Searching for the Perfect Pattern

    There is an age-old question that says: Which comes first, the chicken or the egg? For quilters this could easily be re-phrased to say: Which comes first, the fabric or the pattern?  As I'm beginning to realize, it is much easier to select the pattern first.
Having arrived home with a collection of fabrics in my suitcase, but no specific pattern in mind, I've spent the last week hunting for the perfect pattern for the collection.

   As with nearly every quilt I make, I start out wanting to do something original and out of the ordinary but within the limits of my capabilities.  Possibly these are conflicting ideas, but I'm ever hopeful. I got out my pencils, ruler, eraser and graph paper and sketched some ideas. One in particular seemed promising, so I decided to test the block design by gluing small pieces of the fabrics onto a half size photocopy of the pattern. And it was a good thing I did, for it was clear that my fabrics didn't work in my original design.

    Abandoning, my design tools, I turned to quilt books and back issues of quilting magazines for the perfect pattern. This took quite some time, as I examined pattern after pattern, in between reading the interesting articles that I came across in the magazines.  By now, I was getting quite frustrated. I really wanted to get going on those fabrics, but, couldn't find a pattern that appealed. Finally, I decided to lay the fabric collection aside for a while, get out my machine and do something that required no originality, but would diminish the boxes of scrap fabrics, which always seemed to be full and, hopefully, my frustration. Log cabin blocks seemed a good choice. So today, instead of using these lovely fabrics

I'm sewing these 'wonky' log cabin blocks:

I hope by next month's blog, I'll have found the perfect pattern or at least have a log cabin quilt well underway. 

Batik in the South Pacific

Since coming to Singapore in September, I've been learning a lot about batiks. Of course the internet is a great source of information, but there's nothing like seeing the fabrics before your eyes, and this region is the place for that. There are quite a few places in Sing

apore itself that sell the traditional Indonesian batik fabrics. The designs are quite complex and at one time were hand drawn and dyed using a wax-dye resist method. Most of these are now machine printed on cotton and are sold very reasonably to the mass market. Here are two patterns I've acquired here.

On a recent trip to the island of Langkawi, off the west coast of Malaysia, I had the opportunity to visit a batik workshop and see a different style of batik. This time the design was handdrawn onto cotton, outlined with wax, then handpainted before the fixative was added and the wax removed. You can see by the following photos the very different results from above. These are handkerchief-sized pieces which I purchased at the Pisang Arts and Handicrafts centre.
There are also batiks made by tie-dyeing and stamping, techniques I'm hoping to see when we go to Bali next week.

If you are a CQA member you can read more about the Langkawi visit in the spring edition of the Canadian Quilter.

With Christmas preparations in full swing here in Singapore, may I send my best wishes to each of my blog readers for a happy Christmas with all the blessings is can bring, and many happy quilting experiences in the New Year.

Japanese Fans Photo

Japanese Fans

Although most of my time in Singapore has been focused on our little grand-daughter, I've managed to do a little quilting. The picture shows the completed top for a wall-hanging which I call "Japanese Fans." I was given the centre panel as a gift last Christmas and decided to add the fan borders and do some quilting on it before I finish it. The fan blocks were machine-pieced and then appliqued to the backing squares. I will layer it and quilt it when I get back home in January.
I've also made a foray into Arab Street, which is a wonderful experience for anyone interested in textiles. The street is lined on both sides with shops, which sell mainly silks in gorgeous colours and for a quilter or anyone who loves vibrant colours, it is a real visual treat. I did find some cottons among the silks and other fabrics, and of course there are lots of traditional Indonesian batiks, with their intricate patterns, available, but they didn't tempt me, as I've found them difficult to use in my quilting in any quantity.
A visit to the Singapore Botanic Garden, especially the Orchid Garden, gave me inspirations for a number of future projects and we also visited the World Orchid Conference Show, which featured 50,000 orchids from all over the world. What an amazing show! Words fail me to describe it! Another surfeit of colour with orchids of all sizes, from the tiniest which almost needed a microscope to be seen, to the large showy "corsage" style. My mind is awhirl and I've still almost two months more before we return home in January. I'm sure my sewing machine will be very busy for the rest of the year!
Happy quilting!

Something New

It's not November yet, (when I would normally update my blog) even here in Singapore, where we are a day ahead of North America, but I couldn't wait to show off our lovely little granddaughter under her little quilt. In the minutes between cuddling and admiring her, I have managed to make some progress on the appliqued fan blocks that I brought along as a traveling quilting project. There are 26 of them and they will form the border around a printed panel given to me last Christmas, which depicts a Japanese lady holding a fan. Sorry no pictures yet, but I will put it on my blog when I have it all pieced together. In the meantime, the tiny work shown above far surpasses anything else that you might want to see! Isn't she beautiful? Her doting grandparents certainly think so.

Happy quilting!

Singapore

We've been in Singapore for over a month now for the long awaited birth of our grand-daughter. Although I've been busy sewing - curtains for the nursery, sheets for cradle and crib, and diapers - yes, diapers. Our children are very environmentally conscious and realizing the effect that so-called "disposable" diapers have on the environment, have opted for non-disposables. So grandma has up-dated her skills from the time she sewed diapers for her own little babies and having found some "nappy flannelette" (as they call it here) at a bargain price of one Singapore dollar per metre, got to work.

But even with all the baby preparations, I've managed to connect with a quilter friend from my last visit. Marianne Bos is a quilt artist and has produced a variety of beautiful work which you can see on her blog http://www.mariannebos.blogspot/ . Through her I have been able to visit a group of quilters who meet every week. They are the ANZA (Australia and New Zealand Association) quilters, one of several ex-pat quilt groups who meet here in Singapore. Like quilters everywhere they are a friendly group and it has been a pleasure to sit and sew with them and to see the variety of projects they are working on.

Of course, I never travel without a quilting project of my own, so this has allowed me a quiet space of time for my own work.

As we'll be here for two more months, with a little perseverance, I should be able to finish them before I leave.

What a difference a Month Makes

This photo is quite a change from the dreary picture of my last blog. We've had some spectacular sunsets lately and this is one of them. The improved weather has meant that we've enjoyed some side-trips to towns within a day's drive of Edmonton. The most recent was to Camrose (about an hour's drive) which was celebrating "Founders Days" and among the festivities was an arts and crafts display. I had a lovely time seeing the quilts of the local quilters' guild and chatting with Judy Hoehn who had several of her lovely "multi-fabric" quilts on display. Since I've been trying to use up my own left-over pieces of fabric, I was interested to see the variety of designs which she had used and received more inspiration to continue down that road myself.

Last month's blog showed a multi-fabric work in progress and I'm happy to have it completed. I changed the title to "Blooming Garden" and as you see used a watering can for the centre panel. This was a Quilt-As-You-Go" design of my own, inpired by a number of sources.

I've already prepared a little project to take with me as we travel to Singapore next month to welcome our little granddaughter into the world. I hope to meet some quilters there and be inspired by their work, too. Until next time,

Happy Quilting