Quilt Triennale 2012

Last Saturday I sent off my entry documents for the “Quilt Triennale”, a tri-annual competition initiated by the "Textilsammlung Max Berk" in Heidelberg. The letter had to be postmarked by the next day at the latest, so it was a tight fit, as so often with me and participation in competitions.

I had only decided at the beginning of the week before that I would actually enter a piece as I had been planning for most of the last year. When I had sat down with my husband  in early January to figure out our schedules, and was so hit with all that I was planning to do, I had sort of scrapped any entries to competitions such as European Art Quilts or others immediately. Couldn’t miss out on any running meter of quilt for my solo at Ste. Marie!

But then I finished a large quilt in the second half of January, measuring 1,80 on every side, that I had been working on for quite a while, sometimes even struggling hard. At first I was only happy to have it off my hands, then I finally decided that it was worth to try and enter this one.

If it gets taken, I have 2,30 m more to fill by September (that’s the measurement of the quilt plus the distance between quilts as set by the organizers.) If it doesn’t make it, I will still be able to show it in Ste. Marie. We’ll see what happens.

Scrapped out

In the beginning of September, after we returned from our summer vacation, I was sorting my blue scraps to give my creativity a boost. 

I love creating new fabrics, and using them, nevertheless I have a hard time throwing anything out that is larger than a square inch. Which leads to a situation that looks like this:  lots of small plastic bags, all filled with scraps sorted by approximate color value.

That has given me wonderful materials – I have used lots of leftovers from the background colours in “Play of Lines VI” for the background in the left hand panel of “Play of Lines VIII”.

Play of Lines VI

Play of Lines VIII

These past weeks now sorting the blue scraps has worked well for me, I have been working on a quilt that is using up almost all of my blue scraps. This has had intermediate stages that looked like this.

The current stage of the quilt is this: rolled up, waiting for the next step, for which I need to get some material first which is not obtainable in my town.

The whole thing weighs just a little over 1 kilogram. Now is that a whole lot of scraps used up or not?

As this quilt is going to be entered at European Art Quilt or, if not accepted there, will be part of my exhibition at Ste. Marie-aux-Mines next fall, I won’t show more of it here before that has been decided. But I am low on blue scraps now, this is all there is left. 

Of course, there are lots of scraps in other colors left, such as yellow, or orange, ...

Museum of cloth and weaving: "Tuch + Technik" in Neumünster

When we spent almost three weeks with numerous rainy days on the North Sea coast in August, I took a trip to Neumünster, the former  „Sheffield of  Northern Germany“, and visited the museum “Tuch+ Technik”. The last factory closed in 1991, but the museum offers an interesting and encompassing exhibit on the history of spinning, weaving and clothmaking.

When I got there I realized that the museum was also hosting the „European Art Quilts VI“ at that time. Sheer coincidence, but I will concentrate on the museum as such here.

The musem is easily accessible from the station. And it is a very good example for the fact that visitng a museum can be fun, entertaining and very instructive – ok, you have to be inerested in the subject matter, but that I was. I was greeted by a guide who pointed me to the beginning of the round and promised to fetch me when she was starting the actual demonstration of the machines, which she did, too.

The permanent exhibit gives a complete overview of the develoment of spinning and weaving, and frequently with objects that were actually found in the Neumünster area. And the historical development is always juxtaposed to events in local history, so you get an introduction to that as well.

These are prehistoric weights used in looms, and a reconstruction of an early loom.

You can find several looms from different periods and in various designs and sizes:

I was particularly attracted by the presentation of the development of the process of spinning, from the early hand spindles to spinning wheels, the „Spinning Jenny“ and then the automatic machines. Unfortunately, the „Spinning Jenny“ was not in working condition and waiting for repair, but we saw a demonstration of the big automatic machine:

They also have a 30-m-long „Dreikrempelsatz“, that machine which transforms unspun wool into spinnable pre-threads. A concise film shows you how this machine works:

For some reason, the pre-threads really tempted me to fetch my spinning wheel back from the attic, where it had been banned only a few months ago due to lack of use...:

And then there is qualitäty control: detecting tied knots in a finished wool blanket, opening them up and sinking the threads properly so they will not be noticeable in the finished product:

A few more impressions from the museum:

These "Spinndrüsenplatten"
- sorry, don't know the correct English term! -
are used nowadays to spin threads
from recycled plastic bottles!

Too bad that I won’t be able to go to their weaver’s market on October 8 and 9. Too far away...
But if you ever plan to be in the area - go and visit that museum, it is well worth it!