt'. Anyway, he had some terrific stuff yesterday, several gold/bronze/coppery and pewter pieces, including some parts with wonderful imperfections I am sure I can enhance. I could have bought a whole hide of some beautiful brown with deeper brown splatters on it, he says it is natural but I think/feel has been paint splattered, not that I really know a lot about processing hides.... I settled for about 1.5m x 60cm, it only cost 600 pesos which is about US$22; it's soft and very shiny, and I'm thinking about it.

Labels: leather, new work 07, quilting

A beautiful day, not too hot, and a fresh breeze - perfect for a morning's stroll through some of the Tristan Navaja street markets this morning. The market goes on and on for many blocks, the best stalls occupying the whole length of Tristan Navaja, but it then spreads many blocks westwards of that street, into shall we say lower rent areas, for all stall holders pay a fee to the intendencia for this.


The lady in the mid blocks of Tristan Navaja who often has interesting household linens didn't seem to have much this morning, but just along from her was another stall I usually look carefully at, having found a couple of other treasures there previously. This morning my eyes lit on this vintage 30's neckpiece. Around what feels like a soft rope? core, is some kind of mesh fabric I think, possibly canvas, and ecru silk thread has been darned into this, covering any seam there might be - the flowers at first glance looked like lovely carved bone or ivory but they aren't - they are 'early plastic' the woman said - I can tell they have been set in a mould not carved. The flowers are sewn into place by hand, and these of course may may have been added later, perhaps in place of something else, but she was very firm that this from the 30's, and I must say I have never seen anything quite like it. It could have had a lovely silk flower on it... My mother and maternal grandmother were both pretty stylish, and Grandma had a couple of very elegant sisters - between them all they had heaps of modish jewellery and accessories. "In their day" it was a big thing to have your photo taken walking along the street, and they all did fairly often - I have seen a lot of these photos for the record so to speak, and the gals were always dressed to the nines complete with hats gloves and fox throws over their shoulders. And parties, too, or big nights out - they dressd up and often had photos taken. I have always taken a great interest in changing fashions of jewellery and accessories - but saw nothing quite like this in the family photos. Of course, little old Launceston Tasmania is and always has been, a long way from the fashion centres of London, Paris and other european cities. Which is where I feeeeel it might have come from - inexpensive but chic.

Since it was rather grubby, I have washed it, it has come up beautifully, and as I said, I am sure I will enjoy wearing it sometime.

Labels: 30's, antique, necklace, textiles

A few days ago on the quiltart list someone asked for technical information and tips regarding attaching human hair to a quilt. I am sure it is technically possible, and hair like mine, dead straight and fine would be infinitely harder to deal with than thick wavy , curly or frizzy hair; and damaged (colour processed, permed, bleached) far less difficult than slippery natural hair. But apart from struggling with unwilling or slippery human hair, alternatives include some very realistic doll making hair ; the quilter could hand drawn hair using a very fine permanent pen ... or why not take a photo, transfer it to fabric, and apply that to the quilt .... some very practical options, which I suggested. Someone else suggested containing the hair under a layer of tulle -quilted or sitched down, and that could be OK, too.

The real question for me is, WHY focus on just this one bit of realism ?

Now I don't do pictorial designs in my work but have admired some very fine art from people who do. And, I have noticed that these embroiderers, collage artists and quilters, especially those designing their own (perhaps personal story) quilts, will go to quite a bit of trouble to find fabrics with appropriate textures and colours for particular parts of their design; and some of the effects created with print fabric by both traditional and non-traditional quilt, collage and stitch artists can be quite incredible, giving the illusion of Reality and Life. They reflect the artist's vision through some exquisite fabric selections, and often attest to a very wide circle of quilter and dressmaker acquaintances or a very comprehensive stash of fabrics and scraps.... these are the 'paint' of such artists. (google the work of Edrica Huws of UK, or Margaret Cusack of USA with her cut fabric illustrations especially) and there are countless good examples in the major quilt and embroidery magazines.

My point is how far does any textile artist really need to go to present a semblance of realism? We expect to see it in certain other media - think photography, good quality portrait landcape and still life paintings, sculpture, television and movies, to name a few. Or think of it another way - no one would go so far as looking for ways to attach a real human face or other body parts to a quilt, would they? (Hmm, I wonder if Jeffrey Dahmer or his mates ever considered contemporary quilt making as an avenue of artistic expression.. yeah, a sick thought, I know.... I'm a murder mystery fan (books and tv) and enjoy the forensic trails the goodies follow.

These may sound pretty facetious remarks, but my point is, in a textile like a quilt, how far is it necessary to go to present a semblance of realism? The motivation might be to display something innovative that contributes to a general "Gee Whizz Factor" , and we hear it all the time at quilt shows or art quilt exhibitions : " How did they DO that?...Is that really HUMAN hair on that quilt?" People love something innovative and novel, and using real human hair on a quilt would do it. Sadly in the art quilt world today technical diversity, alacrity and the accompanying GWFR*are often mistaken for "Art".
The technical answers will be interesting because, with motivation other than presentation of Realism, there might come a time when I myself want to put hair on a quilt; the hair itself being a symbol of something on my mind at the time. But for realism, and considering the difficulties of obtaining and attaching real human hair to a quilt, I'd almost certainly fall back on a low tech straight stitch by hand (straight or stem) or machine, in a glossy thread.

* Gee Whizz Factor Rating, a new term coined today, abbr. GWFR - it's one of my pet peeve key concepts !

P.S. monday 19th february: just a bit of interesting serendipity !
I was reading my book "The Optimists" by Andrew Miller, over my first cup of tea, procrastinating about actually getting out of bed this morning; the first hints of Autumn crispness were in the air. Makes a pleasant change from suffocating humid heat. Anyway, reading along at the point where Clem, the main character was reading an essay his sister Clare had written, I came across the following passage:
"on Theodore Gericault...... a Romantic obsessed with giving to his work a shocking new realism. For the painting of a disaster at sea, a notorious shipwreck off the West African coast, he had sketched in hospitals, visited morgues, even smuggled body parts into his studio in the hope that this butcher's haul would infuse his painting with that quality of the authentic the first photographers, setting up their tripods in the Crimea and Gettysburg, would soon claim for their own." (my own emphasis)

Labels: applique, collage, GWFR, human hair, realism

Progress with quilting what I am now working on has been slow - first blogged on 13/8/06 and inturrupted by various things like travel, surgery, christmas visitors and so on. With DH away for a few days I am again working on it, but it's quite large, and closely hand quilted, and I keep asking myself why I do this stuff. I have been making good progress since listenging to a recorded version of Pride and Prejudice. I know the story and writing so well that I don't mind hearing the same disc over several times - which happens because there seem to be all kinds of interruptions. The plastic thimble thingy I normally have on the underside of the quilting as I go is not being much help - since the work is not mounted on any kind of frame, the thimble keeps coming off in the manoeuvrings of the quilt on the shiny table I'm doing it on. So the basic callous had to be worked up and now I have it I need to keep going.

I have just finished reading a marvellous Kate Grenville novel, "The Secret River". Being out of Aus much of the time I have somehow managed to not read her last two novels before this one, but they are top of my shopping list next time I go. There have been other good novels about the early days of colonial Aus written about real or imaginary characters who came out as convicts - e.g. "Morgan's Run" by Colleen McCullough, and Bryce Courtney's "The Potato Factory" come to mind instantly, and there are others of course. The story of convict Will Thornhill and his wife is fictional, but woven into what must have been experiences shared by many of his time. Many Australians today have little understanding of the feelings of those involved in this clash of cultures and its tragic results.

Labels: australian books, reading

This pic is of a vine we have always loved as it climbs around several houses in this area - and just this week planted one in our garden.

No, DH didn't mangle it in the car while bringing it home, (as happened with a beautiful bougainvillea once when the car door blew shut on the top third of the plant!...it has now recoverd from the shock) The woman at the nursery picked a sample for him to look at more closely as they talked about it.

This one piece shows all the main stages of flowering:- the row of green bobbly things are actually the unopened flowers, next up, green tinged with yellow is young flowers,, which change colour to orange/mature after a while, and then finally the little cup things drop off - as per lower right corner. It is a vine, not a bottle brush, nor is it a eucalpyt, but reminds us of both. We are replacing a very uncooperative maracuya/passionfruit with this vine , and have resigned ourselves to buying passionfruit in the supermarket. NO, I'm not going floral in my quiltmaking, just including this on the basis of a thing of beauty being a joy for ever...

Yesterday I sent this off up to the US as my contribution to the auction at the SAQA conference auction this coming may. The size needs to be 12" square, and although I love working on square grids, working within one square itself is something else; I didn't find it easy. I am looking forward to seeing heaps of these small pieces in the auction. I myself don't feel really comfortable working so small, and am not planning a series of these....

Technical note: Despite appearance in the photo, this is a 12" square. I am well known to be a last minute wonder, and so, in this case while DH went through the lining up and checking in procedure at the airport yesterday afternoon, I sat out in the A-C vehicle completing the addition of the sleeve, signing, and photographing the quilt before turing it over to him to mail to the organisers while he is up in the US over the coming week. Piece of cake!

In retrospect I should have laid it out on the ground against it's muslin background to get a flat, square, image, but of course, in haste the best ideas don't always come up in time.... I do wish procrastination wasn't my middle name. On the other hand, since the deadline for these works is May 1st - I am running way ahead of time - and sending it up north with him saves the huge bucks Fedex would accept in return for making sure it did get there - the post here is not always 100% reliable, going either way.

Labels: punched leather