new website and blog address

I've now got a newly designed website with blog, so I won't be posting on this one in the future. I'll be able to manage it myself which will be great.
I am looking forward to a week's artist in residence at Nature in Art, Twigworth, Gloucester, from next Tuesday 24th to 29th April. Next month I am taking part in Stroud International Textile Trail as part of Select 2012. This is held over two weekends, 12th,13th May and 19th, 20th May. I will be with a group at One Fat Quarter in Nailsworth, near Stroud.
Links to these events can be found on my new website www.lizbrookeward.com and my new blog address will be www.lizbrookeward.com/stitch-in-time-blog html
I will post on this very soon and publish pictures of the first three journal quilts.
Thanks for looking!

Sensitive tint 2012 First 2012 Journal Quilt

I signed up to another set of Journal quilts with the Contemporary Quilt Group. This year the themes are based on colour - and the first four are to have at least 75% red in them. The size is A4 portrait. I came across a sketch I'd done of one of John's photomicographs - luxillianite -  rock found in Luxillian, Cornwall. I translated the design into reds with a dark turquoise green accent - reverse applique, machine stitched with bobbin couched thick threads.
The original thin section is colourless but if you illuminate it with polarized light different types of crystal in the rock will show up in different colours according to a property they posses called birefringence. Apparently if you put another crystal in the light path, the colour adds or retracts from the existing colours to produce a new set of colours. The purplish red colour produced is called "the sensitive tint". I love the name and it was a happy accident on my part.

textile hanging showing pockets and quotations

The quotations are printed onto calico strips and then buttoned on top of the pockets.

From left to right:
I have to become unimportant in the scheme of things, that's when the best stuff happens, when you get out of your own way. Helen Storey
Got no cheque books got no banks, still I'd like to express my thanks - I got the sun in the morning and the moon at night.
No one is old enough to know better.
The life so short the craft so long to learn. Chaucer
The truth is rarely pure and never simple. Oscar Wilde
Whatever you think you can do, begin it. Action has magic, grace and power in it. Goethe
When you come to the end of your rope, tie a knot and hang on.
I get by with  little help from my friends.
It's not what happens to you in life, its how you deal with it - that is important. Dalai Lama
If you want to grow, push your limits. Mia Rozmyn
Today is the tomorrrow you worried about yesterday and all is well.
It's hard to know if you're bound for a fall, but better to have tripped than never danced at all.
Out of the gloom a voice said unto me, 'smile and be happy, things coud be worse.' So I smiled and was happy and behold things did get worse.
There comes a point in your life when you realise who really matters, who never did and who always will.
Nothing in life is to be feared it is only to be understood.
and finally:
Your friend is your needs answered, and in the sweetness of friendship, let there be laughter and the sharing of pleasures.


Thank you my dear friends!

With a little help fom my friends- last Journal Quilt January 2012

I asked my friends to give me a button and a quotation that they liked. I made little two inch pockets and stitched the buttons on the front. A variety of techniques was used for the pockets - some appliqued, some machine stitched and painted. I printed the quotes onto calico, stitched a buttonhole on the strip and wound them around some small bamboo pegs and then popped them in the pockets. Some of the buttons are quite signifcant. One belonged to a friend's father who was in the Navy, another was from my friend's mothers button box. The quotations can be taken out of the pockets and buttoned on the front.

December Journal Quilt Lily white boys

This is my December Journal Quilt. There is a hawthorn tree across the valley on the dog walking route which had a lovely bunch of mistletoe on it. I managed to get a piece to put in the house for Christmas. I love mistletoe and was struck by the vibrant green of the leaves and branches and the contrast of the translucent shiny white berries. They reminded me of some old pearl buttons which was lucky as somehow I had to get at least one button in this piece to fulfill the brief. I used commercial and hand dyed fabrics for the fused background and the mistletoe shapes were freely cut and then stitched in straight lines with embellishments of one pearl button and some old pearl beads- must be the first time I've ever used beads! Lily white boys are sometimes explained as holly and mistletoe in the song " Green grow the rushes oh!"

Button it! November Journal Quilt

Button it! November Journal Quilt.

Apples October Journal Quilt

This is my little journal quilt for October - apples. The challenge is to use buttons for the next 4 pieces. I've been picking the apples from my Sunset apple tree and thought the apple pips and core looked a bit like a button. The background is a rustic open weave linen and I embellished apple shapes with little pieces of wool, adding them like watercolour. The leaf shapes were appliqued and layered with muslin which was also blattered with the embellisher to distress it a bit and then machine stitched to the background. I added handstitching and then white laundry buttons. They looked a bit stark so I painted them with some dilute Inktense colour.
I really enjoyed getting the embellisher out and needle felting the background, the effect can be quite subtle.

Traditional quilt

I haven't made a quilt like this for a very long time. My aunt was 90 this week so I decided at the last minute to make her a lap quilt. It is a little larger than the usual size, 45cm x 45cm and  I was determined to use up some of my commercial fabrics which I tend not to use these days. Inevitably I had to buy some more - you never have enough of the right colour. It has turned out rather bright but I hope she likes it. My mother will be 90 in January so I shall make her one too. Its very strange to think that they are the last of that generation in the family - more memories!

memories and connections

Several months ago my brother and I were forced to make the decision that our mother could no longer live at home and needed more help with her needs. She is suffering from dementia. Neither of us was prepared for the emotional implications of this decision let alone the practical ones. We were faced with a home crammed with things that represented our lives and those of our parents and grandparents. The home is now just an empty house and we have tried to deal with the contents. I collected up pieces of linen - table mats, hankies, embroidered napkins and tablecloths, gloves and aprons. These had been embroidered, crocheted, stitched, darned and and owned by my grandmothers Maud and Gladys and my Mum, Eileen. What on earth should I do with them.  I do not want to leave my boys with the decision of what to do with my things let alone my grandmother's. I wanted to do something that would connect me to them and also be relevant and even something of use for my children. I bit the bullet and started cutting up the pieces. I am stitching a crazy patchwork quilt in squares made up of pieces belonging to Maud, Gladys and Eileen. I am using old transfers to add my marks to the pieces now. So far I have made 17 squares so a long way to go but all the time I am stitching them ( glass of wine at hand in front of the telly) I think of these women, their lives and how they have made me what I am.

Flying the nest September Journal Quilt

Yesterday I came across the paper collage above which I did 18months ago. My eldest had just left home and was starting a new job and living in Brighton. I was doing a workshop with Sian Martin and had collaged bits of photos, receipts, computer printouts about Brighton and bits of  discarded artwork, then machine stitched pathways over the surface. We were using potassium permanganate and on that cold February day and I found the colour so dreary echoing my state of mind probably. I had a lightbulb moment looking at it again. I scanned and replaced the background colour with a lighter tone which immediately lifted it. I used a portion in large scale as a background then layered up the image again in two sizes. I printed the image on to old cotton sheeting that I had treated with bubble jet set and then machine stitched the background. I particularly like the scanned areas of the original stitching marks which picked up portions of the p.perm. and seeped into the needle holes.

Man Woman August Journal Quilt

This is my August Journal Quilt entitled "Man Woman". It is the third of the quilts which specified text. I have been suffering from empty nest syndrome. It always happens at this time of the year. The youngest (now 21 ) drew this little picture many years ago and I have had it pinned on my wall. The funny expressions always make me smile. I used this as an opportunity to get to grips with a new printer after my old Epson started dumping ink on the surface of my fabric. I defined the pencil marks and then added some more colour to the original drawing then I added a half triangle border to the design together with some repeating figures which I think must have been Ralph. There was a tiny little figure on a distant planet and I'm wondering if that was his brother! The little wholecloth was printed on bubble jet set treated recycled cotton sheeting and then machine stitched and I also put some little french knots where there were pencil dots on the original. It still makes me laugh.
The exhibition in The Guild in Bristol, Cloth, Paper, Stitch, has now finished. Thank you to my friends who supported me and the people who visited and bought my work and cards. There was a lot of interest in the lichen pieces again and I think I shall make another large piece soon.

July Journal Quilt

"Love a wall" This is my July Journal quilt for the contemporary quilt group challenge. I have used the applique stone shapes, but this time have added some hand stitching. The text is from Robert Frost's "Mending Wall" again.

Fabric Paper Stitch, Guild Gallery, Bristol.

Views showing my piece "Listen" and "Moon-made friends" and "Gaps", the little Gaudi inspired pieces, Di Goodison's jackets and bags and Sally Gregg's felt pieces.

Fabric Paper Stitch Exhibition, Bristol.

Spectrum had its preview yesterday in the Guild Gallery at the Bristol Guild in Park Street. We had a lot of visitors and the day was very enjoyable. It ends on October 1st.
You can see some of my lichen pieces on the wall and Joan Bowie's mermaids.

Gaps and Tumbling Stones

The horizontal design above was the original cut out piece which I have added a border to and mounted on linen - called Gaps.
The vertical piece on the left is made from some of the original applique pieces on top of a printed text background using verses from Robert Frost's Mending Wall. I have added borders to this, some builders scrim which I particularly like using at the moment and the whole thing is mounted on a linen background.

Moon-made friends

At last the blog is up to date thanks to my son. Somehow I had two addresses and now I have transferred the images from the old one.

Moon-made friends was made for the recent exhibition in the Weavers Gallery, Ledbury, entitled The Dymock poets. The poem that inspired this piece was Iris by Night by Robert Frost, one of my favourite poets. It tells about an encounter that Frost and his friend Edward Thomas had, while walking late one summer afternoon in the Malverns. It was wet and the light formed a rainbow which magically encircled them. I started the design for this piece from lichen circles which I re- drew and distorted. When I finished the design and cut and appliqued the pieces I really didn't like the result. I am in the habit of bonding down the random cut out shapes from a piece of work and had done this on a long piece of calico using the negative shapes. This was a far more interesting design and I used it as the basis for the piece above. The text from the poem was printed onto some transparent non woven fabric I had acquired and looked suitably watery. Both the rainbow and the moon were appliqued and the whole piece was also hand stitched in vertical lines.

Having agreed to produce a quilt a month for the Journal Quilt project this was an eleventh hour piece. I made it even worse for myself by using the contents of a " challenge" bag of fabrics and threads - pink is not usually me at all but I managed to complete this with a nice grey background - more me. This is the last of the circles theme. The next four pieces will have text in them.

Another journal quilt for the month of April inspired again by the tree of life image.

Chocolate wrappers were bonded on the background, hand made khadi paper from Ahmedabad was mono printed with acrylic paint and the circles were completed with silk bonded with scrim rubbed with gold markal stick on the surface. The trees were machine stitched and the surface machined with a gold thread grid. The threads were left unstitched across the circles.

Visited this extremely skilful kalamkari artist in Ahmedabad recently. His work was beautifully delicate and lyrical.

This is the second little journal quilt I've done. For some reason the first February journal quilt has posted to a different blog. It can be seen if my website is accessed and you click on the link on the contact page. This is a mystery to me!

I spent a wonderful 8 days in India in February,mainly Gujarat, looking at a lot of textiles and art. This little tree of life piece is appliqued on silk which is first hand quilted, then machine stitched over the top of the applique. It was inspired by a wonderful Tree of Life window in Ahmedabad. I bought a lovely scarf made of two pieces of sari silk. One side is a single ikat type weave and the other is block printed. The whole scarf has then been stitched completely with rows of running stitch in stripes of two colours. I tried this technique on the background of my little tree.