Challenging myself...

Wonderful, I feel like I have my energy and inspiration back...     Such a blessing...   I have been stitching all week on a project which I had already cut in 2011....   Yes, sometimes one has a wonderful concept, but the challenge is to transform the initial idea into something special....     A lesson maybe that we don't always need to rush through projects, sometimes one has to wait for the magical inspiration to come....  I know that if I started stitching in 2011, it would have been quite mediocre.... Now I feel the stirring of excitement and I cannot wait to continue, but I am taking it slowly, there is no rush ....  While I was happily stitching along, I realized how exhausted I was before my long holiday....      

My Mom's motto in life was that one had to try before you could say that you could not do something....   The word "cannot" did not exist in her vocabulary and she always encouraged us to try again if our first attempt failed...    I share this motto and it has landed me in challenging situations...   Where quilting/sewing is concerned, I know no boundaries and will try my hand at anything, no matter what amount of patience it takes....   I will challenge and push myself until I get it right....

I made a wedding dress for a very special young lady with very definite ideas of what she wanted...    But as you know, it is not always possible to find the exact fabrics needed to create the dream with....     This is the same reason why I started painting fabric for my quilts as I could not find commercially printed fabric which suited my style of quilts.   We wanted a piece of lace with a curved edge at the bottom with a border pattern - a very tall order indeed.   So, without thinking twice, I decided to make the lace myself...!    I have never made lace before and I had no idea what it would entail...   As I felt skilled enough to work with all the wash away stuff available for embroidery, I decided that it would actually be easy....    I started off by designing the lace panel on paper to scale.   The design had a curved edge at the bottom which would form the back section of the dress.   I joined strips of Avalon Plus with wash away thread to form a big enough piece for this panel and transferred the diagram onto the Avalon using a wash out marker.   The bridal tulle was sandwiched between two layers of Avalon Plus to make it more sturdy and protect the tulle as it was very soft and delicate....    I tacked the 3 layers together the same as making a quilt sandwich.    I then started embroidering the design by machine, numerous little satin stitch leaves with rayon thread, the 3 layers carefully secured in an embroidery hoop.   I couched No 5 DMC perle thread with silver and gold metallic thread as stems between the leaves.    I used  commercially embroidered organza flowers on the border section.   The entire piece was hand beaded, using numerous perle sequins, pearls and glass beads.   The beading took almost 80 hours to complete.....     I used the same technique to make lace sections to cover the shoulders with scalloped edges - this was stabilized with transparent organza to prevent strain on the delicate lace.   Making this lace was rather daunting and I had no idea whether it would actually work....   I completed the beading 5 days prior to the wedding - only then could I wash all the Avalon Plus away....   What stressful experience it was to put this piece into the water not knowing whether all this effort would produce the desired lace....!    Any way, the Angels smiled upon me as I took the lace from the zinc and spread it open onto old towels, just perfect....  I was so excited, relieved, grateful and needless to say, I slept like a baby that night!    I succeeded in making this lace, the first time ever that I did something so spectacular....    The bottom line was, if I was not an experimental quilter, I would not have known how to tackle this challenge....

Diagram for shoulder sections

Bodice section with completed lace section on shoulders.
Bodice partially embroidered and beaded.

Lace  panel immediately after it was washed with untrimmed scalloped edge....

Bottom back section of completed dress...

This post is about making lace and not about the dress.....   It was a wonderful challenge to create this, but rather stressful ....    As with life, there is always something new to discover...     This project introduced me to working with silk.   I fell in love with silk and promptly started collecting bits of silk in all the colours of the rainbow (and all the colours in between) which has now taken me on another road of discovery.....

Welcome 2013....

I have been very quiet.....   There were a few reasons, nothing serious though....   My son occupied the computer as he was preparing for his exam towards the end of November and I took time out from my quilting activities after a very busy year....   I did some redecorating at home, oversaw routine maintenance work to our house as well as the garden which was so nice for a change....    In the meantime it was the Festive Season, then January came and our little family went away on a holiday, great fun going away with adult children...    I really needed time to reload my batteries as it was very flat....    I now feel rejuvenated and ready for action...

I had lots of time to rethink many things - I often need to this...   I have now shared My Journey with you.   My quilting career has been an incredible one to date and I feel very blessed to have achieved so many things.    It has been incredibly good for me to write down this passage of my life as it enabled me to put so many things in perspective.   Thank you for reading it....

It sounds very fancy to refer to myself as a quilt artist, but in my heart, I am just a normal quilter and a proud member of our local Guild.   As a quilting veteran of 29 years, I think I can safely predict that I will always be fascinated by fabric, design, threads, paints etc....   It is however intimidating to read blogs of other quilt artists and it sounds as if they quilt every day....    Good for them, but I actually cannot quilt every day....   Maybe because a lot of my work is experimental and I do a lot of my work mentally...   Maybe many of you can relate to this...

This year it is time for the National Quilt Festival again, this time in Bloemfontein in July.   As the official Festival Programme is now available, I can share the two workshops which I will teach there.   More information is on the Workshops page.    Currently I am doing a lot of experimenting with fused small squares and triangles - ideal for using scraps.   I never throw scraps away, sometimes even the last threads of fabric are used for projects!   I have also collected a palette of silk fabrics of which I use small pieces and it just adds something special to a piece....

The first workshop will be Freestyle Ways on 1 & 2 July 2013....   A little story about this one.   My good friend Yolande Bowman and I thought up a concept of a skinny quilt for an informal challenge between some fellow quilters of the Dias Quilters' Guild in 2011.   As my program was so full, I decided to make my entry and use it as a new workshop which I presented to the 2013 Kaleidoscope National Quilt Festival Committee.     It is always a challenge for me to prepare new workshops as I feel I need  to teach the students as much as possible.....  

Freestyle Ways

Small squares of cotton and silk were fused in a colourwash format to a background piece of fabric and it was decorated with embellished silk strips.  This is a machine stitching workshop and various embellishing techniques are demonstrated in the workshop.   More information on the Workshops page.

The second workshop is Bag-a-Square on 3 & 4 July 2013.

Bag-a-Square

Fused cotton and silk squares complemented with paper cut tiles at the bottom, embellished with beads and cords and constructed in a specific way to form a bag.      More information on the Workshops page.

I hope to see some of you at the Festival in July.....!