Textile Students

Textile Students on the 4 foot Art Quilter frame

 Ally Pally is a fun venue. It's full of students and teachers.School kids in their uniforms on a fun day out and University students too. These girls are on a Textile Course at university. Look at their faces, they just loved the frame. They loved the gorgeous variegated thread from Superior Threads too.

The Art Quilter frame with the Juki TL98P straight stitch

Being able to effortlessly glide the sewing machine over the perfectly tensioned layers of fabric was quite a novelty.

Textile students 'drawing with the needle' at Ally Pally

They really appreciated the control this gave them as they played with various line designs on the practice piece of fabric. It was sooooo much easier than wrestling with the fabric under the arm of the machine! It is the perfect tool to help them complete their textile projects quickly and to a much higher standard.

everyone had a go with the Juki on the Art Quilter frame

Now they really really want one! It's right at the top of their Christmas list.

Back Story

 It was the Big One that caught their eye as they were leaving the Festival of Quilts on Sunday afternoon.

They all tried the new JUKI long arm and then moved to the back to try out the smaller New English Quilter frame with the JUKI TL98P sewing machine. They were surprised to get the same freedom of movement. I enjoyed seeing all these young people around the frame.

This guy's mum has a haberdashery shop. He was thinking what fun it would be to have one at the shop. It was definitely worth a call home. There were quite a few quilt shop owners who also realised the advantages of having a quilting frame like this in the shop.

"Hey mum, can I buy one?"

The girl in the back on the left is a young quilter. She just loved trying the frame! You can see her thinking about all the quilts she could finish if she had one of these frames.

This guy is a textile teacher at a Birmingham High School. As he tried the New English Quilter frame he was excited by the potential benefits the frame offered for his textile students. He loved the TL98P sewing machine too. It was exactly the kind of sewing machine he'd been looking for to use with Textile students.

Rosie on the 6 foot New English Quilter frame

It was fun to see all the different ways these young people could  imagine using the New English Quilter frame. They got it! They realized that the frame was a tool and could be used in a variety of ways. It was so satisfying talking with these young people. They left the show very inspired and excited. These kind of interactions make me glad that we were there!

Lalla Ward's Vanishing Act

LallaWard 

has a new exhibition coming up at the National Theatre called Vanishing Act

It's staged as an encore applauding

Lalla's penchant for flora, fauna and fibre so admired in her previous exhibitions. 

Lalla's exquisitely stitched textile pieces capture the amazing ability of many animals, reptiles, amphibians and insects to blend in with their natural environments.

It's a clever idea, brilliantly executed. 

moth by Lalla Ward  rests on artisan bowl by Nick Kettlewell

The camouflage theme plays out across a wide variety of materials ranging

from hand turned wooden bowls to meticulously stitched moths. 

Lalla with her sketch book

Lalla's work has a curious impact on the viewer.

It draws you in as you look ...again and again... to find
what's hidden in plain sight

Viewers often ask Lalla how she creates her pieces. So as a new feature of the exhibition, Lalla will stage a mini-mock-up of her work space, offering a behind the scenes glimpse of  the tools, materials and techniques that she uses to stitch the pieces.

 

Vanishing Act

by textile artist Lalla Ward

on show at the National Theatre

April 1st through May 12th

Be sure to catch it before it disappears!

Lalla's textile art work was stitched using a
JUKI straight stitch TL98P sewing machine 
with a wide variety of Superior Threads. You can see them on display 

at the National Theatre through out the exhibition. 

The Vanishing Act exhibition is Free! 

If the shoe fits

It's just been too busy to blog. I've been wanting to get a post up about Jan McNally. Jan's a textile artist we met at the Festival of Quilts in Birmingham last August. Jan has come up with a unique and quirky method for creating her projects and she wanted to see if our JUKI/Art Quilter combination could handle it.

Jan pulls fibres through bubble wrap and irons it for an initial seal. Then she pops it under her sewing machine and uses a 'Big Foot' presser foot to sew down the fibres. Jan has been doing this sitting down at the sewing machine but it was taking a long time and giving her a pain in the neck. So Jan stopped by for a visit last weekend to give it a try and see if our frame could make the process quicker and easier.

This 'Big Foot' comes in a variety of models to fit most sewing machines. Jan had a high shank and a low shank version with her. The high shank Big Foot fit just fine on my JUKI TL-98-P.

I was really excited to see how this was going to turn out! We put a 100/16 Topstitch needle in the sewing machine and popped on this high shank 'Big Foot' onto my JUKI. The shape of the foot helped to hold down the fibres so they didn't get caught in the foot. Amazingly, the sewing machine was able to glide over this bubble wrap base with the fibres all pushed through it.This was really cool!

We picked some pretty thread from the Rainbows range of Superior Threads and drew loops and swirls and leaves. Jan was delighted at how easy it was to guide the machine and how quickly she was able to cover the ground. So Jan went home the proud owner of a new 4 foot Art Quilter. I'm thrilled to see our Art Quilter put to such good use! I will keep you posted about Jan's future projects. Meanwhile, Jan let me keep the practice piece. I love it! And I'll be bringing it to our stand in Houston so anyone who visits can see it in person. We'll be at Booth 726-728 - right in the middle of the Hall on one of the center isles. I'll post a map soon.

Art Quilter in residence

We were very fortunate to have an art quilter(textile artist) attending each of our first two Machine Quilter Retreats. Art Quilters are so much fun, quirky and creative, they think outside the box and kept us in stitches! We decided that having an 'art quilter' on retreat was going to have to be mandatory. So when a space opened up for the July retreat, I invited Anne Smithies back as our 'art quilter' in residence.

Anne, having attended the May retreat, decided she would use the weekend to get on with her own projects. She brought some paints and a white piece of fabric. Just after breakfast in the morning sunshine , Anne created a simple colour wash with acrylic paints as the backdrop for a beach scene. Then she used simple objects, bits of card and wood, the tip of a paint brush, the cap of a marker to stencil flower shapes on the fabric with blue paint. Anne let it dry in the sunshine, then ironed it to set the colours.

Next, Anne loaded the top with some backing and wadding on a 4 foot Art Quilter frame. Anne used the frame just like as easel, to support her 'canvas'. Now the sewing machine needle became a brush which Anne used to paint with thread.

It was amazing watching the beach scene evolve as Anne added texture shape and colour with the various threads. Then Anne moved on to the 'still life' flowers, adding detail with line and colour and texture to the background. The incredible thing was just how quickly and simply it came together. As the rest of us more traditional quilters watched Anne work throughout the day we felt liberated. We felt confident that we would be able to put into practice what Anne had demonstrated for us. Anne's creativity is infectious! I'll be posting more about her in the future and we hope to have some of her textile projects on show at the Festival of Quilts!