WIP Kaffe Fasset Tapestry Garden - Sunlight through Glass Quilt

 

In May 2007 my dear friend Christine and I attended a Kaffe Fassett class in Wellington.  She has blogged about it here.  It was so exciting to actually get to meet him and Brandon, and have the chance to get a few pointers on each of our quilts.  I learnt and a lot, even though some of the lessons are still being absorbed.

The class was based around the Tapestry Garden quilt first featured in 'Kaleidoscope of Quilts'.

I love the colour blending approach Kaffe Fassett employs, where by placing similar tones/colours next to one another the eye becomes confused as to where one block finishes and the next begins. 

I decided that since the quilt top itself was a learning exercise, I should continue skills building by attempting to free motion quilt it.  The down side of this admirable self imposed goal, was that the quilt top is HUGE, 241cm by 158cm.  Certainly the biggest I have ever tried to quilt myself.

Consequently my enthusiasm for the quilting has waxed and waned!

I finished sewing the top not long after the class, I think it was completed by October 2007.  I think I began quilting it in New Zealand shortly after, then stopped while we moved to Australia.  I started again in Melbourne, sometime in 2008 and did some more in Singapore in 2010 (boy was it hot!  I had air conditioner blasting and still could only manage about an hour at a time!).

Inspired by Christine, who has recently finished hers, I got mine out again, and have spent another 7 hours on it over the last week, while back in New Zealand with family.

While I have definitely made some good progress, it is still not finished.  However, I am enthused again, and my FMQ is improving. Slowly.  Parts of the quilt top are awful...but there is evidence of steady progress.

Given I am now back in Perth for a month, without my sewing machine, there will be no further progress for awhile, but I'm OK with that.  I'll aim to finish it within the next 12 months!

 

WIP Hand stitched hexagon Mosaic Quilt

In March 2008, not long after we moved to Melbourne, I attended a class at Patchwork on Central Park, with Adrienne Armstrong to hand stitch a hexagon quilt.

Adrienne designed the pattern based on this quilt......

featured in the book 'Historic Australian Quilts' by Dr. Annette Gero.  The original is attributed to Frederica Mary Josephson of Sydney, c1850.  (If you are unfamiliar with the books Dr. Annette Gero has published on historic Australian quilts, they are well worth checking out - beautiful quilts in beautifully produced books).

While some of the other women in the class finished making their blocks over the six weeks of the class, life got in the way for me.  I made a good start, but got nowhere close to finishing.

But I like a slow burn project....a REALLY slow burn project...so I've been stitching away ever since.  I go in bursts.  There are some periods when I make no blocks for months.  However it is a great project to take travelling, and since I'm doing a few long haul plane flights at the moment, I'm underway again.

Here are some of my earliest blocks...  I so love the wee girl in the spotted headscarf....and lots of bits of Liberty have made their way in...

Here is the detail of some of the blocks from the photo at the top.

There is an intended deign ethos - but I keep straying from it - I have always wanted the finished top to be scrappy, to have lots of interest, (Adrienne's original had some amazing fabrics that kept me looking for ages), and to have something of a vintage feel to it.   And I have tried to use scraps from many of the other quilts I have sewn while working on this, the photo below includes some of the feature second hand shirting from the quilt I made for my Dad.

 

 

The top needs 233 complete hexagons.  So far, I have made 186.   Can I just say that again.... 186 handstitched hexagons....For someone who is a little inclined to start many more things than she finishes, I'm very proud to have persisted this far). 

And I WILL finish this, because I love it.  Only 47 to go - and then the fillers for around the edges.

Here are the blocks I am working on at the moment - auditioning background.

It's all about the journey really......

Do you have any slow burn projects on the go?

1940s smocked child's dress

I come from a long line of creative women.

I want to share some of the textile treasures we hold in the family, through my blog.  Why?
Because they are objects of beauty and careful craftsmanship, currently stored away in cupboards and drawers.  They deserve to be more widely shared.  Further, I want to create a record for family members, and as a source of personal inspiration.

The first of these vintage textile treasures I want to share is a smocked dress, made for my mother, Wendy Williams, in circa 1942- 1945.

This dress is made from trabalco.  A fabric I had never heard of before.  It has the appearance of cotton.  I can find advertisements for trabalco fabric in womens periodicals from about 1919 - 1940 but no further information.  My mother has told me that trabalco was often used for childrens clothing in the war years when few floral cottons were available.  She remembers this dress as being well starched and somewhat scratchy to wear!

The dress was smocked by my grandmother Dinah Williams (nee Sloman) and sewn up by my great grandmother, Esme Sloman (nee Sommerville, b December 1886, d 1959).  My grandmother, who we called Gee, enjoyed smocking, tabestry and knitting.  I can recall her hand stitching, but never saw her sit at a sewing machine, and am not certain if she even owned one.  But she had little need to, since my great grandmother, known as Gargee, sewed clothes beautifully.

In this photo you can see my grandmother and three of her four children.  My mother is second from the left.  Both she had her sister are wearing smocked dresses, similar to the one featured in this post.

The dress would fit a little girl between about 3 and 6.  It has a chest size of 60 cm.  It is machine sewn with beautiful French seams at both sleeve and side seams.  It buttons down the back (8 green buttons, now faded), and is smocked front and back.  The dress has cream (now discoloured) collar and cuffs edged with blue blanket stitching.  It has a small hem, only 1cm, and shows no signs that the hem has been let down at any stage.  (It was common to make smocked dresses with big hems that could be let down so the child could continue to wear then as they grew).

The fabric on the outside of the dress is faded from the bright Kiwi sun.  But on the inside the colours are still bright.

I love the colours of this dress, picked up in the smocking, so bright and pretty.

The smocking is 10cm (4inches) deep, in 6 colours; dark navy, white, mid pink, yellow, green, mid blue.  There are 7 bands of smocking ranging from 1-6 rows of stitching in each band, using three stitches stem, cable and wave stitch, with a mirror image repeat from the 6 rows of blue wave stitch in the centre.

My favourite part of this dress is where it has been invisibly mended.  At some point the dress has had a deep rip, down the edge of the back placket, from between the 6th and 7th buttonhole almost to the hem of the dress.  My great grandmother has carefully repaired this rip, using herringbone stitch on the inside, and covering this on the outside, by a piece of fabric, perfectly aligned, appliquéd over the rip, making the mend almost invisible.  It speaks of such care and pride in the work and the importance of ensuring a wartime dress can continue to be worn.

This is the mend from the inside...

And this is what you can see on the outside...

The dress is too fragile now to be worn.

At some stage I want to use the colours, the squares of the gingham, and maybe the patterns of the smocking as inspiration for a quilt.  Perhaps a mini quilt?