Best and Worst of Times

It's finally finished! My fabric concertina book, Best and Worst of Times is done. The workshop with Mandy Pattullo through TextileArtist.org was held in July 2020. Considering the amount of stitching in the book, a year and a quarter is not that long! lol

Fabric Concertina Book

The book is the story of the last two years. It goes from being full of fear to eventually finding joy. It's also bilingual (English and French) except for the title and end pages.

The front page is written in chain stitch on one of my first hand-dyed gray fabrics.

Best and Worst of Times, concertina fabric book

The first and second pages illustrate the beginning of the pandemic. Everywhere there was fear. No one knew what was going one and it really felt like time was standing still, especially at the beginning of that first lockdown.  I used tulle, cheesecloth and lots of dark colours. The running stitches in the background are black and prominent.

Fear (peur) is in the air

The third and fourth pages express how I escaped the gloom. In English it's called escape but in French it's called dreaming (rêver). It's about escaping in books, to the seaside, on a hot air balloon. It's also about nature, which mostly benefited from the lack of human activity that affect the rivers, oceans, forests, etc. Colours are back and there is a sliver of optimism. 

Escape (rever) - finding a way to cope

The fifth and sixth pages are about hope (espoir) and creating (faire). It's what I did after my escape time. For me, hope and creating are represented by finishing UFOs, playing with hexies, thinking about spirit, and mostly by playing with scraps and making. It's about trying new things and I did that through the workshops offered by the TextileArtist.org Stitch Club. 

Hope (espoir) and create (faire) - to make the best of it

The last two pages are about the happy ending...has it come? Well sometimes it's here fleetingly. It's about finding joy (joie) and laughing again (rire). It's full of bold, strong colours that I love.

Joy (joie) and laugh (rire) - finding the joy in life again.

The last page is made of some pinky-orange fabric that I hand-dyed. I love the top and bottom fabric which is what you get when you dye white-on-white fabric. Isn't that fun? You can see larger versions of all of these photos by clicking on them 😊

The End? or The beginning....

Making my first YouTube video

If you're interested, I've also uploaded a short video on YouTube (my first one!) of the entire fabric concertina book, Best and Worst of Times. I hope that you like it. You can click on the link below the image to take you there.

Best and Worst of Times

What I learned

• In my first post in July 2020, I wrote that I was missing that second layer to stitch through. Since I've been doing a lot more hand-stitching, it's not really an issue any more.
• I also wrote..."Hand stitching is called slow stitching for a reason - the concertina book may end up being a longer term project since it's demanding a lot of stitching." Famous last words....see, 16 months is medium to long term!😊 
• This project sat for a long time until I needed things to stitch for my #100dayschallenge on Instagram. It was great working on the book. I used a lot of variegated Superior Threads. It was a lot of fun.
• I just realised that I didn't make a label for the concertina book - I'll have to tuck in my name and the date somewhere!
• At work this last year, I've learned to manipulate videos. This served me well for the recording of the video.

Related links

• Slow stitching with new projects, July 12, 2020
• Mandy Pattullo's website and a TextileArtists.org article
• Mandy Pattullo's bog: Thread and Thrift

Tools that I used to manipulate my video 

• I downloaded a Video Convertor to my phone so that I could compress my original video enough to send it to my email. After that I used
• Kapwing, which has a free online version that is great to trim video, add images, text, etc.

Linking parties

I'll be linking to many fun linking parties. Let's check them out! Put your foot down, Patchwork & Quilts, Monday Making, Design Wall Monday, 15 Minutes to Stitch 2021, Wondering Camera, Free Motion Mavericks with Muv, Midweek Makers, Off the Wall Friday, Peacock Party, Oh Scrap!, Slow Sunday Stitching, Mosaic Monday, 

Project details

Best and Worst of Times, fabric concertina book

Size: 6½" x 5¾" by 45"

Materials: hand-dyed cotton, tulle, thread and cheese cloth; buttons, hexies, commercial fabrics, 

Techniques: appliqué, ruching, embroidery, free motion stitching

Fibre Fling 5 Show

It was amazing to see my art quilts hanging beside other wonderful art and feel that they fit right in! I have to admit that I didn't expect this to happen to me, at least before I retired and got to play and create full time.

It was great to help set up the Out of the Box Fibre Fling 5 art show and sale. Some of the larger pieces were hung on the wall, but there were a dozen free-standing structures to hang the art pieces. I worked with one of the artists to set up the pieces on the structures. What a great learning experience.

I learned what pieces played well together and would look good hanging on the same surface while others did not play nice. See my "What I learned" section below for some basic tips on choosing which pieces should hang out together.


Here is the video of my interview with Liana Voia.

Envelope for "Imagine"

"Imagine" 26½” x 30½”

Even before the show, it was quite the job getting my pieces ready. Each piece needed a good label, a card with information and a photo for display purposes as well as a hanging rod. I always use a dowel, but had to attach eye hooks and then a length of wire to each dowel.

Each piece also needed a container or envelope for transportation to the show. If the piece was for sale then the container needed to look good in case it sold and was taken home by a customer. Here are the envelopes I created as well as the pieces that were in the show.

The envelope for "Imagine" was the largest since it had 2 sections - one for the quilt and the other for a piece of cardboard so that the quilt could stay rigid and not get folded and creased. I couldn't roll it up since it was three-dimensional.

Imagine
Inspiration: Musical Challenge for the CTQG representing the song “Imagine” by John Lennon. The people are holding hands around the crazy-quilted world. Each fabric represents a culture or part of the world.
Materials: Cotton fabric, ribbons, beads, embroidery floss
Techniques: Hand embroidered, machine appliquéd, free-motion quilted, beaded

I made the envelopes for the next two quilts out of a pillow case. You can see that "Woven Landscape" got the edge of the pillow case while "Yellow Kayak" got the end part.

Yellow Kayak

Inspiration: Quilt based on a friend’s photograph of her kayak in the river.

Materials: Cotton fabrics, shoe lace, metal clasp, button 

Techniques: raw-edge appliquéd, free-motion quilted

Yellow Kayak 11½” x 12½”

Envelope for Woven Landscape

Woven Landscape

Inspiration: Playing around with a woven background and creating a whimsical landscape.

Materials: cotton, organza, jute-cotton ribbon, beads, embroidery floss

Techniques: woven background, raw edge appliqué, beaded, embroidered and hand-quilted

Woven Landscape 13" x 17½"

Hockey Day in Canada

Inspiration: Playing with fabric in a winter theme. I finished it on Hockey Day in Canada 2016.

Materials: Cotton fabrics, beads, buttons, tulle

Techniques: raw-edge appliquéd, free-motion quilted, beaded

Hockey Day in Canada  12½ " x 9½"

The envelope for "Hockey Day in Canada" was made from lovely snow flannel with a blue border to extend the envelope. 

Envelope for Hockey Day in Canada

A very practical envelope

I didn't make anything special for the "Memories of the South-West" piece since it was small enough to fit into a plastic pouch and it wasn't for sale. Some duct tape to secure the information to the envelope and it was done! 

Memories of the South-West 12" x 9½"

Memories of the South-West

Inspiration: After a trip to the American south-west, I wanted to create a landscape art quilt, however the photo used as inspiration is from Ayers Rock in Australia.

Materials: cotton, wool and acrylic yarns, embroidery thread, tulle

Techniques: hand appliquéd, embroidery, machine sewing.

During the Fibre Fling 5 show, we had the privilege of being interviewed for a short YouTube video of our work. I was interviewed this morning. After a couple of false starts, it went really well. As soon as it's ready, I will link it to this post and possibly to my blog page - something else to learn to do :-)

What I learned

While helping to put up the show on Thursday, I learned some tips about placing art pieces together. Here is what I surmised:

• A face in a piece will always attract the most attention. Our eyes are drawn to it. To be placed with such a piece, the second piece has to be visually strong enough to command its own attention without distracting from the face. 
• Similar colours in two pieces may help them to "play nicely with each other". There still needs to be enough contrast so that they don't just blend into each other.
• Shapes in both pieces are important. A piece with straight lines may not play nicely with a piece that is mostly curves or more flowing. 
• I also learned that I have pretty good colour instincts. It's great though to know why something works or doesn't work since saying "that it doesn't feel right" isn't the best way to express your opinion.
• As I write these tips down, I realise that these also applies to auditioning fabrics for a project. On the other hand, breaking the rules will often create stress, contrast and interest. It just depends on the effect the artist is going for.

I have linked this post to the following linky parties. Please check them out to see what others are doing. Thanks for stopping by.
Off the Wall Friday; Can I Get a Whoop Whoop? Fabric Frenzy Friday; and Lessons Learned Linky