It starts with a river . . . . .

Before I started on my bed quilt for Enter the Forest of Dreams, I looked through some of my photos of forests.

A Dartmoor woods with river

From the beginning, it felt right to have a river flowing through the quilt.  I collected all of my fabric from The Cloth House in Soho and Exeter Fabric Centre in forest floor and river colours.

To begin, I got all of my Warm and Natural cotton batting and joined it together to make a huge rectangle.  It’s the remainder of about 15 yards I bought in America in 1998 before I moved to the UK, which I’ve been using for all of the quilts I’ve made over the past 13 or so years.  I laid the batting out on our living room floor and sketched in the outline of the river.  The finished dimensions will be 70″ x 95″ (178 x 240 cm) way too big for my design wall, so I’ve taken over our living room for the duration!

Then, I pieced some purple-green silk dupioni for the river.

I originally thought about piecing the forest floor fabric in large organic shapes, similar to the piecing I did in the headboard quilt.  But, the design wasn’t really working. I also thought about a crazy quilt pattern, since I’m using a lot of silks, velvets, tafettas.  Again, I didn’t really like the examples I saw – a bit too random and messy crazy.   I did some online research and came across a pieced diamond shape pattern, which Kaffe Fassett has made very popular.  It seemed like it would stitch together and grow quickly and I like the angles of the shapes and how the colours can flow together and apart.  I like the way the regularity of the pattern contrasts with the hanging quilt.  Plus, I’ll have the river flowing through the middle to break up the uniformity.   I cut all of my fabric into 7″ diamonds with a 60° angle.

And laid them out right onto the batting.

Since I am using so many different types of fabrics, it’s very challenging to piece them.  Especially the silk velvet!  The diamonds curl up like leaves, so I’ve cut out diamond shapes in freezer paper and ironed that onto the back of the silk velvet pieces to stabilise them during the piecing.

floppy silk velvet

I worked for about 7 hours today and got about a third of the diamonds stitched together.  It’s a bit of a slog and I felt like a quilting robot today.  I ripped out and re-stitched several feet of stitching when the points just didn’t line up.  Its looking really good though and I’m thinking ahead to how I’ll do the river, which will be very organic and flowing.  I’m looking forward to that part!

Breakfast of Sickos!

You’ve heard of  ‘Wheaties: Breakfast of Champions’, right?  In the 1920′s Wheaties cereal began advertising on baseball field walls.  Throughout the 1930s, Wheaties increased in popularity with its sponsorship of baseball broadcasting, and by the end of the decade, nearly a hundred radio stations carried Wheaties sponsored events. During these events, athlete testimonials about Wheaties were used to demonstrate that Wheaties was indeed the breakfast of champions. Also in the early 1930s, athletes began to be depicted on the packaging of Wheaties, and the tradition is continued today.

I came down hard with stomach flu a few days ago and haven’t been interested in food whatsoever.  However, hunger pangs struck yesterday and I was faced with the dilemna of what to eat that wouldn’t outrage my still tender stomach.  So I updated my status on Facebook and learned about the BRAT diet from my cousin’s wife.  Banana, rice, applesauce and toast.

This morning I cooked white rice with chopped banana.  Very tasty, especially when I added a pat of butter!

Comfort food

I’ve also been laid up in bed, with books.   Among others, I’m re-reading ‘Knight’s Castle’ by Edward Eager.  It’s from a series of great magic/fantasy/adventure books written in the 1950′s which give a nod to E. Nesbit’s wonderful books.  Both have been favourite authors of mine since I was a child.  There’s something about being at home sick that brings out the kid in me and a desire to return to childhood comforts.

Thin Red Line

Over the winter break, I made a duvet cover for our marriage bed to harmonise with our wedding quilt ‘Cleaved‘ which hangs at the head.  Cleaved is made from white and slate grey silk and scattered with red rose petals printed onto fabric.

Over the summer, we’d found a duvet cover with red roses at Dunelm Mills, but the colour wasn’t right and it had polyester in it, so we took it back.  I did some searches on the web, but couldn’t find the one in my mind’s eye, so I decided to make one myself.   I bought a 100% cotton cover, chopped off the top and spliced in some gorgeous white on white rose fabric with a thin line of red piping.  It sounds pretty easy (and it was) but it took me an awful long time to get down to doing it.  I’m funny that way when I do something new.  It takes me a while to get the courage to start.

I have a piping foot for my Husqvarna sewing machine which I didn’t end up using.  The online tutorials I looked at used a zipper foot.   BurdaStyle gave an easy step by step guide to making the piping and this post from J Stern Designs showed how to insert the piping.  Once I finally got started, it took about 4 hours to make.  I just had to be very accurate and do lots of pinning!

Snug Bear

My next big project will be making a Provencal quilt from the same rose fabric with some red and slate grey fabric in it somewhere, with a scalloped edge.  Probably not as detailed as this example though!  I’ll see what develops  .  .  .

Detail of a white cotton boutis quilt

Enter the Forest of Dreams

Twelfth Night is a festival in some branches of Christianity marking the coming of the Epiphany and concluding the Twelve Days of Christmas.

It is defined by the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary as “the evening of the fifth of January, preceding Twelfth Day, the eve of the Epiphany, formerly the last day of the Christmas festivities and observed as a time of merrymaking”.  However, there is currently some confusion as to which night is Twelfth Night:  some count the night of Epiphany itself (sixth of January) to be Twelfth Night. One source of this confusion is said to be the Medieval custom of starting each new day at sunset, so that Twelfth Night precedes Twelfth Day.  In some cases the 25 December is the first day of Christmas, so therefore 5 January is the 12th day.

At any rate, tonight we’re celebrating Twelfth Night by taking down our Holy Day decorations.  We ate, drank and made much merry over the festive season and it’s time to get back to business, look forward into the New year and see the deepest, bleakest part of the winter through.

I’ve set myself a couple of important quilting goals.  I’m entering a juried quilt show in Germany at the end of February and am working on a piece for that, based on one of my South Bank photos.  Techniques include digital imagery onto fabric, machine stitch & applique and painting.  I’m working on a very large scale with cotton organdie and it’s exciting, challenging, frustrating and rewarding.  In that order!

Suncast Shadows - detail and palette

I’m also going to have my studio open to the public on 10th March in conjunction with the 4th annual Moretonhampstead Festival of Food, Drink and the Arts.  I’ll display the bed I made in furniture school, ‘Enter The Forest of Dreams’ for the first time since 1999.   I’m making a beautiful quilt to cover the bed from silk, taffeta, corduroy, silk velvet and other sumptuous fabrics.

Enter the Forest of Dreams

It all feels really good and I’m really ready to focus on the hands on, material (tee hee!) work.  Tonight, I got my pretty, new (just a few months old)  Canon G12 out and played around with the tripod and some lowlight night shots of our Twelfth Night.

I made a little altar to some of my artistic heroines:  Georgia O’Keeffe -  painter, represented by ‘One Hundred Flowers’ , Red Poppies, 1925; Lee Miller – photographer, represented by ‘The Lives of Lee Miller’; Tracey Emin, artist, represented by the postcard ‘Running Naked, 2011′; Diane Arbus – photographer, represented by the photo ‘Melinda Schwakhofer in Tiger Costume, 1966′ and my Muse – represented by a plaster cast I made of my face.

‘Fortitude’ is the word which has chosen me for 2012.  I think of strong tree trunks and stout hearts of oak.  I feel that I am entering the forest of dreams.  Shortly before his death, Robert Schumann dreamt an angel, possibly the spirit of either Schubert or Mendelssohn,  dictated a “spirit theme” to him.  What a beautiful gift and vision (even if he was going ‘mad’).  I wonder which, or if perhaps all, of my artistic angels will inspire and encourage me on my Journey and what gifts they’ll bring.  I know I’ll be rewarded with Fortitude, because each of these remarkable women either came through some tough times, or pioneered right smack over the edge of what ‘everybody else’ was doing, or both.

My Guide to the Deepest Depths

Blessings on your Journey into the New Year.  May your guide(s) be with you.

So we take our Holy Day decorations down and sing ‘The old year now is fled away, the new year it is enteréd  .  .  .  .  God send us a happy new year!’

Happy Hoppin’ John New Year

We started of our New Year 2012 eating with one of my traditional family meals of Hoppin’ John.  My parents were both from the South, we always had ham for Christmas dinner and then seasoned a big pot of black-eyed peas on New Year’s Day with the hock.

Southerners look forward to an annual dish of black-eyed peas at New Year’s. The peas portend good luck because they represent coins. Cooked greens are good luck, too, because they represent folded paper money. If you eat both on New Year’s Day, you might, or might not, get rich during the coming year.  Most recipes call for rice, but we never added it when I was a kid and I still don’t.

Hoppin’ John

• 2 cups dried black-eyed peas
• 1 onion, diced
• 6 bacon pieces or a slice of smoked ham, cut into bite size pieces, or a ham hock
• red pepper flakes
• salt and pepper
• cider vinegar
• greens, such as collard, nero cavolo, purple sprouting broccoli, kale

Soak the beans overnight.  The next day, put them in a big pot with the diced onion and meat. Cover with water, bring to the boil and let simmer for about 2 – 3 hours.  Season with red pepper flakes, salt & pepper and cider vinegar.

Wash and slice the greens into ribbons.  Cook seperately in a pot of water with some cider vinegar and salt.  Add to the beans with some of the pot likker about an hour before serving and heat through.  Serve with cornbread.

Even better the next day!

Most food historians generally agree that Hoppin John is an American dish with African/French/Caribbean roots. There are many tales or legends that explain how Hoppin’ John got its name:

• It was the custom for children to gather in the dining room as the dish was brought forth and hop around the table before sitting down to eat.
• A man named John came “a-hoppin” when his wife took the dish from the stove.
• An obscure South Carolina custom was inviting a guest to eat by saying, “Hop in, John”
• The dish goes back at least as far as 1841, when, according to tradition, it was hawked in the streets of Charleston, South Carolina by a crippled black man who was know as Hoppin’ John.

Fortitude

New Years Eve.  Thinking of my blessings,  being with my husband, calling a few close friends on the phone, enjoying wonderful food and drink  .  .  .  .  .

Thinking about which word chooses me for 2012.  Fortitude.

In the midst of all of this, I honour my Mvskoke ancestors and am grateful for the fortitude given to me from my Tribe.

Even though this letter, beautifully read by Johnny Cash, is about the Cherokee Removals in 1938, it captures some of the experience of each of the 5 tribes removed on the Trail of Tears.