Jiggery Pokery

Hi everyone,

I love it when the blog is so busy with everyone posting! It's brilliant to see what's going on in everyone else's workrooms isn't it?

This afternoon I have started on what I think will be my first quilt for Orientation. I did have a head start though:

Can you tell what it was in a previous life? It's the skirt from our 'Art to Wear' outfit from last year's Festival of Quilts fashion show. Needless to say I won't be parading down a catwalk again anytime soon, so when is the occasion to wear a such a skirt? I decided there probably wasn't one and have ripped out the back seam. Of course doing that doesn't make a flat or rectangular (quilt shaped) piece of work so some modifications are required. I have made quilts that could have done with a dart or two to get them flat, but I do try my best not to start out that way!

I had thought that I could 'make up' the sides to get it rectangular and then add a bit more fabric to the top edge. As you can see pinned to the right I have got some more of this parchment coloured cotton, but sadly not enough. It's been in this state, staring at me for about a week now, but today I thought, what would I do if this was paper? Well, I'd just cut out the good bits and jettison the rest before collaging to a new background - simple!

 Here it is chopped up. Obviously I was limited in the cutting up as some motifs were touching and couldn't be sensibly separated, but I've broken it up into four segments which has given me enough scope to rearrange the composition.

I've laid the pieces onto the rectangle of spare cotton, altering the angles of the strings that suspend the birds and cages so that they converge more steeply to, at this stage, an imagined point. There's more fabric folded behind the top to accommodate this but my pin board isn't big enough to lay it all out!

As I've cut up the pieces I've kept some of the edges that now form negative spaces where new cages will be drawn into. You can see one in the photo above. I think this'll be a useful way to bring the composition together. It's all just pinned together at the moment and of course I don't have any Bondaweb. I think that might make it all a bit thick and stiff anyway so I might just hold it all together with some temporary spray then quilt it to death to secure it all.

Bye for now,
Laura