Loons and Snowy Owls, wildlife in black and white

The loon, linocut on Japanese paper, 9.5" x 12", by Ele Willoughby 2020

Between getting pneumonia and the school strikes, I feel like I've not had as much time as I would like so far in 2020 and I am behind where I would like to be. On the other hand I have several projects on the go! I have plans to make art with more varied media this year. I'm starting with some textiles but also working on some more 3D works and more electronics. Got some collaborations in the works too. I'm starting with some black and white animals and exploring how to combine different black and white prints.

Snowy Owl, linocut on Japanese paper, 11" x 14" by Ele Willoughby 2020

The black and white animals will do double duty on my quilt in progress. I thought I would try something (moreorless) monochromatic. I'm learning that black and white can be busier than the most colourful piece I've made and that combining these patterns is new challenge.

Baby Quilt

Maybe I'll ask RJH to take some better photos, but I wanted to share the baby quilt. It's hexagons (broken into trapezoids... commonly known as tumbling blocks) in yellows, purples, grays, turquoise & teals. The front features hexagons with some of my animal linocuts including the raccoon, owl, butterflies, panda family, seahorse, nautilus, and the baby tapir - as well as some patterns like clouds and feathers. The reverse is the entire alphabet of linocut animal monograms, with sashing, and a pieced border of scraps from the front.

Baby W quilt

I realized I didn't share the baby quilt I made for my brother and sister-in-law's soon-to-be baby:




I wanted to avoid any colours which we tend to ascribe too specifically to girls or boys (the parents don't know if I'll have a niece or nephew, plus the whole gendered colour scheme thing is sort of demented), or anything too bright or colourful, because my SIL really goes for the monochromatic. It's a running joke with my brother that he's only allowed black and white art. I've made a few black and white animal prints for them, and they decided this would be a good theme for the nursery, so I knew including my block printed animals in the quilt would work. I realize there is a lot of colour here, actually, but charcoal to gray, white, pale yellow, turquoise, and purple is subdued for me, while still being cheerful enough for a baby. Luckily, the bedding they selected is in a gray and white pattern with elephants, so I think this goes well with the nursery. The quilt was a hit at my SIL's shower.

There was always a tradition in my mother's family that the grandmother would make every grandchild two quilts; at birth and when they reached 13. My own grandmother died fairly young and my mother never learned to quilt. I was always touched that my grandmother's sister (whom I had only met a couple of times) took on this duty and made quilts for all my grandmother's grandchildren. This was one of the reasons I wanted to learn how to make quilts. So, I'm happy to be able to make this for my niece or nephew to be (who is due now, in less than a month....)!

Scrappy Strip Quilts

I really like the photos posted by The Workroom's flickr stream. You can see most of the other quilts made in their classes if you follow this link.

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.