On Publishing a Book

What a week! It has included a trip to the city, a meeting with my textile support group, knitting with my oldest friend, and — most exciting — the collecting of my book from the printers.

The back and front covers of FABRICATONS: Textile Work

What a moment! I sat at the boardroom table at the printers’ and opened the book that was waiting for me. The smell of the newly printed pages and the feel of the silky 300g cover in my hands was an entirely new experience. Since then there has been a sense of unreality, of not quite believing that we managed to produce this book. To explain the “we”, this is what the acknowledgements page says:

• To Andrew Stevens for the steady support
• To Catherine Knox for the mentorship
• To Dan Wylie for the idea, the editing and the encouragement
• To my quilting friends for the convivial friendship
• To Madeline Lategan Parker Lass for the nudge

It is self-published, with help from the friends mentioned above and JP, the graphic artist at CADAR printers. I did the layout (on paper) and he tweaked away the problems.

Here are two more sneak peaks from inside the book.

The contents includes a foreword by Dan Wylie, notes about quilting and textile art, a gallery of 22 works in full colour plates and accompanying technical notes, details of annual self-challenges, more notes on my teaching practice, and an essay on running stitch. It also includes a poem or two.

My oldest friend (we are the same age and have been friends for over 50 years) was the first to see the book. She took the photograph that is reproduced in stitch and re-reproduced as the book’s front cover image. We celebrated by popping the cork on a bottle of South African sparkling wine.

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The book is printed on heavy weight paper, measures 23 x 21 cm, contains lots of colour and interesting text, and is 72 pages. It costs R390 (R500, if couriered to your door in South Africa).

Nine Orbs

Thanks to last week’s readers who said they liked the quilt Nine Orbs just the way it was. This encouraged me to ‘sign off’ the quilt and add it to the list of works that will be on display at my exhibition at Carinus Art Centre during this year’s National Arts Festival in Makhanda (20 to 30 June).

Nine Orbs. 115 x 115 cm.

The mosaiced shapes were originally made as nine individual pieces and attracted quite a lot of attention at my previous exhibition. Readers with long memories may recall that they were ‘offshoots’ of a much larger work called Carnival.

The above photographs from the archive show the set of nine orbs alongside the mother quilt, Carnival.

To make the new iteration of the nine shapes I first made a blank background by machine quilting plain calico to the pattern of a nine-patch. It was quite tricky to get the horizontal and vertical lines more or less match up to make the nine square shapes. I also used calico as the backing and it was a pleasure to stitch with this soft, undyed and unbleached cotton fabric. Then I cut the orbs from their original backings and machine appliquéd them onto the pre-quilted background, after spending a long time deciding on the layout.

The final step was to bind the work. I decided to use the same fabric for the binding and my now favourite method of modern big-stitch binding (where you machine the binding to the wrong side of the quilt, turn the folded edge to the right side, and use big running stitches to secure it). This was the only bit of hand stitching on the work and I used a twisted viscose thread for its subtle lustre.

Addition to Road Trip

Another route has been added to the perpetual work Road Trip. Started in 2023 at a modern hand quilting workshop with Diana Vandeyar, this quilt now records various road trips.

The new route is in the centre, in blue, and marks my recent journey to Rhodes Village for the fabulous Fibre and Fabric Fair organised by Fiona Adams. She is already hard at work organising another Fair for March 2025. Something to really look forward to.

On Getting Back into the Swing of Things

It’s been a short week and and an even shorter time in my workroom after a happy time away in the mountains and at the sea. A good excuse not to write a post this week, but then habit took over and here I am, back at my computer in the bay window.

That said, this will be a short piece. I am working on three projects, in various stages of completion.

There is one work, Explosion, that is nearly finished but I don’t want to show it to you and spoil the suprise. It is one of six quilts that will be revealed at a Quilt & Wine Pairing on Friday 23 May 2024 at Nieu Bethesda. It is billed as the Original Stoeptasting Weekend by the Karoo Wine Club, organiser of Great Wine Weekends. The six quilts are being made by different textile artists and each matches one of the Montpellier wines. I was lucky to draw the MCC Pinot Noir.

Here’s a teaser of collaged cameos from Explosion.

The second work in progress is a portion of the Gqeberha River (aka Baakens River) that I started stitching over the Easter Weekend. It is part of the panel I am working on for the TAPE (Textiles Artists of PE) collaboration.

As for the third piece, I am not sure whether or not it is complete. The edging was finished off this morning with a big-stitch-binding.

It is a fairly big work (115 x 115 cm) and I am not sure whether to add more (smaller) round shapes or to leave it as a floating nine patch. For now it is lying fallow (hanging fallow?) on my pinboard.

On Hand Stitching (again!)

After all the fun of the Fibre and Fabric Fair at Rhodes Village I settled down with some hand stitching to ease back into a quieter life at home.

To stitch a portrait of my big dog has been on the list for a while.

Huxley. Stepped running-stitch. Stitched area 5 x 20 cm.

His tale really is half as long as his body. He is a big dog (bull mastiff x rottweiler) with a large head. My previous stitched family portraits have been rear views, so I kept to this pattern. Maybe one day I will try to stitch his sweet face.

The method was the same as for the two previous family portraits. I traced the outline onto a vintage table napkin, using a photograph and my laptop as a light table. The cloth was backed with iron-on stabiliser. First I stitched the outline of the dog, then filled this in with close rows of running stitch, using a hand-dyed variegated Perle thread in no. 12 weight.

Above is the outline and the photograph from which I worked.

Then I stitched another circle for my 2024 project to hand embroider a circle to mark each month of the year.

This is made using interlocking blanket stitch (my name for it). It is a stitch and method that I learnt from Mirjam Gielen during an online Stitch Club tutorial.

I am writing this on my cellphone from Hogsback where we are enjoying a mellow long weekend. I have done some hand knitting as well and made these for The Woodworker as an Easter present.

FFF FABULOUS

It felt like I was inside a fairy tale last week. It’s hard to describe my five fabulous days at Rhodes Village and the delights of a superbly organised Fabric and Fibre Fair (FFF).

Like all good fantasy tales, there was a hazardous journey to get to the magic village. It took two hours for a small car to negotiate the 60 km rough gravel road that leads to Rhodes Village from Barkly East. The trip was well worth the gear changing. The hamlet is charming and neat and nestles alongside a river in the Eastern Cape highlands. Apparently the trout fishing is very good there.

I started and ended by teaching full-day classes based on hand-stitch. In the three intervening days I did some of the workshops on offer and learnt block printing on fabric, nuno felting, Sri Lankan embroidery, and intarsia knitting. What a whirl!

Above are photographs from each of the four workshops that I did. At bottom right, internationally renowned mohair yarn producer Adele Cutten patiently shows two students how to twist the yarn when changing colours to make shapes while knitting (intarsia).

On Monday I showed a delightful group of women how to create boro-style patch-patch using running stitch.

They set to busily and finished covering the base cloth with patches of bright African wax print by the end of the day. Interestingly they variously chose to turn their base cloths into a needle roll, a book cover and a pouch. This they will do at home. One student has already sent me a photograph of her covered notebook. Well done Sally!

Happily holding up their finished patch-patch cloths and (right) a group photograph of the class’s stitched pieces.

Friday’s class was based on the kawandi method used by the Siddi people in Karnataka, India. The method was further adapted to a Rhodes-style-kind-of-kawandi during the class. Again, everyone threaded their needles and started stitching busily. And again we chatted and laughed and told stories around the table as we sat and stitched.

Above are some snaps of busy hands at work. Below are some of the students holding up their day’s stitching (one was too shy to be photographed) and a photograph of the cloths they made.

I could write reams about the warm and friendly people, the delicious food at Studio Cafe and at the market, the shorn llamas on the tennis court, the interesting conversations on the stoep, the crows that cawed at dawn, the bubbling river, the rose garden, the fibre exhibitions, the man in a magic cape, the delicious bread baked at the hotel, etc. etc. I hope this gives you an idea of the fabulous experience. I have to confess that I returned with two unknitted jerseys (jumpers) — one in merino wool in a neutral shade and one in a range of brightly coloured mohair. Afterall, winter is coming and a girl needs a bit of knitting for those cold nights.

To end, some more photographs of people.

The Knitting Police were very visible and issued many fines. Here they are visiting the kawandi stitching class. I think they were bamboozled by our threaded sewing needles and did not reprimand or fine us for our wrongful use of yarn.

Above (clockwise) Noskunge with the covered bowls she made in Barbara Manning’s workshop; Barbara herself with SteveB, the knitting aficionado all the way from Minneapolis, USA; a man with a bird and wearing a magic cape, and enthusiastic wonder bag shoppers wearing their new cooking aids.

Fiona Adams, who lives at Rhodes Village, was the powerhouse behind the Fibre and Fabric Fair. It was superbly organised.

On Heading for the Highlands

An adventure awaits. This weekend we will travel to the northern part of the Eastern Cape to a charming village nestled in the mountains for the first Rhodes Fibre and Fabric Fair. If you click on the link above you will immediately have a bird’s eye view of the village.

To recap: I will be giving two full-day classes at the fair. On Monday (11 March) it is the patch-patch class to make a pouch or needleroll with African fabric patches and running stitch. Then on Friday there is a workshop on how to make a kawandi-style cloth that can be turned into a small bag.

Today was spent cutting strips and preparing kits. I took some photographs to tell the story.

The workshop materials are all packed and read to go. I am amazed that so many items (pins, needles, press studs, demonstration samples, extra fabric, tacking thread, a tin of tikli (bright bits), extra fabric, pencils, ruler, sharpener, thimbles, plasters, treats, etc. etc.) fitted into my special bag.

During the three days between giving classes I will attend workshops on wet felting, Sri Lankan embroidery, block printing, and intarsia knitting. I am so excited that I can barely contain myself.

F i n i s h i n g l i n e

It is done! The last stitch has been made and Brash Flower Garden is finally finished. Regular readers may recall the repeated posts during the saga of the making of this quilt, started in 2019. Without further ado, here it is.

Brash Flower Garden. Hand and machine appliqued. Hand embellished. Hand quilted.

Some snaps to show when it was almost complete (left) and draped accusingly over the couch, waiting for the next stitching session; and (right) the day it was finished. Do you think the quilt on the wall (A Full Bed of Roses) matches the new one? It was a bit of shock to realise that they were made 18 years apart. I think they look like siblings.

On Leaping

On Thursday (29 February 2024) thirteen of us took a leap into the turbulent waters of a textile art collaboration. It was an astonishing and exhilarating day. Under the skilful guidance of Angie Weisswange members of TAPE (Textile Artists of Port Elizabeth) began work on a 16-panel textile piece for an upcoming exhibition titled Unsettled.

On her Pinterest page Angie Franke Weisswange is described as an author, artist, artisan, quilter, and teacher. She is all of these things and more. This author of eleven books on multi-media art and craft is a generous and incisive facilitator and teacher. As an artist, she conceptualised the group work and also did the leg work of preparing the 16 panels that depict the river that runs through the city of Gqeberha (formerly Port Elizabeth). We each chose a panel (which represents a slice of the city and environs) and will work on stitching and collaging the river area. At the next meeting we will then pass our panel onto someone else to work on the areas adjoining the river. Rather unsettling, but true to the spirit of collaboration.

At the day-long workshop Angie demonstrated techniques which can be incorporated into the textile works, such as rust dyeing, cotton string and patch dyeing, silk and wool dyeing, making embossed paper leaves, making paper cloth, eco printing, and acrylic staining of synthetic cloths. Between getting our hands wet we listened to a poet read poems about the Gqeberha (Baakens) River, an artist talk about the colonial gaze, and a historian on the history of the city, from the Stone Age to the present.

It took me a day to recover from all this stimulation.

The exhibition, Unsettled, is to be mounted at the GFI Art Gallery in Gqeberha from 5 September to 16 October 2024. The exhibition will coincide with a SAVAH (South African Visual Arts Historians) conference, UNSETTLED: Collective Memories and Histories of South Africa.

This is the brief for the conference (from the SAVAH website):

Theme Overview: As South Africa continues its journey of self-discovery, the concept of “settling” takes on renewed significance. One may think of settler-colonialism, and the associations between settlement and belonging, along with expressions that relate to place and trauma, such as letting the dust settle. On the other hand, looking back over recent history from the end of the apartheid era, or even further back, some complacencies in contemporary South African society might still need to be “unsettled”. This raises questions about how much we have actually changed. The visual and performing arts offer opportunities for critical interrogation of the “settled” and “unsettling” dynamics of our society and how we express ourselves.

This will be the first time the SAVAH conference is held at Nelson Mandela University and only the third time it is held in the culturally rich province of the Eastern Cape, itself laden with the incongruencies of socio-economic and historical legacies which affect the social cohesion of the region. The conference will allow researchers to question and engage with the ways in which art might challenge these legacies, and also to consider how they are embedded in particular geographical contexts, places and landscapes.

This conference seeks to unravel the dynamic interplay between art, unsettled histories, and the processes of settling, unsettling and being in the spaces in between. We invite scholars, artists, researchers, curators, and performers from diverse disciplines to contribute their insights and engage in constructive dialogues around this profound theme.

This dense text was the starting point for the textile group’s discussion on our colloborative textile work.

Watch this space for future developments. Meanwhile, if you want to get a more visual idea of the project, please have a look at Angie’s Pinterest board called Unsettled Gqeberha: from an abundance of reeds to… ?

Finishing Line

A few weeks back I wrote about the idea to stitch a circle a month for my 2024 self-challenge. Above is the hand-stitched circle done during February. I first traced and stitched around the figure with brown thread. Then, starting from the centre, I stitched rounds of the kantha stepping stitch in blue and green thread until the outer circumference of the pencilled in circle on the cloth. The final shape was not perfectly round, so I filled in the spaces to create the circle.

This year’s stitchings have so far been rather odd. As yet I don’t have an idea for March and am curious to see what unfolds. Below is a group photograph of the January and February stitcheries.

On the Calming Effect of Stitching

While working on the book I mentioned a few posts back I have had the delightful diversion of stitching another mystery quilt. Thank heavens! Writing and then editing even a small book is agonizing. Getting the points of HSTs (half square triangles) to match is a much more relaxing activity.

I sing to the joys and calming effect of stitching. The book, FABRICTIONS: Textile Work, is now with the printers and I continue to stitch to keep at bay anxious thoughts about how the book will turn out.

Meanwhile, here is my quilt top for the Good Hope Textile Guild’s 2024 Mystery Quilt WHEN YOU SHINE. It ended last Friday, but all the instructions are still live and available on the website highlighted above.

Merry Go Round. 160 cm square

The designer Diana Vandeyar has again produced an exciting design with crystal clear instructions. She kept us on our toes and, despite second-guessing the outcome, we were all surprised and delighted when we got the final set of instructions. The cutting and then stitching instructions were released weekly for six weeks.

For the final stretch she gave various suggestions — from no sashing to various widths of sashing and borders. I went a bit overboard and sashed mine with 7.5 inch blocks of the two grey fabrics I had used.

This is what the quilt top would have looked like without sashing. Different and more effective. The blocks are 14 inches square and so this version is a bit too small to be useful. So I decided to go for the sashing option. It also meant I used up all of the grey fabrics. Uncannily, there was just enough to complete the border, which is half the width of the sashing.

Below are in-process photographs of adding the sashing. There was too much grey and it muted the vibrance of the pieced blocks (left), so I added four squares of the geometric grey and white print around the central star (centre photograph). It still did not look right, so I slept on it. In between dreaming of page proofs and the selection of quilts for the book, my mind came up with the idea of making four more pieced HST blocks for the centre of the quilt.

Finally, here are some photographs of the early part of the mystery quilt making process.

First we cut 4.5 inch blocks from nine different fat quarters. Then we arranged them in a set pattern. Then we collected blocks into nine piles, in a strict order. For the following three weeks we sewed three sets into HSTs and made one block from the set, again to a strict order. And then came the day when we assembled the nine sets of HSTs + one block, into nine big blocks. There was an option between two configurations. This litany of activity hopefully gives a sense of the mounting anticipation.

To see Diana Vandeyar’s spectacular WHEN YOU SHINE quilt please click on this link.