Scrappy Strip Quilt - and butterflies, dinosaurs, fractals and more

I finished my quilt. I was torn on whether I wanted to block print the fabric or not... but I'm glad I did. Here's the reverse:



I made this quilt with stripes of fabric scraps from my stash, including vintage thrifted fabrics and contemporary prints. I block printed the sashing with my own carved monarch butterfly lino block. The reverse is a patchwork with the green sashing fabric, rectangles of the fabrics used on the front and a series of my block prints on fabric including a dinosaur, jellyfish, bees, butterflies, Russian nesting dolls, a fractal triangle, a quail, a rhino, and a blue whale. The quilting is done in a couple of variegated threads, by machine. The quilt is 39 inches by 57 inches (1 m by 146 cm), maybe the size of a child's bed.



Pretty nifty what one can do with scraps, imagination and patience, no?

Sails

I've made some more of those collaged or chine collé linocut sailing ships.

fish are jumping

Today, after solving my mother's technological conundrums, we went to the Humber to see the salmon spawning. There was a photo of a Humber River salmon shot by one of the Globe and Mail photographers this week; I had not previously realized we could see this right here in the city. With some coaching from RJH, I managed to capture one of them with his camera:





I've been to see the salmon run in Sooke, BC, which was quite the experience. While there they are larger and more plentiful, it was pretty amazing here too. Even here there were some pretty impressively sized fish, and the steeper slope meant they were jumping much higher. They really do seem to fly. It was nice to see how many people had come out to watch them. Next week, the trout are expected to do the same thing. Trout of course are smaller, but more acrobatic by reputation. If you're interested, you can see them from either side of the river, especially about midway between Bloor and Dundas St W.

These are RJH's photos:

Sailing ships

I had this idea to combine my extravagant collection of Japanese washi papers and assorted ephemera with block print, like I had done in my Unicorn Amongst Umbrellas series for a while. I based my ship block on a decorative drawing on a sixteenth century Dutch map. The sails are washi, a nautical chart, some vintage sheet music from Lady Redjeep and assorted things.

Groundhog

Ah yes, September. When the nights get cooler and thoughts naturally turn to ... Groundhog Day. That's right. This might seem an unseasonable offering (winter is coming), but, you see, I like Groundhog Day because it's perfectly absurd. Here we are in our allegedly modern country, prognosticating weather by harassing celebrity rodents (Wiarton Willie, Shubenacadie Sam,...). Further, this is Canada. Unless you live in Victoria (and possibly Vancouver), if it's February 2, you don't need a groundhog to tell you there will be 6 more weeks of winter.* If you live south of the border, anywhere near the most famous American prognosticating groundhog, Punxsutawney Phil, the same is true. Shadow or no shadow, winter ain't over on the 2^nd of February.



Every year, I write something for Groundhog Day. Every year, I think I should make a print for the occasion, but I never do in time. Well, I got the jump on 2012. These are two copies of a block print of a groundhog - and his shadow - on Japanese kozo paper 11" by 12.5" (28 cm by 31.8 cm). The shadow is printed with thermochromic ink, so when heated it disappears! Whether the groundhog can see his shadow is determined by temperature. The cool blue state and hot colourless state are both shown. So the print itself serves as a prognosticating groundhog for Groundhog Day! If the shadow is heated above 30^oC (86 F) then it turns colourless. And let's face it; if it's February 2, and your artwork is > 30^oC (86 F) you either a) live in the tropics north of the equator b) live in the Southern Hemisphere or c) need to turn the thermostat down ASAP. So, there's a pretty good chance that this print can accurately predict that there will not be 6 more weeks of winter (to a degree of accuracy at least comparable to any celebrity rodent).



I bet you thought I would try to sneak in the word 'prognosticating' again.

*Conversely, if you live on the left coast, and there are crocuses coming up in your garden, you do not need a celebrity rodent's shadow to give you leave to laugh at the blizzards to the east of you.

Discomedusa

I made this lino block print of the fabulously-named discomedusa jellyfish. As you may suspect, it's inspired by Ernst Haekel, the famed German biologist, naturalist, philosopher, physician, professor and artist, whose book "Art Forms in Nature" filled with lovely 19th century scientific illustrations of biology. It's printed in white, water-based block printing ink on 'unryu teal' Japanese paper. (I would describe the paper as navvy not teal, but that's what the paper was called nonetheless). The paper has many visible fibres, which add to the organic feel of the piece and makes each print rather unique. They also make printmaking by hand more challenging! The edition is limited to 9 prints, each 17.8 cm by 19.7 cm (7 inches by 7.75 inches).

Quilting stripes

I'm taking a quilting course at the workroom. If you've followed the blog for a while you'll know this is my second quilt. The first one I made I a) taught myself how to make it b) use printmaking methods on every single panel and c) took me over FOUR YEARS. So, I'm taking this course and attempting to make a (much smaller, mind you) quilt within THREE WEEKS (there's a lot of 'homework' in this class). It's a lot of labour! However, I thought it was worth my while to learn the tricks of the trade, as it were. In fact, advice I've had about measuring, cutting and pressing fabric, not to mention stabilizing small pieces, in our first class, has been tremendously valuable and could have saved me a lot of grief. A lot of it boils down to using the proper tool for the job (oh! the irony! that's practically my mantra as ocean-going geophysicist) as well as (another shocker) proper maintenance of tools. So, I'm going to make a somewhat more traditional quilt and once I learn how to do that properly (which, in fairness, could be a life-long process, but I mean once I have a firm grasp of the fundamentals) then, I can mess with these tools and methods and try the crazy quilt-like textile schemes in my head.

This is the stage where the interesting mathematics of quilting starts to come into play, if you're into that sort of thing which I don't think you are, so don't panic. The basic planning is just arithmetic, but now we have permutations, tessallations, algebra and geometry to consider. We could make x's, chevrons, zigzags or diamonds. This is my plan. I scanned all my squares and then played with orientations in software, since floor space is scarce.



By 'plan' I mean, this is the way I intend to make groups of four squares, and the sashing I have in mind. There may be some more variations.

I've used a lot of my scraps and bits of nifty contemporary prints, but I've also thrown in a lot of crazy thrifted vintage fabric. I'm quite pleased how beautiful that combination can be. You can look at each square by clicking on it. I wonder if you would know the age of the fabric by looking at it.

RJH picked me up after class last week. He said a group of 'drunken party girls' stumbled by and one exclaimed, "They're quilting in there! Quilting!" in complete disbelief. They were followed by a couple. The young man said to his girlfriend, "Maybe I should ask those ladies to sew me some drapes, because you're never going to." They rent machines by the hour - I hope she suggested he could sew his own drapes. Ah, Parkdale on a Thursday night.