I have had a new lease of life with my Laura Ashley project. My huge Body Shop/Anita Roddick quilt has finally gone to its new home and this seems like a good time to make a start on the large Laura Ashley piece. As ever it will be made in panels because this is only way I can manage something as big and heavy. I will post pictures of the other panels I have soon, but wanted to show you a finished one based on the outlines of clothes.
So many of the scraps that I stared my patchwork career were fents – the bits that are leftover from cutting out pattern pieces – that they keep on creeping into this project. This is a page from a sketchbook project where they re-emerged:
This panel is all hand-stitched and I had a good time manipulating the fabric using a kantha type stitch which relies on running stitch in parallel rows to ripple the fabric:
And you can really see the effect of the variegated thread.
I also really enjoyed using stem stitch. I have never been able to do this until I got a lesson from the fantastic Tanya Bentham. I love in this picture – where I am playing with the idea of the red thread which binds us all together – the way that the stem stitch sits on top of the kantha-y stuff:
Really, though in this post, I just wanted to post some pictures taken in very strong sunlight. One reason is that this is so rare. It is dark, cold, grey and wet here, so a crisp sunny day is a real luxury. I have posted before, however, about how much I love to photograph my work when there are strong shadows and contrast. I love it because in close-up (with the wonderful new camera) the textiles take on a sculptural look:
I will post a bit more about this panel, but I know that some people read my blog on Sunday afternoons, and I wanted to have some nice pictures for them.
