getting shirty (work in progress)

At the back end of last year I had an idea for a quilt.  I was inspired by Morwhenna Woolcock’s lovely screen-printed bags made from recycled men’s shirts and by the memory of a quilt I had seen in a book many years ago.  So I put out a call to the men in my family for their cast off shirts and I also went hunting in charity shops.  Charity shop shirts are surprisingly expensive when all you’re planning to do with them is chop them up!  I asked a couple of times whether they had a stash of shirts that weren’t good enough to go out on the racks, but I always seemed to have turned up the day after the ragman had been!   It’s ironic that buying brand new fabric might have been less expensive, but the important point about this project is to re-use and at least my money was ending up with a charity.

 

Last week it seemed like time to make some progress, so I set about cutting up my pile of old shirts (“pre-loved” as the saying goes!).  It felt almost sacrilegious; men’s shirts – even the cheap and cheerful brands – are amazingly well-made and constructed to last.  I chopped off cuffs, collars, yokes, button bands and ended up with rectangles of cotton, polycotton and linen from backs, fronts and sleeves and a whole tangle of discarded pieces.  Surely there’s something I can still do with those!

A little bit of play with my harvested fabrics made me realise that the lovely blues and greys of my chosen shirts were a little bit pale and bland when viewed en masse, so I had another shopping session and came back with a couple of shirts that had red in the pattern. This was better, but still worryingly dull. I like borders on quilts, they provide a sort of frame for the patchwork within, but I had been hoping that this could be a really simple quilt just pieced together in large pieces, with maybe a bit of contrast colour in the binding. However, as I laid out the pieces and looked at them it came to me that one of the reasons that traditional quilts often have a contrasting inner border is that if a quilt is draped over a bed the binding is largely invisible.

Fortunately this was design on the hoof and I pieced together an inner square and Ruth’s fabric stash yielded some plain red fabric. It’s fantastic what a splash of contrasting colour can do to bring the whole thing together and give it a bit of excitement. I'll try to bring some decent photos to the blog when I've finished it. I've left some pockets in place (for little notes or treasures) and it's going to have quite a few buttons added as the quilt "ties".

finished!

Finally, my "vintage" quilt is finished.

I am pleased. It's not a perfect piece of quilt-making by any stretch of the imagination, but I think the overall impression is pleasing and I'm happy with the layout and fabrics. After I had bought the vintage bundles in St Ives I had some doubts and felt I'd been overtaken by holiday fever and the need to buy something; they seemed a bit dull and dated. After I chopped them up and added the plain central squares from my stash it started to work though, and I was especially pleased by the addition of the turquoise fabric, which just seemed to lift the whole thing and give it a bit of zing.

The backing is an old duvet cover which had ripped and has been dyed in cold water dye.

I still need to get to grips with machine quilting. I don't seem to be able to avoid creasing and puckering of the backing fabric.

Still, overall I'm happy and felt confident enough to take it to the village fete-style, 'Best of Malago' at tonight's WI meeting.

finally!

That's "finally" as in "finally I'm back", but also "finally" as in "finally I've finished my Cortona quilt. It is so called because the design is inspired by some tiles I admired in the church of Santa Margareta in Cortona when we were there on holiday five years ago. The little squares echo a rounded notch in the tiles which makes them look a little like jigsaw pieces. I drew the line at trying to cut and stitch curves! I bought the fabrics and got to work pretty soon after we came back, but putting it together was a pretty fiddly and repetititve business that I could only face in small doses. And to be fair to myself I have completed a lot of other things in the meantime. The photographs don't really do the colour justice - it's a pale sage-y green. The quilt is now in its planned home - on the bed in our spare bedroom where it looks cool and peaceful.

birthday list

No, not a list of the presents I want! This list is about a different kind of hope.

Some time ago my friend Gai blogged about the 49 things she wants to do before she’s 50. I found it a very inspiring list - a mixture of treats, challenges, resolutions and plans; things that can be ticked off in one go and things to incorporate into regular life. I thought I’d have a go at my own list. Trouble is I’m ten years older than G, so I decided to make it 50 things to do before I’m 60. It’s my birthday this week, so I’ve got a year to do all the things on my list.

I well remember that after I passed my fiftieth birthday I got a bit gloomy, feeling that there wasn’t much to look forward to, just the downhill slope towards old age. In fact that was untrue, the past nine years have brought lots of wonderful experiences, including a major move to a different part of the country, a lifestyle shift and the birth of three grandchildren. But I know that in my low moments I can lose sight of the good things and forget what it is that I enjoy doing. So this list is to remind me of all the stuff I have to look forward to and remind me that I can still make a contribution to the world.

1. Visit Cambridge
2. St Ives holiday with all the family to celebrate our 60th birthdays
3. Walk (part of) the Kennet and Avon canal
4. Make a daisy chain
5. Increase exercise to 10,000 steps per day
6. Reduce BMI to a healthy level
7. Find a tai chi, yoga or pilates class
8. Practise meditation every day
9. Learn more about meditation and other spiritual exercises
10. Keep a thankfulness diary
11. Plan a retreat
12. Take some kind of pre-retirement course or life coaching
13. Reduce the amount of waste we send to landfill
14. Where reasonable, avoid buying plastic
15. Increase loft insulation
16. Grow some vegetables and herbs
17. Take part in Earth Abbey’s GrowZone
18. Start a wormery
19. Make bread once a week
20. Take grandchildren on the miniature railway at Ashton Court
21. See theatre regularly
22. Read two books a month
23. One book in five to be a challenge of some kind – maybe a non-fiction book or a classic I’ve never got round to
24. Go to a couple of major exhibitions (maybe in London)
25. Give myself a weekly treat
26. Conquer lace knitting
27. Use the screen printing equipment I bought two years ago
28. Take an art or textile course
29. Get my Central Park embroidery professionally framed
30. Get properly fitted for a bra at Rigby & Peller
31. Clear cupboards and recycle junk
32. Learn how to make an egg custard with confidence
33. Continue to explore faith and doubt with my spiritual director
34. Do work filing once a month instead of a marathon when life becomes impossible
35. Make a simnel cake
36. Go to cinema once a month
37. Finish my "cortona" quilt
38. Research what I need to do to complete my OU degree
39. Make a range of "earth friendly" cotton shopping bags for the Arts Trail
40. Finish my mother’s florentine canvaswork. This was started in the 1960s. It’s never going to be the rug that was originally intended as some of the wool has run out, but could be a substantial floor cushion
41. Have a pedicure
42. Write up detailed job notes for my successor at work
43. Start an Etsy or Folksy shop to sell my handmade items
44. Apply for my bus pass, so I can go on jolly jaunts on local buses around the country
45. Get an indigo vat going and do some dyeing
46. Invite someone else to join in the fun of indigo dyeing
47. Try to save up some money to get my grandmother’s old armchairs reupholstered
48. Reawaken my interest in wildflowers and foster my granddaughter’s existing interest in flowers by teaching her the names of wildflowers and collecting some to press
49. Sort out the hopeless tangle that is my "jewellery box" and put things neatly (if temporarily) in nice new boxes in tidy little compartments
50. Make another list ready for next year!

25 random things

The 25 random things meme has been tagging its way around facebook for a while now. After I had been tagged twice I thought I'd better give it a go. It turned out to be easier than I thought as one idea led to another. Then I remembered that last summer I had been tagged here on blogger by Just Gai to come up with six things about me and ducked it. So, in the spirit of re-use, recyle, reduce (well maybe not reduce) I am reproducing my list of 25 here. I haven't got a huge blog circle, but I think I may tag a couple of people whose blogs I read, but don't know in person.

1. I had a very bad squint as a small child. As a result I never developed binocular vision. I had four operations to correct the squint when I was 5, 6, 7 & 8. I am very grateful that something could be done for my eyesight as reading and needlework are such an important part of my life.
2. I’ve always been a bookworm. When I was a child my friends used to hide their comics before I went round to play!
3. Being a mother to our three lovely daughters has been my best achievement.
4. I grew up in a nominally christian family and made my own commitment to christian faith at the age of 15. Since then my faith has taken a variety of different forms, but has never completely deserted me. I wrestle continuously with faith and doubt. Sometimes I wake up in the morning and think the whole thing is barking mad, but at others it is a source of great comfort.
5. I have a very sweet tooth and can easily eat condensed milk straight from the can with a spoon.
6. I’m very untidy. I think this is because my mind is dashing on to the next activity before I’ve finished what I’m doing.
7. I wish I had carried on with A level maths. I was talked out of it because I was planning to apply to study French at University.
8. I’m frightened of old age. My father had dementia and my mother had a neurological condition that robbed her of language relatively young. Equally, I have no desire to die young – I’m too interested in finding out what my children and grandchildren are getting up to. I aspire to being a healthy and still intelligent old woman like my maternal grandmother who lived until she was 101.
9. I am completely uninterested in sport of all descriptions, especially team games.
10. I did actually once win a race. It was a three-legged race with my best friend at primary school. We disproved the theory that you need to be well matched in size to do well at this event. I was a good deal smaller than her in both height and weight. Neither of us was particularly athletic, but we did practise. I tucked myself in under her armpit and we had practised starting together on the middle leg and staying in stride; so we powered up the track while all the athletic, well-matched pairs who had been winning the individual sprint races tripped over each other’s feet and fell over and shouted at each other.
11. My mother taught me dressmaking when I was fairly young and I made a lot of my own clothes during my teenage years. We used my grandmother’s old hand powered sewing machine which stitched everything so tightly that it couldn’t be undone.
12. I love all textile pursuits. I learned to knit when I was about six and a lovely neighbour, called Mrs Turner, taught me to crochet a couple of years later. I got to know her because she had a lovely mongrel dog called Sally and I wanted to be allowed to take her for walks.
13. Discovering the world of contemporary embroidery and textile art in the early nineties was a real epiphany for me. In a family where I was intimidated by the considerable drawing talents of my husband and daughters it was wonderful to discover my own means of expression.
14. We used to visit my grandmother every Tuesday. When I was little I used to get bored with adult conversation over the lunch table and I disappeared into my own dark mysterious world under the chenille tablecloth. This is where I first smelled real coffee brewing in Gran’s spirit-burner Cona machine. Although I love coffee I have always thought that the smell is better than the taste.
15. I love the sight of allotments on the edges of towns and villages, there’s something very appealing about their tumble-down, messy orderliness and the evidence of so much industry.
16. I was born and grew up in Lichfield, Staffordshire, which is pretty much as far from the sea as you can get in any direction in England.
17. Over the past 37 years I have accumulated almost enough credits for an Open University degree. When I retire I’ll give it one last push and finish it!
18. I love crosswords and sudoku.
19. When I was 11 I wanted to be a vet. Thank GOODNESS I got talked out of it!
20. I need to spend time alone. I’m an introvert and naturally cautious, but nevertheless I love spending time with larger-than-life, try-anything-once friends.
21. People think I’m calm and serene, but they can’t see my feet paddling under the surface.
22. Steve and I will have been together for 40 years in October this year. On the face of it we don’t seem very compatible (if you compare his 25 things with mine!), but we have shared values and the differences in our personalities complement each other. Clearly, love conquers all!
23. I used to collect and press wild flowers with my mother. It’s something I would like to do with my grand-daughter.
24. I am living proof of the theory that "Dieting Makes you Fat". Despite numerous and frequent diet regimes I have managed to gain at least a stone in each decade of my adult life. This is not something I am proud of.
25. Self-deprecation comes to me as naturally as breathing and I have had to make a real effort not to make this list a litany of my faults and failings.

I'm tagging:

Flutter-by

Poshyarns

Roobeedoo

photo-montage of me aged about 3, 16 and 18