MILLYPENNY

I have just submitted my online entry to the Dislocation Challenge. Dislocation is the theme for this year's Contemporary Quilt Group Challenge. Here's a detail shot of the quilt, will holding off showing the whole quilt for a while. I called my piece "In the Street Where I was Lost". When I was researching items on the theme of "Dislocation" I came across an article by Samuel Beckett in which he mentioned cultural dislocation, and being lost in the street of places that he used to know. So I was inspired by that idea when coming up with my quilt idea. Still have to add a sleeve and label, but that won't take too long. Now I have to go and make the sample of the quilt to send off as part of the jurying process.

The C ontemporary Quilt Group of the British Isles run a journal quilt project every year. This year I decided to join in, so I'll be making a small quilt every month. The journal quilts  have to be 8 x 8" square, the only rule this year is that each quilt has to contain a line that runs from one side to another. I've also decided to use up my leftover workshop samples and sample pieces for my journal quilts. I keep finding interesting bits and pieces that never got finished or completed, so this will be an opportunity to use them up. Here's Journal Quilt no. 1. Snippets of organza etc. were laid on fabric, free-motion stitched and then the soldering iron was used to distress certain parts. I satin stitched a few thick lines to the quilt. Journal Quilt no. 1 I have a few other journal quilts almost finished, just need to complete the bindings!

Last month I spent a weekend down in Cork at the Cork Textiles Network "Making Tomorrow" Annual Conference.Had a great time there and met loads of lovely people. On Saturday morning we had lectures from Rachael Howard , Cas Holmes and Liz Spillane. Then on Saturday afternoon, everyone went off to their different workshops. I was lucky enough to get on Cas Holmes "Using the Found, Extreme Stitching" Workshop which booked out really fast. A small collage I started at the workshop  Cas Holmes had some really lovely samples that we could all look at and admire! Some of Cas Holmes work I spent the afternoon and next day working on altering paper, monoprints, rubbings etc. to make various collages. One of the collages I worked on One really nice thing about the conference, is that at the end everyone brings displays their work in the canteen area, so you get to see what the other workshops did! Here are some of the baskets made at one class. N...

Have been neglecting this blog for ages as when I get home from work it's too dark to take any decent photographs. Hopefully this weekend I'll get around to taking a few decent pictures of what I'm working on.  For the last few weeks I was working on this wall-hanging. It was going to be entered in a competition, but  didn't get it finished in time for the deadline. So I now can take my time finishing it (it could be years that happens though!). The weather this weekend is supposed to be awful, so am planning on staying indoors and working on one of my UFO's which I unearthed last week. The Contemporary Group of the Quilters Guild UK is having a competition at the Festival of Quilts in August. The theme is "DISLOCATION". I've been mulling over the theme for the past week or so, and got an idea last night about what to make. So I have to get started testing out a few ideas in my sketchbook, make some samples and screen-prints,...

The Cork Textiles Network (CTN) are currently holding an exhibition "White Noise" in the Cork School of Music. Exhibition runs till December 20th. I entered a piece entititled "Sound Waves" for this exhibition. At last year's CTN conference, I did an indigo dyeing workshop. Some of the dyed pieces really suited the White Noise theme, one had a section which  looked a bit like a ghetto-blaster and another had some lines which reminded me of like sound waves. Sound Waves   Detail of Sound Waves

I have loads of projects on the go at the moment. For once, I'm trying to be organised and get stuff started early for exhibitions. I usually end up running out of time before deadlines but not this year (fingers crossed!). Unfortunately, none of my projects are finished yet so haven't any decent pics to show at present.  This is one of my works in progress, for next year's International Quilt Festival of Ireland.  I have the quilt top completed now, so hopefully I'll get it basted and quilted over the bank holiday weekend. And I when was down in Waterford on Saturday for the IPS National AGM I spotted this cool piece of graffiti near the Tower Hotel. I'm also working on a piece for the upcoming "White Noise" exhibition that the Cork Textiles Network are having in November. I cut out my fabric last night, so will try and get the quilt top put together this weekend as well.