My Space Your Space Our Space

My first thought when I saw our theme SPACE, were of those wonderful pictures NASA and others have given us from the outer space. Just like some of our hand dyed fabrics, especially some of the ice and snow dyed ones. But of course I needed something more.
In April, my daughter and I had a weekend in London and Manchester. She wanted to go to the Backstreet Boys concert in Manchester, and I wanted to visit the Harry Potter experience at Leavesden.
Well, we went together on both places. And of course, there were a bit of shopping!
Walking in the streets of London, the idea suddenly came to me. This was her space, and mine, and we had them together, so this trip ended as our space.
I decided to use photos I had taken at the concert and during the studio-tour. Transferred them to fabric, cut the in strips and bonded them to some fusible wadding. Unfortunately, the photo transfers were not so bright as I wanted, so I put a piece of blue organza on top to give it a bit more colour. I then finished this part with some stitching on top, running stitches and french knots.
The background fabric I had chosen, emphasizes the colours of the photos. For the quilting, I went for machine-embroidered lettering, inspired by Laura Kemshall. Because of the size, 15"x15", I could not use too bold letters, but I think I found a font that suits the size. And to give this background a bit more life, I put in some running stitches in some of the letters with the turquoise from the pictures.
Instead of bonding the photo-part to the background, I wanted it to have more depth, so I finished it with a blind fold and attached it loosely with stitches from the back.

and a close-up:

My Street

Gabriele Bach - My street

When I read about the challenge "Space", my first thought were Houston, the space and "Star Trek". But space can also be my sewing room, a house or a street. That was the right idea. In the street where we live are some very colourful painted houses. Where are only row houses, all equally built 50 years ago. By and by the owners made their homes individual. Our street is well known in our little town because of its colourful houses. This street is the space, where I live. In Germany our community is one with the most densely population, so you could also title "no space".
My quilt is fused and machinestitched.

Cosmos

“Space” is Latitude Quilts’ latest challenge.  This idea came from a workshop that I took from Susan Carlson about fabric collage.  The process was to take fabrics and cut out shapes that would be used to enhance a drawn picture on a piece of muslin.  As you build your creation, you use glue to tack down the pieces and once it is finished, the entire piece has a tulle overlay which is machine stitched down.  At the time of the workshop, the theme had must been announced and I thought this technique perfectly matched the theme.  So, my piece is simple called “Cosmos”

Cosmos

Cosmos_detail 1

Cosmos_detail 2

Katie Pidgeon

Techniques:    fabric collage, tulle overlay

Materials:       commercial fabric, tulle, beads and sequins

Date:               May 31, 2014

Tastes and techniques change

A few years ago I belonged to another challenge group, the Fast Friday Fabric Challenge. They have a challenge each month, with some parameters, wide or narrow, and the idea is that you complete the challenge within a week, no overthinking, lots of chance to experiment. It is always good to have a playday, even when you are in middle of a larger, more difficult work that is going to take weeks or months to complete.

I made this one for a space challenge, using lutradur through my inkjet printer, and a photo from NASA of the Orion Nebula. I have never used that technique since, and I was a little disappointed that the colours were not as intense as I hoped.

Luckily, time has passed, and I have evolved, so I wouldn't want to repeat that for the current theme.

The downside of the evolution is that we accumulate fabric, threads and supplies over a number of years, and then find it is not to our current taste, or, as in my case, I now use a lot of my own hand-dyes. What to do with all that commercial fabric in turquoise, magenta and multi-colour prints? Originally I imagined I would do some bed quilts using strips or blocks, but that is not going to happen!