yarnstorm

pools of colour

For months I've had little piles of fabric squares on my desk ready to be sewn together to make my Swimming Pool quilt. Now, at last, the fragments of water and reflected and refracted light (as I see them) have come together to make a swirling mass of blues and aquas and greens.

An all-time favourite book is Waterlog by Roger Deakin, a passionate outoor swimmer whose descriptions of swimming in the moat of his ancient Suffolk house are wonderfully vivid. I love the way he writes about swimming with wildlife and through underwater plants, parting and clearing the debris on the surface of the water. So when I was choosing fabrics for this quilt, I was happy to include leaves and foliage which suggest the variety of plants that appear or fall on the surface of ponds and natural swimming pools.

One of the best moments of quilt-making for me is choosing the backing fabric. I rarely buy it in advance, because I am never quite sure how the top will turn out. I like to wait and see, and then pick something to complement or surprise or contrast, or just something to make a statement. I'm prepared to keep an open mind until I see what's on offer, and then I usually know when I see the fabric.

So yesterday, when I pulled out the bolt of the gorgeously, exuberantly, rococo Brocade Flowers by Kaffe Fassett and saw the wonderful waves and curves of colour and light which match the aqua tones and suggestions of scattered sunlight, I could see it would work perfectly for what I had in mind. Putting the whole thing together will be like diving into a soft, warm, dappled pool.

I'm adding a dark, dramatic border to mark the edge of the pool so that people don't fall in, but can stand at the edge and look into the depths.

hot summer or wishful thinking quilt

How ironic that I should finish my Hot Summer quilt on a lovely, hot, sunny, summer's day. For this could also be called the Wishful Thinking quilt. We have had such a miserable, grey, wet and cool summer that I decided to quilt myself a better one. Then, finally, on the very day my ironically tilted quilt is completed, nature grants my wish.

It's a version of Kaffe Fassett's Floral Columns quilt in his and Liza Prior Lucy's V&A Quilts. It all began with the wonderfully kitsch, hot ladies fabric which I realised could ruin a tasteful quilt, or get lost in a busy quilt. So this design with nine 9" wide strips allowed the fabric to show off but not dominate. It took me ages to find eight fabrics to enhance and complement my buxom beauties, but eventually I worked out that the combination of tangerine orange and deep teal was what I wanted to play with.

All are large-scale prints and it's a real treat to let such lovely flowers and leaves and bosoms show off in good-size pieces for a change, rather than cutting them up small. Actually, this was the real attraction of the design in the first place - the opportunity to use fabrics I really love and want to be able to admire fully in a quilt. 

I decided a border wasn't necesary and chose a Kaffe Fassett blue and orange polka dot fabric for the binding; you don't see a lot of it but its aptness and jollity makes me smile.

I didn't have enough of any one fabric to back the quilt and couldn't wait for a delivery of one of them from the US, so I went to The Quilt Room and found this brilliant orange fabric with a tiny pattern which was perfect for suggesting a scorching hot day.

The quilt measures 74" x 80" / 188cm x 204cm and is machine-pieced and hand-quilted with a teal cotton thread using relatively large stitches. The fabrics are from eQuilter, Glorious Color and Purl Patchwork.

This quilt is for Phoebe. She claimed it early on when she first saw me playing with the strips on the floor. She helped me with the placement order, chose the binding fabric with me and came to Dorking to advise on the backing fabric. It looks stunning in her bright orange bedroom, and she happily put it on and twirled round and round in the garden for me.

It was difficult to get her to stand still for a moment (top photo), because she was soon off doing a Mexican wave or Hawaiian dance as the ladies might do if ever they came to life.

Fortunately, she was reading when I did the morning photos (all the other photos) - the quilt is far less wriggly on a tree.

                                ***

Thank, you, thank you, thank you for all the encouraging and supportive comments on my last post. You are such wonderfully philosophical souls.

sweetness and light

When the children were tiny I knew I wanted to find somewhere we could go to on holiday year after year. I liked the idea of returning to a place that was special to us all, somewhere we could slip instantly into relaxation mode and feel at home, somewhere we could build an archive of shared memories and anecdotes and details.

I really had no idea where it would be as neither Simon nor I had any connections with the seaside (it had to be beside the sea) and neither of us had somewhere we'd known since our own childhood. We tried Cornwall, Devon and Dorset but couldn't find what we were looking for. 

And then one grey and windy summer's day ten years ago we took Tom, Alice and Phoebe to Aldeburgh for fish and chips. We sat on the wall of the shelving pebbly beach and faced the ever-changing sea and sky and shared our chips with the cheeky seagulls. And we fell in love with the charm of the town, the bleakness and simplicity of the landscape and the edge-of-the-worldliness atmosphere.

We've been back again and again, and still Aldeburgh offers the sweetness and light we were looking for. We've stayed in many different places in the town, but this was the first time I've wanted to move into a rented house permanently. In fact, it was so conducive to domesticity that one of the first things I did was buy three bunches of wonderful dahlias when we visited the utterly fabulous gardens of Helmingham Hall (an unbelievable £1 a bunch) and arrange them in the living room.

Inspired by these flowers and the general homeliness, we visited Woottens, our favourite plant nursery, to buy some plants to take home, including some 'David Howard' dahlias which I've been searching for for a while (lovely burnished orange flowers with dark, bronze foliage). As the house didn't have a garden we kept the plants in the wash-room - a wash-room to beat all other wash-rooms I've ever known, it must be said - and I spent inordinate amounts of time simply enjoying the effect in here.

This would make a perfect flower-room, I thought.

But the most stunning view was from our first-floor living room and it was best enjoyed with a glass of cold and fruity rose to match my dahlias and my husband (above). I was enthralled by the way that three wide strips - the beach, the sea and the sky - could offer so much drama and variation. One day we would have a calm and glittering silver sea and the next we'd be watching rough, brown, crashing waves.

The sky changed by the hour, and the clouds and the colours offered us brilliant wide-screen entertainment all week.

And I felt so at home that I was able to hand-quilt all my quilt while I listened to Leonard Cohen and the children roller-skated up and down the beach path, queued for fish and chips and designed ridiculous board games.   

Sweetness and light, indeed. 

hot summer quilt

I'm quilting myself a hot summer. It's probably the only way I'll get one.

I've been thinking of making a 'Floral Column Quilt' as shown in Kaffe Fassett's V&A Quilts for a long time, certainly longer than I care to remember. After all, how difficult can it be to sew nine strips of fabric together to make an over-the-top textile wallpaper? Well, a lot more difficult than you would guess.

It sounds easy-peasy; just go to your stash and bring out nine half-yards/half-metres of big, bold florals and get on with it. But it's not like that in reality. Because I wanted to make something that looked impressive, something that exploited the scale of the strips (approx 90" x 8" inches) and showed off some large-scale patterns to their fullest extent. I spent ages studying why Kaffe's two versions work and it's to do with eye-movement and clashes but also flow and harmonies. What I needed was a great starter fabric and then I knew everything else would fall into place next to it.

Then I found this wickedly hot-summer, kitsch Alexander Henry fabric on eQuilter. I make no apologies for my taste; I love this fabric, and I thought it would be be a laugh to work with and to see whether I could get it into a quilt which was relatively tasteful but with a nice touch of irony.

It has taken months to find eight fabrics which work with it. I've had to abandon many which I thought would be OK (too small, too orange -yes, it's possible - too dull, not the right blue) and it was only yesterday that I finally put the right combination in the right order (above is one of the attempts). It was Phoebe who found the missing piece - the very pretty Denyse Schmidt floral from the Katie Jump Rope collection in a lovely, deep sky-blue that I bought in Purl Patchwork.

I have now cut out and lined up the fabrics in their final order and I am ready to put these buxom ladies into a 'Hot Summer Quilt'. I can feel the temperature rising already. 

purly, purlesque, purlescent

Purl. Did you know that 'to purl' also means 'to flow with a murmuring sound', 'to spin round' and 'to fall headlong or heavily'? How apt. I did all these things in Purl and Purl Patchwork at the weekend. I certainly flowed round the shops murmuring to myself about the beauty and desirability of everything in them, and when I wasn't flowing I was spinning with excitement and darting from side to side to check, consider and compare. And, of course, I fell heavily for far too many fabrics.

When I finally emerged with my purchases, I could have done with a large tankard of purl (warmed and spiced ale, as drunk by various characters in the novels of Charles Dickens) to revive myself.   

The first wonderful thing about Purl is that the two shops, one for yarns and one for patchwork fabrics, are there at all. There aren't many cities where two such eclectic, visionary and independent enterprises could thrive. Yarn and fabric sales can never depend on passing trade, and it's all credit to Joelle and her excellent team that Purl has become a destination for buyers. There's a palpable feeling of excitement in the shops every time I visit - all those people, from beginners to seasoned knitters and quilters, purl around and are clearly inspired by the possibilities that the jewel-like yarns and the more pearlescent fabrics suggest. 

The second wonderful thing is that so much of the hard work has been done for you before you even step over the threshold. I'd arranged to meet Liesl just after she'd taught a sewing class at Purl and we had a lovely, chatty lunch together, and she used just the right word when describing Joelle's skills. She said that Joelle is a genius at 'editing', at choosing the best, the loveliest, the most tempting, whether you are looking for basic or luxurious, bright or subtle. Liesl also introduced me to Joelle who is charmingly modest and relaxed about the whole Purl phenomenon, which makes me love it even more.

I had a good idea about this 'editing' from my previous visits to Purl, but I could see exactly what Liesl means when I went into Purl Patchwork for the first time. As everyone who has written about PP before me has said, it's really very tiny as patchwork shops go, and yet there is not one fabric which hasn't earned it place on the two, tall, tastefully arranged walls. Despite the limitations of space - or, more likely, because of them - there is a great breadth and depth to the range which makes you consider colours, patterns, designs which you may never have even thought about before.

I fell particularly heavily for a number of delicate, beautifully coloured Japanese prints (above and in other photos) in unusual tones and shades. I also bought some prints by Denyse Schmidt and Amy Butler (n.b. there are 2 or 3 fabrics in the first pile which I bought at City Quilter), and had a great time mixing and matching until I gave up and, on Joelle's advice, simply bought the fabrics I liked ('go with your instinct', she said - a dangerous suggestion when my instinct was to buy a piece of everything).   

At the yarn Purl I had a much easier time. I arrived with a plan and left with what I came for - a mass of cheap, cheerful, colourful Cascade 220 for a new crochet project.

And now I'm hoping I've cured my tendency to purl, as well as my itchy fingers and my itchy feet. For a while, at least.

itchy feet, itchy fingers

I have had itchy feet since I was very young, so I know how to recognise and deal with the symptoms. Itchiness in my feet is particularly acute around this time of year, so I am going away for five nights on my own at the end of this week.

While I love the planning, the thinking and the organising involved, I also find that the prospect of travel makes me somewhat 'jiffly' as Simon would say (the slang verb 'to jiffle' is an expressive one for 'to fidget', a word which could have been invented for Simon when he was younger). When I know I'm off somewhere very soon, I find it hard to concentrate on current projects, like sewing up these fabrics to make a bluey-greeny 'Swimmining Pool' or 'Pond' quilt. 

And now the itchiness has spread to my fingers and I find I am literally and metaphorically feeling for something new. I don't know about you, but sometimes my fingertips really do itch for a lovely, new yarn project, something which will give tactile pleasure and demand that my fingers and hands embark on a new series of repetitive and satisfying actions.

I have some knitting on the go but it's not assuaging the itchiness, and I know that what I really want to do is start a crocheted granny square blanket with masses of colours and some new stitches. So, in lieu of some calming balm from the chemist's and to stop my fingers jiffling, yesterday I made myself work out the kind of square I want to use for this blanket.

I was so pleased to find that I now have enough crochet knowledge that I can understand how it works. I couldn't find a pattern for the square I have in mind, so I spent all yesterday afternoon with yarn, hook and books, and let my fingers have a lovely time playing with puffs and clusters. I think I've put together a template I like, so that now all I have to do is let my itchy feet get me to a yarn shop to buy the necessary treatment to cure my itchy fingers.

(The practice squares are very much that - practice. I suppose I could claim that the yellow and blue look is inspired by Monet's kitchen at Giverny, but that would be a lie because these are simply two balls of leftovers which contrast and show up the pattern and stitches. A whole blanket of these squares would induce nausea, and I'd rather suffer from itchy feet and itchy fingers than feel sick.)

tate postcard quilt

The Tate Postcard Quilt is ready to be used, and I think it may very well become the Trampoline Quilt.

It was inspired by a collection of postcards of paintings which I bought at the Tate Gallery after I'd had an hour to kill and had wandered round with no particular objective in mind. I'd been struck by the fact that an abstract by Terry Frost (bottom left in the photo below) resembled a fabric I'd bought but was finding difficult to put into a quilt. I gathered together a pile of postcards with red, white and black themes and then discovered that the addition of bottle green (as in the Gilbert and George painting - centre top) made the rest of the colours work far better together.

So I bought more greens and graphic prints and made a quilt using elongated 'postcards' (3" x 7") and arranged them to form a series of bold diamonds. It's machine-pieced and hand-quilted with large stitches using thick, emerald green DMC embroidery cotton, and it measures 69" x 77" (175cm x 195cm).

I like it, but I don't love it. Funnily enough, both Simon and Tom say it's one of their favourites. I don't know whether there's such a thing as 'masculine' taste in quilts, but I do wonder whether it's the string geometrics and obvious patterns, not to mention the very clear, definite colours, which appeal.

It's very different to my more usual organic colours and designs, and I have to say that I've learned a great deal from making it - about the patterns I like, and not buying enough of the right fabrics, and realising I am much better suited temperamentally to quilts which change and develop as I make them.

Fortunately, I realised today that I have found the ideal organic context for this rather inorganic quilt. I took it outside to photograph and saw that the trampoline, with its black mesh and dark green border, makes the perfect setting and frame. Right next to the trampoline there are bright red poppies with deep, blackish crosses on the petals, and a huge philadelphus (mock orange) whose smell is at its most powerful and evocative at the moment (it transports me back to the small, suburban road where I grew up - and reminds me of sitting on garden walls and smelling the odd mixture of the neighbour's philadelphus and the ice-cream van's dieselly fumes). 

The children spend ages on the trampoline on summer - and not always bouncing. Alice lies on it and reads, Tom and his friends put it on its side as use it as a wall to run against and bounce off, and Phoebe and her friends all crowd onto it to chat. So a Trampoline Quilt would be great for the gossip and reading sessions.

But have you ever tried to take photos of a quilt as you bounce up and down on it? I got so dizzy I thought I'd fall off.

Especially when I turned the quilt over to photograph the back.

I was only bouncing gently, but when the children are doing some serious vertigo-inducing stuff, they can throw the quilt onto the philadelphus for safe-keeping.

I'm beginning to think this quilt belongs more in the garden than in the house. It's come a long way since that cold day when the Tate was a warm, inviting place to escape for an hour and my mind was ready to be filled with ideas.

thoughts on patchwork

Lucy Boston was famous for her books and her garden, and for being a late-developer in life. She began making the garden of the Manor House when she was in her late forties, wrote the first in the series of books which made her name when she was over 60, and lived to the age of 98. But what really amazed me when I visited her house yesterday, were the patchwork quilts she made until her eyesight deteriorated when she was almost 90.

She rarely talked or wrote about her patchworks and yet she spent winter after winter producing the most exquisite, hand-made pieces which speak volumes about her skills and artistry. She exhibited them only once, in the 1970s, and many of them still belong to members of the family. She didn't quilt, date or name them and she seems to have enjoyed the process of patchwork as much as, if not more than, the end product.

'Kaleidoscope', made when Lucy was 81, photographed by Julia Hedgecoe.

She was self-taught so her phenomenal ability to create patterns and effects must have been entirely instinctive. Her loveliest quilts are made from cotton dress fabrics, although I did see a wonderful 'Duster' quilt made when clothing could only be bought with precious coupons during the war - it's made with dusters, tea-towels, ticking and linen remnants.

But the most stunning aspect of her quilts, besides the rule of twenty hand-stitches to the inch which she maintained even when she was losing her sight, is the way she could create new patterns from the same fabric by cutting and placing so carefully that she made what appear to be different fabrics in the same top, and yet they are the result of inspired cutting (even fussier than fussy cutting). I think the best way to describe the technique is to say that it was as if she saw scraps of fabric through a kaleidoscope in her mind, one which she could shake to create any number of new arrangements.

What really impressed me at Lucy Boston's house was the way she had three major creative strands to her life - books, garden and patchwork - and how she set and achieved very high standards for herself. I can't help feeling that this is the way to maintain a young mind in an ageing body (although I would have to replace the 20 stitches per inch with something a little less demanding), and Lucy's example of how to grow old creatively is one which has made me realise that late-developers have so much to look forward to and enjoy, and that they should be envied and not pitied.   

house and garden

At last, a day out on my own to a place I've been wanting to visit for a long time. And it was as if the house and garden I went to see today had stored up some extra riches and joys as a reward for having waited so long. Or maybe it's like that all the time, because The Manor House at Hemingford Grey is a magical place to visit.

There was 'room for more people', but no-one else took advantage of the invitation hanging by the gate, so I had a guided tour of the house on my own. Parts of it date back as far as 1130, so it's incorrect to say that it 'belonged' to Lucy Boston (author of the Green Knowe books for children) who lived there from the late 1930s to 1990, because she was just one of a long line of inhabitants and guardians of the place. Today, her daughter-in-law, Diana Boston, lives and continues to cultivate the wonderful garden there, and it was she who took me round. 

The house is right next to the Great Ouse and is secluded and sheltered; I'm sure it was a degree or two warmer in the garden than in the incredibly English-pretty village (thatched cottages, lupins, hollyhocks, pub, church, post office) and that this microclimate accounts for the lushness and abundance of the garden.

There are 'hottish' borders with masses of California poppies and tall spires of white foxgloves, and cooler borders with huge peonies and the same, elegant foxgloves.

The garden's specialities are old roses and bearded irises - and they are at their peak at the moment. I couldn't have timed my visit better and I had a wonderful time wandering round the garden enjoying all the incredible scents and smells. The roses are intensely perfumed, as you'd expect, but I'd never realised just how much the scents of different iris vary. I love smelling any iris - they smell as I imagine rain should smell (I always feel you should be able to drink iris scent, whereas you should wear rose perfume).

The garden has many different sections and you can see why, with the house, it made the perfect setting for a series of children's books.

Just after I'd left, Simon phoned to wish me 'happy anniversary' (nineteen years today) because we had forgotten what day it was before he went to work (now there's a surprise), and I told him about the lovely experience I'd just had. He said he'll come with me next year - just so that I can spend more time looking at the details this time. Like these poppies which are unfurling at this time of year.

I didn't take any photos inside the house, but I'll write about it tomorrow. Because the real reason for my visit was to see the amazing hand-made patchworks which Lucy Boston stitched by the fire in the winter evenings. The garden and atmosphere were marvellous bonuses, and great inspiration for the next nineteen years with Simon. He needs to come just so he can see what he'll be working on...

allotment quilt

Spring has sprung and the Allotment Quilt has burst into flower and fruit and vegetable. This quilt has been a pleasure to sow, sew and harvest, from the moment I had the idea when I was in Stockholm last October, to hanging it up onto the long branch of the cherry tree yesterday so that I could stand back and enjoy its glorious colour.

It's called the Allotment Quilt because I adore allotments with all their neat plots, lines and patterns. I visit the local allotments in summer to admire the beans and sunflowers and tomatoes and dahlias, and I have favourite allotments I look out for when I'm on the train to London. I keep magazine articles about allotments and allotment-holders because one day I want to join their number and make small talk about broad beans and rhubarb, mulching and staking.

When I was in Stockholm I visited the most amazing organic cafe surrounded by fields of flowers and veg growing in long, wide lines, like an enormous, giant allotment. Everything was coloured yellow, gold and all shades of green, with strong flashes of pink and red from chard and cosmos, and I began to imagine a quilt based on this wonderful scene.                                                                                                                                    

The trees were more vibrantly yellow than at home where I'd noticed far more reds and oranges,

and I wanted to keep that sunshine, sunflower brightness in my quilt.

Seeing the Stockholm pictures with the quilt pictures makes me think I've done what I set out to do.

I put together a big pile of suitably leafy, flowery, fruity, veggie, twiggy fabrics (they all had to fit the theme) which I then cut into strips of random lengths across the full width of each piece. I laid out the strips in two blocks making sure that no seams matched in the middle and that there was a balance of thick, thin, pattern and colour, and I machine-sewed them together. I'd originally planned to have three blocks but this quilt grew like Topsy, as if it had been sprinkled with some natural fertiliser. The finished quilt measures a whopping 87.5" x 102.5" or 222cm x 260cm.

I'm getting to like borders on my quilts these days, and decided a narrow dark one would frame the whole thing well. I also wanted a yellowy, vegetal outside border and used the Martha Negley twig fabric which makes the edges of the quilt look like they are sprouting new growth, or at least in need of a little strimming.

I've been looking for an excuse to use the Kaffe Fassett Arbour fabric in Tobacco for ages(it's from the Lille Collection - possibly the loveliest group of quilt fabrics ever, I think - I bought mine from Glorious Color), and the Allotment Quilt meant I could use acres of it. Because the quilt had grown so organically, I found that I didn't have quite enough for the back even with two full widths, so I added a strip of one of my favourite vegetable prints to make it wide enough.

I hand-quilted it with yellow thread in horizontal lines quite far apart and following the seams of the strips which means that some of the quilt lines are offset and don't carry on over the full width - something I did deliberately because I like the less-than-perfect gardening approach that comes with allotments, and was quite happy to reflect this.

I love this quilt. I think it's my favourite so far. Next step, a real allotment...