STARTING TOMORROW - CATCH IT QUICK

1ST MARCH 2012 - WORKSHOP DAY - still time to sign up - see LINKS above in PAGES for DESIGN TO STITCH or its blog HERE

SMASHEES & TANTALISING TECHNIQUES - the one off Smashee workshop BARGAINS end tomorrow as well.

Dull, grey day here, much to do, see you tomorrow x

TRY NOT TO RANT

Yesterdays post was a huge rant at disorganisation, so today am going to be sweetness and light !!! :-]

Some times in photography you capture the moment perfectly, look at this heron in flight (scared by me creeping up on it)  This is the lake at Bletchley park.
I most definately will be using this in stitch, the 3D quality is fabulous, I am so glad that I took my DSLR camera and did not just take my phone, shame it was not on RAW format but the detail is fabulous anyway

Its sunny again in England, hooray, hope you enjoy your Sunday, thanks for reading x

BLETCHLEY PARK QUILT SHOW

On a beautiful sunny and warm February day Rachel & I took a trip to Bletchley Park Quilt Show, run by Region 7 of the Quilters Guild
Bletchley Park - the home of the Enigma machine & the radio centre.  Beautiful grounds & a stunning house
All marred by dreadful organisation, dont know who was to blame but standing in one queue for a half hour not moving & being slightly accosted by a woman with stickers and a plastic bag asking for 10 pounds, given a sticker then told to walk a good way again, only to stand in ANOTHER queue for at least 20 minutes to get into one of the most cramped places that I have ever been to.  The lighting was poor and the display, well later in the day the quilts on display turned out to be excellent but at the beginning, elbows, tipping over stands and the poor traders, stuffed into corners, come on Quilters Guild for a total of 13 pounds this was just not on.
There were toilets inside but no where to eat, you had to exit to eat or drink (we stood in a queue and got to the counter to be told the hot drinks machine had broken, so after being at the venue for nearly 2 hours we had water to drink, unless we went to the other part of the cafe and queued again)
Then we queued to GET IN again
Awful
I have been to many many quilt shows home and abroad and have never had such a shambles, if it had been cold or raining we would have all been soaked, we even had to queue on grass, great for ladies with sticks and a lovely woman with a guide dog
I guess that the show would have been lovely with a tenth of the people, wandering around such a fabulous building setting it up must have been ace.
I am very cross with the Quilters Guild for charging so much for what was only 3 rooms with quilts in and traders (not huge rooms)
We didnt go around the rest of the site, which was included in the admission fee, aparantly we could have got a ticket to return again to the park during the year if we found whereever it was and queued again.  So we decided to go to Threads & Patches patchwork shop in Fenny Stratford.  There we found a toilet and a lovely tea room & plenty of fabric to fondle and coo over
A lovely day out and such a bonus in beautiful weather, with excellent company, so enjoyable after being so low for so long.  I saw lots of people that I knew, chatted to some, waved to others.  Nothing really stood out but the work was mostly based on the park & inspirations from it
Thank you Rachel for a lovely time x
Look at the wonderful ceilings below

BLETCHLEY PARK QUILT SHOW

BLETCHLEY PARK & ROTARY CUTTING

Hi from the sixteen degree country in February.  Weather gone totally mad

This weekend is the BLETCHLEY PARK QUILT SHOW - 25 / 26th February 2012

Unfortunately I wont be going, it should be very good

This invitation card is an interesting way of presenting text - students of mine please note!!!

Not much going on here in the studio at the moment, trying to rest as much as possible & sometimes surf for wedding outfits that dont cost as much as a small car

Please remember that its not too late to sign up for the courses starting 1st March 2012

Visit the PAGE BUTTONS above

I hope that you like the updated blog, I am going to leave it like this for a while (hmmmm???)

The bird image is a design for cloth as it is a repeated image, it needs some 'tweaking' (reminds me of Youve got Mail)

Remember that film?

I like to buy my wadding from www.creativegrids.com  they have a FREE POSTAGE offer on at the moment, they dont just sell wadding but all sorts of stuff, good place to get 505 spray glue with no postage, I still love my omnigrid rulers

Even though creative grids have an excellent range.  I suppose thats what I started with and because I have so many sizes (lucky me, I know, but collected over more than 30 years, so I deserve them, I have 2 broken ones as well both large squares and both broken by SOMEONE ELSE, you can guess who, when left propped up in the wrong place, is there a right place for sewing? if there is then someone tell me....no dont bother....a house...a home ...a stitcher whoo hoo)

I like the yellow colour and the black of the creative grids rulers does not show up as well for me, having said that I have quite a few of their rulers as well and one random other make

They are expensive but oh so worth it

You need 2 cutting mats a very large one and a very small one (or a turntable mat which I have purchased recently but am not quite so enamoured with yet)

Then a good quality 45mm ROTARY CUTTER got to be wither OLFA or Friskers - dont buy a cheap make, believe me, dont

Then comes the rulers

1inch by 6 inch or 12 inch

6 inch square or 4 inch square

I hate the rulers with half inches on the edges, believe me, I have some and no end of times my students cut wrong because of this

Then the important one 12 inch by 6 inch or 14 inch by 4 inch

Lots of people buy the long 6 inch by 24 to start with, much too long and uncontrollable, great for cutting strips, but you need to learn how to control the cutting method before buying such a large ruler

I love my 15 inch ruler - the broken one & a new one and also the 12 inch ruler, I would buy a 12 and a half inch square for squaring up blocks and this is one of the creative grid ones that I do have

MIND YOUR FINGERS, when you cut.

Except for the one inch ruler which is really for marking and cutting around templates with a small cutter, your fingers should be behind the one inch mark

Get loads of scrap fabric, tatty old stuff, IRON it smooth, dont try to cut through lumpy bumpy pieces of fabric

ITS A PET HATE OF MINE - when students do not IRON their fabric BEFORE CUTTING

Successful patchwork relies on careful stage by stage

1.  IRON - leave to go cool before cutting

2.  Cut unfolded

3. Cut with a sharp blade

Inbetween make sure that templates are accurate and markings can be seen, before cutting

Remember that the corner junctions are the most important for accuracy

I think that I will post this under a PAGE above, so it will be easy to return to and for me to add too

Am off to explore the sunshine

Thanks for reading x

EMBROIDERERS GUILD

ICELAND POSTCARDS
Embroiderers Guilds up and down the land are busy stitching 6 inch by 4 inch postcards of the countries taking part in this years LONDON OLYMPIC GAMES

My local branch KETTERING, of which I was first Chairman (or woman or person whatever..) drew ICELAND

There are 12 postcards, headed by the ICELAND flag, beautifully stitched by Carolyn.
I volunteered to stitch them together before I felt so ill, but this morning hooray feel human again, so I have finished them off and packaged them up ready to be posted to headquarters
The work is completely superb, I have not asked permission yet to post close ups so will wait until then to show, they will be on display at East Midlands Regional Day & other venues no doubt.
I don't really know what is happening to them...its a bit of a mystery

Anyhow this is my entry

It is based on the fissures caused by the ash eruption, the blue beads and stitching represent the small amount of blue sky that could be seen through the ash in a photograph that I viewed on the TV.  When the planes were not flying I went for a walk on a clear blue day, the sky was amazing with no white trails and no noise
I sat in a field for ages and just looked and absorbed a phenomenon that will most probably never happen again.  I was so pleased when we were allocated Iceland
The piece is edged with machine fringing - a favoured technique of mine

This is a close up, there is a lot of invisible stitching and the main cloth chosen was raw silk, I have added sprays and spray gesso, manipulating techniques and hand stitch

The photos enlarge if you click on them

Off to try and do something - whoo hoo, thanks for reading x

NEW FREE TUTORIAL

There is a new page link to the tutorial above, see how this was created

HAPPY VALENTINES

To all of you from me - a very happy Valentines day

Thank you for the continued support x

My gift to you, a copyright free image of my flowers.
Print this out onto fabric and then colour it in with fabric markers, Inktense pencis or blocks mixed with fabric medium or fabric paint, even acrylic paints mixed with fabric medium will produce a handle enough to stitch
Just like painting by numbers fill in each area
Then add stitching, quilting or embroidery
Finally embellish with beads
Happy stitching x

QUILTING IN IRELAND

I have been sent this link for the Irish quilt festival

http://www.iqfoi.com/index.html
 
Jinny Beyer ....Ricky Tims ..... Wish I could go, but we have the wedding to go to so maybe next time
 
Dont forget the SPECIAL WORKSHOP  DEALS END TOMORROW

QUILTS FOR LONDON

http://culturalplayingfield.wordpress.com/2012/02/10/quilts-4-london-presentation-at-the-guildhall-northampton/

Shirley Wiblin, one of my City & Guilds students, & a group of ladies have handed over to the Quilts for London organisers a staggering 1,561 pennants.  This is Northamptonshires donation to the 14,000 needed to give EVERY athlete at the London Olympics a souvenir pennant.

Wow Shirley, fantastic result.

Shows what dedication can do, I am very very proud of her and her team

http://www.quilts4london.org.uk

The picture shows the Mayor of Northampton at the Guildhall with some of the pennants, there are more images on the links

TWO DAYS TO GO

VALENTINES DAY - 2 DAYS TO GO for workshop OFFERS
See pages and previous posts
Join by direct link on the sidebar

Pretty flowers, photographed with a Nikon D70 camera

Colour, line, shape, texture & form

Patchwork design, especially for you for Valentines, click on photo for enlargement

Noughts & Crosses, an idea for a workshop - let me know by comment or email if you are interested



SPECIAL OFFERS

Please note that DESIGN TO STITCH is not a drawing course, you do not have to able to draw or paint, if you can then fab, if you cant then fab too :-)
I will show you how to adapt the elements & principles of design, through technique into stitch - http://designtostitch.blogspot.com/

I am a HOLEY MOLEY - Dale Rollersons year long internet group

I have been the invited artist & very much enjoyed developing ideas for the workshops.

We are on the last of the workshops & been provided with 15 ideas for beads.
YES 15 IDEAS - lucky us
This has been an excellent course, lots of information & ideas
Hopefully one day Dale will write a book on this & you can all share in it.

The reason I am stating this is that you may be unaware of how many ideas have been invented & developed by Dale.
There seems to be nowadays so much blatent copying of others ideas.  WITHOUT giving credit to the originator.
WHY IS THIS??
What is wrong with saying 'I learnt this technique from........'  or I have developed this idea from an article or workshop that I took / saw / read by ......

What a sad creative community we have become not giving links or credit to those (like Dale & myself & many others) to the originators of ideas

Okay it is difficult with something like a patchwork block or using bonding agents, that have been in the public domain, but I see on blogs and website blatant copying without a mention to where the idea was first seen
Some of the products like Lutradur & Evolon & Zeelon are so new that there is an originator.
In my Tantalising Technique workshops, I developed the ideas specifically for the workshop.  In my Smashees item making workshops each item is an amalgamine of techniques making original items.
Look at the image above.  This is hand felted & dyed blanket by Jemma Saunders of www Unique to her, then I have used SOYA wax & silk paints.  The cut a stencil of a bird and used the new product DECOLORANT to print the birds.  I am the originator of this combined technique.  If someone uses it to post on a blog or in a course all I am asking is ...I made this from an original idea learnt from http://shelaghfolgate.blogspot.com......not/ alot to ask for hours of trialing out and developing.beeinspiredltd.co.uk
So come on bloggers give credit where it is due PLEASE

WHAT DO YOU THINK?

Hand dyed calico (Procion MX) Commercial stencil, Decolorant

WORKSHOP BONANZA

******NEW******

DESIGN TO STITCH - £60

Previous students of any of my classes or purchase of a workshop £10 discount

Early booking FOR ALL £10 discount

Can use both discounts

ALL DISCOUNTS RUN OUT ON

14TH FEBRUARY 2012

Makes a great Valentines gift

Workshop starts 1st MARCH 2012

Dont miss out

*****************

I have been asked if THE SMASHEES can be bought per workshop as they are complete items

So until 1st March 2012, each workshop can be bought for the BARGAIN price of £10

This is the lowest price these will be offered  at

See new page BARGAINS at the top of the blog

Buy using the new button on the side bar

**********************

TANTALISING TECHNIQUES

Please email me at

shelaghfolgate@aol.com

If you would like to purchase these workshops separately

GROTTY DAY

Its a grot outside, a grot in my head and a grotty on my lip...but sunshine has just visited in the form of my son.  He runs a SAFETY business, check out his website
http://www.folgatesafety.co.uk/ & follow the links to his ebay page for offers

Back to patchwork & a couple of traditional cushions
first a curved patchwork by hand using vintage inspired fabrics

A mariners compass that was a pig to piece, should have used foundation piecing but I didnt, I cut ans pieced all the templates and the fabric was stiff as well, but just the right colour

It also has part of my treasured Liberty fabric, bought in the Liberty shop in the Lanes in brighton, a long time ago.  I hoard these small pieces of this fabric like gold dust, they were so very expensive and I wanted a few of them so had the smallest cut they would let which was 10 cm, try doing a mariners compass out of that!!  I still love this cushion, its only 10 inches with a pleated edge & a huge stain which will not come off

Here is a bit of COLOUR BLENDING, using silk and the sewing machine & curved cutting, makes an interesting type of quilting

Try putting TWO threads through the SAME NEEDLE

Interested in more HINTS & TIPS - join my newsletter or sign up for one of my courses, see pages above or side bar

or visit http://designtostitch.blogspot.com/   for more details

Try the same with black & white threads, making a blend of grey

How about this?  Picture of me manipulated in photoshop elements, ooooh scarey, but would make a good patchwork, love the range of blues with the soft yellow

Here is a tonal version, not so dramatic - I was messing about Andy Warhol style, shame I dont look like Marilyn Monroe

Gosh wasnt she a stunning woman- look at those cheek bones and lips, such a shame that she dies so young.
Dinner time now, wherever you are I hope you have a lovely day / night, thanks for reading

WELL IT CAME

Lovely sticky soft stuff, makes great snowballs, about 2 inches and a bit of a back door drift.  Is thawing now and the sun has been out.  What a huge fuss the weather people have made of this

So I have photographed a few of my patchwork pieces

Lonni Rossi Geisha panels.  This hangs in my dining room and I love it.  The ladies come just in a creamy white colour and I painted them, this was a few years ago now.  Painting onto patchwork fabric has been around for eons.  I fussy cut the fabric to give the halo around their heads and also used the gold sweeping streaks to ground the panels, would have looked disembodied otherwise
The panels have been framed with attic windows style pieces, the corners are mitred but by the quick technique of half square triangles - I guess if you are not a patchworker then I have left you hanging with these terms.  I have added a signature piece that I call Shelaghs sparkle.  I try to add it into each piece of patchwork that I make.  Not original just a folded strip but adds a strong graphic mark.  The darker of the attic window strips is Japanese text and had to be carefully fussy cut for the words to run round the squares logically.  I do love a challenge
It is heavily machine quilted using Japanese inspired patterns in gold thread using the machine quilting stitch, which is a complete pig of a stitch & one that I think Bernina could have made so much better.  I rarely use it nowadays, hmmm maybe its time to resurrect it!
Around the same time I made this

These ladies hang in my hall
They are Lonni Rossi as well.  The shop that I work for Bee Inspired had just started selling patchwork material and bought some of this range
I spent a long time with the restricted pallet designing where each of the fabric would go
These were very popular a few years ago.  The patterns are like the heads from the previous picture, creamy white with black lines.
All of the magazines ran a how to do and Lonni Rossi produced a pattern as well
I got the fabrics right at the beginning, before any of the patterns arrived.
All the patterns used bonding and zigzag edges
Oh no not me, these are all REVERSE APPLIQUE
I produced a pattern piece for each of the myriad of pieces, including placement lines to maximise the potential of the fabric.  Look at the lines in the purple skirt
I made folded flowers for their hair, the sticks were painted
They took a very long time to make, every piece was stitched from the reverse and cut away and satin stitched, building up layers from the back, complicated, but they are soft and not stiff like the bonded ones.
They are surrounded by a sparkle and the only downside is that they are backed in white fabric - because thats what I was given
I love them, daily I look at them and daily my favourite changes, they have names on them
She did produce another range of these but I didnt succumb
Finally for today

If you followed the creative brain edges blog HERE you will remember this chair.  Dale & I challenged each other to draw a chair, I very much enjoyed doing this.  Well this is my chair, my sitting room chair and it usually looks like this

The pieces of patchwork are MY adaptation of what is commonly called Stack and Whack, really just a pile of fussy cutting

There is this quilt, with various sizes of machine vermechelli as the quilting, a cushion & a coffee table piece that is outline quilted (not shown)

This was one of the fabrics produced by Makower that I made two quilts from

In those days the pattern had to go onto 2 sides of A4, as they were not yet downloadable.  Very hard to design actually onto 1 and a half pages.  The designers have it easy now as they can be as long a pattern as they want.  Typed up in Adobe and uploaded.  However, when I worked for them I was commissioned to design two quilts in differing colourways & the pattern. I was provided with swatches of the fabric range and chose from that alongside their basics range.  Another difficulty, especially with the novelty fabrics
Now a designer has to compete with other designers, design the quilt and submit it for approval.   So all that hard work and sampling and you may not even get the job.  I dont work for them now, I prefer to do my own patterns
If anyone would like to purchase a pattern, please email me and I will sort out a link etc.
Actually maybe a good idea.....wow thats two today, must be feeling better lol
Here is the alternative colourway close up

Must get back to my piece I am making for our SofA exhibition in August.
Hope you have enjoyed seeing a different side of me
More to come
Dont forget that the SPECIAL OFFERS on the workshop courses run out on the 14th February 2012
Thanks for reading x