Article in Patchwork Professional Magazine

Th enewest issue of the Patchwork Professional Magazine is out, and it includes my article on how to make the best of unique snow-dyed fabrics.

If you can find a copy somewhere, check it out!

TAFA mapping the world

I have been a member of the TAFA-list for a few years now (here is a link to my TAFA-profile), and when Rachel Biel mentioned that she was preparing a blog post on maps I notified her of one of my recently finished quilts in the series text messages. I love maps, looking at maps (including mind traveling), and we have old prints of maps and geographical subjects on our living room wall.

on top: an old print of Ratzeburg, the place where my parents met and I spent
my childhood summers visiting my grandparents;
below, left: Weilheim, where my husband grew up; and right: of the area where
my husband I got married.

If you want to surprise me and do me a favor, you can get a pretty or detailed map of one of my favorite places, or any interesting place in the world and I will be very happy!

That blog post on the TAFA-list was a little while in the making after Rachel had made the first announcement, but it is up now, and shows a number of interesting quilts and textile works on the topic of maps.
Here is a small photo of my quilt that  is featured on the TAFA-blog:

Promised Land 2015? (text messages 9)

At that point when I offered Rachel that quilt to be included in the post, I had, I think, not realized that I was already working on another quilt that would apply to the map topic as well. It was made for an article in the magazine Patchwork Professional, where I am demonstrating how my snow-dyed fabrics can be used in traditional and art quilts. The article should be out any day now, but as long as it has not been published, I will post a full picture on the blog yet. A detail, however, is well in order, I think:

Mapping the World of My Mind, detail

It is a combination of two pieces of snow-dyed fabric, and was quilted on the longarm machine.

(So what would be a good title for this post?)

Can't think of anything that catches it all...

Today I finished the binding for the large traditional quilt that uses snow-dyed fabrics for the article in Patchwork Professional magazine.

Fun to quilt on the longarm!

Ready to be shipped so they can take care of proper photography in the studio.

The 'modern' quilt had been finished earlier in the week.

Because this is for a magazine publication, I will not post any full-view pictures of either of these before the publication of the magazine. But I'm glad I am done and can concentrate on other things now. I would have wanted to start dyeing the November selection of the fabric club tonight, but I wasn't home when the new shipment of threads would have arrived by courier, now I have to go and pick it up tomorrow and can't do anything yet. A relatively quiet evening, then.

Of course, there is always something else going on. I am working on catching up on my Journal Quilts for QGBI Contemporary Group:

But I only just now realized that the one of the left hand sidedoesn't have
a real piece of orange in it.... Have to see what I can do about that!

I had busy days with some unpleasant things going on for the Senegalese students in my German class, and I got to visit with the newborn baby of one of them.

She is the sweetest little girl, and I found it impossible to believe that my 11-yr-old was exactly the same size when he was born. How they grow up!
I played in a performance of Gabriel Fauré's Requiem on Sunday, and thought how much I would like it for my husband to find a different position so there would be more opportunities again for me to play in an orchestra.
I am totally upset at what is still going on in Aleppo, and that Russia and several African states are pulling out of the International Court in Den Haag. And now that Angela Merkel has announced her candidacy for next year's elections these stupid alpha blokes in Bavaria are again talking rough to harm her. Do they really think that they are going to improve their own results like that? All they're doing is harming the entire democratic system because we are going to have just as unpleasant an outcome of the election as all the other countries that are having problems right now... I wish I could just live on a small island where world politics don't matter. Even if water levels are rising.

Am I being creative or what?

It's been a very busy week, and I did not get time to post anything here. Now my husband and son are gone for the weekend for what was supposed to be a workshop where they would have built yet another large drum (of which we already have two, that hardly ever get played, add to that my son's drum set, xyolophone... we have a battery of percussive instruments in the house). However, the workshop teacher messed up their announced intention of building the drum, now they are building something rather different and which is certainly not anything we were planning on - but the good side of it all is that I have a weekend to myself.
It started off with a delicious Syrian meal. The one  token Syrian refugee whom I have been teaching German to for one and a half years has recently added a friend of his to our class meetings, who is just as much a token language learner as he himself. Suddenly I am being asked about and get to explain complex sentence structures that resemble diagrams which my former students at university level had difficulties understanding and would never have asked about on their own accord and that definitely many Germans would never think about! So we have been having interesting meetings, and the two of them decided they would cook for me.

Briefly I had thought about joining the SAQA regional UK-meeting which is taking place near Manchester today, but instead I decided I would not spend the money on the flights for just a short weekend, so the result is I actually have time to get work done. Somewhat surprisingly, I have actually been getting work done since I took up the teaching job, but at present it is nitty bitty going, catching up with preparations for International Thread's upcoming exhibition and not yet really something worth showing. But it seems that whenever time is less easily available time management is just so much more effective...

However - I am not a tidy person. Proof to be seen here:

 And no, I am not procrastinating by tidying up, but sometimes I wish I were more of a tidy person because then the creative searching might take less time.
In any case, I am working on a wholecloth longarm project for an article which I have been asked to write for the German magazine Patchwork Professional. The article is on how to effectively use my snow-dyed fabrics, I have finished the first piece, which is on how wonderful snow-dyed fabrics add to traditional patterns, and the second piece now is about a modern interpretation. I admit, this one I have been putting off a bit, but yesterday I finally got myself a photo printed at the drugstore and started on a bit of planning.

And now it's time to put it on the longarm and get started...

SAQA Benefit Auction - It seems mine sold...

I haven't received an official information yet, but I saw on the SAQA website that my donated quilt had a red line around it, which supposedly says that it sold. So I am happy, and as far as I could tell that was not on the last day of the section, which makes me even happier. It's good to sell, but you also want the thing to raise more than just the minimum amount...
The week's been very busy, getting used to my new schedule and the time constraints involved with that. But I just love the fact that it takes less than ten minutes on the bike to get from home to my work place. And just over ten if I have to walk, in case it's raining. The class is a nice bunch of people, they are very eager to learn - they know that this is a very important chance for them, and want to make the best of it. So despite the fact that keeping all 23 of them happy and entertained is challenging due to the fact that some of them are much further advanced in their knowledge of German than the others, it is a very interesting and rewarding way of working.
And even though I did not have time to make art, I did get a bit of sewing done for the article I am writing for the German magazine Patchwork Professional.
I finished off my personal version of the knit-along that I staged to raise money for a children's project, and even got my husband to take a picture of the finished piece (second picture below).

At this stage, I was still working on it, but had already used it's comforting characteristics once: When I was coming back from Ste. Marie-aux-Mines on the train, the compartment was so cool that I reall needed some extra warmth, So I wrapped one piece of it around my shoulders to keep me warm while I was still knitting on the other side.
Now this is the finished piece (and I am quite proud that I managed to raise € 900 with more than 40 people knitting along - or at least buying the pattern, not all of them have started yet...):

Weather turned cold and unpleasant, too, so it has been of good use already - and overall it's been a pretty good week so far!

"Liebster Blog"-Award - passing it on

A few weeks ago I was honored by Kathy Loomis when she awarded me with the ‚Liebster Blog’-award.

I still haven’t managed to find out who donated this award, and when. Nor do I know who formulated or altered the conditions that come with it – basically, I know them from Kathy’ blog, and when they are mentioned on other pages by people who are recipients of the award. You can find these easily enough by googling for “Liebster Blog”.

I have already posted the logo on my entry upon receiving the award, thanked Kathy for the honor, and linked her blog onto mine.

So what remains to be fulfilled is the passing on of the award. For this I had given me a few days for consideration due to the fact that my most favorite blog is Kathy’s, and I can’t really just pass it back to her, especially since she is a double-winner already.

My time of consideration was severely lengthened due to my temporary loss of the computer when it went for repairs. Which also made it impossible to do a bit more intensive reading of the blogs I have bookmarked, trying to make up my mind...

My second-favorite blog – and I am even a registered reader of this one, whereas most of those blogs which get the honor of my attention are simply bookmarked in my browser – is

„Not allthose who wander are lost“  by India Flint. But she has more than 800 registered readers and is aiming for the mark of 900, so she is not qualified as a small blog. Other blogs I like looking at and find very useful and interesting are those by Terry Jarard-Dimond (who is also a previous bearer of the award), and LisaCall (who does not post a number of her followers on her page). Susanne Muus and Bärbel Lehrke always have interesting things for people who like dyeing. But I settled on Magaret Ramsay as the recipient of my passing on the Liebster-Blog award.

I don’t know Mags personally (yet), but I’ve been following her blog since we both appeared in the same issue of Patchwork Professional last July.

Featured artist:
Margaret Ramsay,
with her work on the cover
of "Patchwork Professional" last year July.

I like the way she combines her own pictures/paintings with her textile work. And although I haven’t ever heard her voice yet the ‘sound’ of her writing is just very pleasant to hear. I’m sure there are a number of other people out there who might like to read her entries. Though judging from her world map of clicks onto her blog it seems that she has quite a few more readers than are registered. Well done, Margaret – looking forward to reading more!

Ice-Cube-Dyeing: Report in German "Patchwork Professional" magazine

In December I wrote about our heaps of snow, their effect on my dyeing, and presented a few results. When I was busy ironing the first wonderfully colorful and lively results I started thinking about water and its functionality in dyeing. 

Experiment with snow, this time in a flower pot...

These thoughts turned into a sort of meditation, after all I was still ironing the traditional way, not my most favourite activity in the world and one has to do one’s best to enrich that time...

Waiting to be ironed: snow-dyed fabrics on the line

That meditation centered on the state of matter of water, and the influence that might have on the behavior of dyes, and on the results of dyeing processes. When I was finished with my ironing and at the end of my meditation, I had come up with a new idea: ice-cube dyeing.

A few days of experimenting followed, as I still had a sufficient supply of soda-ash-soaked fabric from my snow-dyeing. Our ice-cube trays had been sitting idly in our kitchen cupboards anyway (we usually have a bottle of water in the fridge, that’s cold enough for us.) 

When I had found out what I was doing, I contacted the German magazine Patchwork Professional. The result is now in print – the newest edition hit the newsstalls yesterday.

Title page of the newest edition (03/2011)
 of Patchwork Professional magazine

View inside the magazine

I will probably give a (sort of) English translation of the workshop article here later in the fall.

Meanwhile you can buy fabrics that have been dyed with this technique via my website justcolours.de (sorry – in German only…), under the tag „Stoffunikate“ (unique fabrics). The site is updated frequently, whenever I have a new stack of fabrics finished. Check it out, and enjoy!