Monday, August 1, 2011

Not in London

I have been home for nearly a month now and am, eventually, settling back in.  I went to the Craft and Quilt Fair in Melbourne on the weekend.
It is over now but you can still read about it here (I think).
I spent about 5 hours there on Friday and could easily have gone again on another day.
I attended a talk on making a quilt using one fabric, not a whole cloth quilt which depends on the quilting for its design but a quilt made of one patterned fabric cut to make patchwork-like designs.  It was very interesting. Margaret Kirkby, of Logan's Fabrics, was the presenter.
It seems to be necessary to know how to find the repeat in a fabric, measure it, cut the fabric out (in the correct layout) and then cut that into a square.
I was pleased that I knew how to do that - one of the benefits of having done the Studio Textiles and Design course at RMIT.
You then cut the fabric diagonally into quarters and put them together to make the pattern. It is obviously more complicated than this but that is the general gist of the talk.
Margaret showed us various examples to demonstrate how different fabrics can work, including a stripe or border fabric.  She also showed us some pieces that she had cut out before really thinking the process through, that had caused some problems.  She showed us how she had attempted to work it out and the various designs that had resulted.  It was a good talk in that she showed us the 'mistakes' she had made and how she had solved the problems.

Now all I have to do is find some fabric that I think is suitable (I have quite a large stash to look through), remember how to do it and get going - without making too many mistakes.  But, before that, I have to do my assignments for the courses I am doing, make a cot quilt and generally catch up with work.  Hmm, I'd better try to find my notes from the presentation and file them well.

1 comment:

parlance said...

That's an interesting example of taking someone's art - the fabric - and changing it around to make an art piece of your own. A popular technique these days in the literary arts.