“that is the same with all quilts, you can see them two different ways, by looking at the dark pieces, or else the light.”
From Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood, 1996
Following on from my take on the stained glass bird quarry at Ely Cathedral last month, I was enjoying the weight of my stork embroidery scissors that I bought from the long-established Ernest Wright factory in Sheffield. The expression on the stork’s face makes me smile every time I pick them up, so I thought I would create my own version of the scissor sisters (the American pop rock band are unlikely to want to recruit me as I can’t sing at all, so a fabric version seemed easier). My drawing skills are as bad as my singing but even I can draw around a pair of scissors.
Scissor Sisters
I’ve recently joined The Quilters' Guild and went along to their conference “A Celebration of Quilting” at Wherstead Park in Ipswich on the 1st of the month to see what they get up to. I was particularly interested to hear Sara Impey’s talk as I am a big fan of her thoughtful work and love her book 'Text in Textile Art'. She is, as you may expect, a very eloquent and entertaining speaker and kindly gave away free copies of a previous Quilt Art catalogue which was fascinating to read through when I got home.
There were some inspiring quilts on display;
Everyone I met was really friendly and welcoming. People all wear name badges and mine had supplementary stars on – one to indicate it was my first time at conference and presumably therefore people should be nice to me, and a second to indicate I was attending on my own (and therefore presumably indicating to those in the know, that I was a Billy-No-Mates and they should talk to me!). I don’t actually think the stars were required as people chatted anyway and the only person commenting on the stars was someone asking what they meant. I met Amanda Jane Ogden at Sara’s talk and have subsequently signed up for her monthly newsletter. Amanda has a fascinating textile website and has done a really good review of the conference talks here; https://amandajanetextiles.com/2022/04/11/quilting-talks-at-the-qgbi-conference/
In the afternoon I attended a workshop run by the Korean textile artist Magenta Kang who works in Cambridgeshire, making traditional silk bojagi pincushions. She is lovely and the examples of her work that she brought along were exquisite. However although I loved handling the silk, I don’t think that my ageing eyes will ever allow me to replicate the precision of her tiny stitches and I was somewhat embarrassed when I borrowed a fellow student's rotary cutter and it immediately fell apart in my hand!
It was an excellent day, so I would definitely go again. I toyed with the idea of doing a short detour to drive past my old house in Suffolk but the desire for home and tea was stronger.
The quote at the top of this post, from Atwood’s novel, with its reference to ‘dark pieces’ can be read in different ways. Like most people, I am usually attracted to the light, frivolous and fun but when I was driving back from the conference I was thinking, if not of dark pieces, at least of more overtly serious and political work. Sara Impey had spoken about how she was doing one piece about what was going on in the world, politicians etc and found she ended up getting angrier and angrier as she worked. A couple of people in our village are flying the Ukrainian flag and I wanted to do something to show support. I work with children and was moved and distressed last month to see the pictures online showing the 109 empty pushchairs displayed in the centre of Lviv that represent those Ukrainian children killed since the Russian invasion.
I’ve started work on something based on the Ukrainian flag but mourning those 109 children. Dylan Thomas’ poem A Refusal to Mourn the Death, by Fire, of a Child in London ends with the line, “After the first death, there is no other.” There have been many interpretations of this statement but tragically, the one thing we really know for certain is that it is untrue. There will always be other wars and more families torn apart. I was originally going to represent the 109 children as 109 sunflowers against a background of a torn flag but wanted to remember that these are 109 individuals so have been stitching a mixture of flowers, stars and other motifs in different sizes and shades of yellow, hoping to retain some sense of individuality.
I have collected many fragments of broken blue and white pottery which have been discarded in the garden over the years and wanted to add a few of these to represent the fragmentation of people's lives. I wasn’t sure how to attach the fragments to the canvas until I remembered the shisha embroidery technique from India and other parts of Asia in which tiny mirror discs or beetle wings are attached to fabric to mimic jewels. A short online search brought up a wealth of gorgeous examples with elaborate stitching and demonstration videos. For my purposes I wanted simple rather than unduly decorative but my first attempt was, to be frank, an unmitigated mess. I was going to unpick but decided to put another lot of foundation stitches on top and found that actually unmitigated messes make for useful padding. I enjoyed trialling a new technique, helped no doubt by going outside to sit in the sun, next to my newly opened and richly fragrant tree peony, with the birds singing and bees humming and an awareness that I am very privileged and my sons are safe.
I like that the bottom piece I've used is a broken fragment of willow pattern with a portion of a garden bridge as bridges are such hopeful things.
Now of course I’m thinking of other things that I could use in textile pieces to utilise the shisha technique. I have a lovely old farthing with a wren on it that I’ve kept since childhood (I vaguely remember us going decimal!). I think the wren may become part of another bird piece at some time. And my son has quite a collection of foreign coins which would be quite fun to incorporate into a money tree. Back in January I went to see the seals at Horsey Gap – on a beautiful frosty morning, just me and the seals. A lovely cream velvet pup raised its flipper, which I took to be a friendly wave, and I used a photo that I took of it for a beach scene. I think the next seaside inspired scene will include some shisha shells.
Bobbin for April;
I love glass; it seems a purer kind of alchemy to turn sand into something that can be so useful and so beautiful. The combination of glass and bobbins is then always going to attract and this one that I bought from an online auction site is fascinating as not only is it a sturdy glass bobbin but it has plant life preserved within in. I’m not sure what the plant is, either a flowering grass or faded lavender head (??) but I love that it is immortalised there forever (or until I drop it). A search indicates that the maker may be Martin Tuffnell of Yorkshire but that requires further research and perhaps a trip north…
