Last three small blocks

Sorry that I haven't posted for a while but here are the last three small blocks -

As I mentioned in my last post, I did consider including a rather complicated star block which I found on an old Dutch quilt - I even drafted in on graph paper, but then decided against it.  These blocks are taken from an English quilt dated 1799 and are fairly simple.

As I have a few Christmas projects to work on,  I am now going to take a break and begin again in the New Year, when I will be starting on the four corner basket blocks. 

Tune in again in 2012 when I will continue on my journey! 

Bit of a set back - not the last four blocks!

Though I haven't updated this blog for a while, I have been working on the quilt, albeit a bit spasmodically.  I suppose it is inevitable that the pace lags a bit on this sort of project, because life gets in the way and life in the form of a collapsed drain has managed to intrude! 

The set back wasn't that though!  It is simply that I miscalculated the number of small blocks.  I thought these were the last four -

but when I laid everything out on the spare bed this morning, I discovered that I needed three more, making a total of sixty six.

As I said in a previous post, I am now not drafting exclusively Sundial block patterns, but taking ideas for blocks from other quilts made around the same time e.g. in the first picture only the two top blocks are from the Sundial.  I have just seen a lovely star block in a picture of an old Dutch quilt and I am going to draft that.  Back to the drawing board!

Another at last!

Apologies for not posting, in truth I had very little to show and even now I only have one complete block, the other, as you can see, is nearly there but not quite  -

The completed Compass Rose Block was based on one at the centre of a quilt made in 1799, with a similar layout to the Sundial but with very much simpler blocks. 

The secondary spokes of the compass, which I did in brown, really aren't strong enough and don't hold their own with the outer ring of pieces.  I should have chosen stronger contrasts but I actually quite like its subtlety.  Just to liven it up a bit I pieced it into a striped background which gives the block a bit of zing!

The unfinished piece is from the Sundial and I'm struggling with the piecing of this much more than the Compass Rose.  I can never understand why these Compass blocks are considered difficult because they are all straight piecing, you just have to get the fabric choice right!

After these two, I have only four small blocks to work and I have cut out two today, so will be able to settle down this evening and piece while watching "Downton Abbey"  (UK favourite Sunday Evening Drama).  It's  on ITV unfortunately because it there are so many adverts that one needs a diversion!

When I finish the little blocks I then begin the four larger corner blocks and of course the internal borders, so a long way to go!

One Simple and another a bit fiddly!

As you may have read on my Little Welsh Quilts blog, I have been gadding around lately!  I have also been having a few house problems which have rather wound me up and I haven't had the concentration to draft and cut out blocks with such tiny pieces. The sewing part is relatively straightforward but even that lapsed and I have been quilting the edges of  my "Little Welsh Treasure"  which is a much simpler job.  I am teaching this at the Jen Jones Quilt Centre in Lampeter next April.  I don't think it has been announced yet but if you are interested keep an eye on this link -http://www.jen-jones.com/QuiltCentre/Workshops.html

 I have, however, completed two blocks I prepared before my travels began-

The above block, which was the fiddly one because it has so many tiny pieces, was taken from The Jane Pizar quilt in the Cheltenham Museum, which I believe was made around the same time as the Sundial even though it has a later attributed date.

and this much simpler one based on a panel dated 1786 in the V&A quilt collection which was exhibited last year.

I have cut out a Compass Rose block based on one at the centre of a Cumbrian quilt date 1799, so perhaps I will start it this evening while watching Downton Abbey.  This would be good entertainment if it weren't being completely spoiled by so many adverts which makes it difficult to watch - piecing keeps me from getting too irritated! 

Another three!

I have been catching up after a few days in the Cotswolds.  I didn't take any blocks with me, as one needs a good light to sew these rather fiddly pieces and that is not always guaranteed in a holiday rental.  So on my return last Sunday I finished these three and cut out the next block.

I was so busy making sure that the cat on my cushion was in the picture, I didn't notice that the blocks were facing the wrong way, so I have cropped and turned them around! 

Only the block with green in it is from the Sundial.  The Sunflower block is a variation and the one on the right is from the Ann Randoll quilt dated 1802 which was also exhibited at the V&A last year.

Now I am tuned in, I am finding interesting blocks from quilts of the same era which I may well include.  At the moment I am drafting a Compass Rose block dated 1799!   

New piece of Liberty Lawn

I have been away for a few days and there has been no progress on the quilt.  However, I thought you might like to see the piece of fabric I bought last week which I mentioned buying whilst writing my post?   I think it has possibilities?   I am now not sure where and how but it might well work?  The largest flowers are about an inch across and some are smaller, which is useful.

I folded the fabric and photographed both sides - the bottom half of the picture is the reverse of the fabric,  you have to look hard to see the difference, but it is there.  The colouring on the reverse is ever so slightly blurry which is useful - sometimes you need a bit of subtlety.


I might do some Broderie Perse with it because each flower is well defined which works best with that technique.  Too many printed flowers have indistinct edges which aren't ideal because then you have add definition with embroidery which is a chore and sometimes doesn't work.

Three finished and one almost!

My it is relentless.  I am trying to fit in cutting out blocks between preparing for a talk I am giving on Saturday, writing this and my other blog and having the builders in.  Oh and trying to cope with Call Centres! Why do we put up with them - alien things?  They must surely be sending up the heart attack rate?

Well back to the calm world of patchwork - thank goodness for it -

Buoyed up with success at doing the original sunflower block, I thought I would tackle a variation. I haven't finished it, but it's getting there! It still needs to be inserted into its background fabric which can be the tricky part.  The other three blocks are complete and ready to be placed in position on the Block Butler.

Apart from the background fabric of the sunflower variation, which is Laura Ashly, all are Liberty Lawn.   

Liberty Lawn fabrics

I am using a great many Liberty Lawn fabrics in this quilt, simply because they are so suitable for tiny piecing and of course I have a great many of them, as I have been collecting Liberty for very many years.  However, I  am still buying the odd bit on eBay and am constantly amazed at the variety on offer.  In fact as I'm typing this I just bought one!

 
Though I have all this Liberty fabric and know a bit about the company, I wish I knew more.  I know at one time manufacturing was in Lancashire, because friends from the Manchester area had access to the mill shops, but I suspect that this is no longer the case and production has moved east?  If anyone can enlighten me please do?

The pictures here are not of the ones I'm working with on the Cottage Orne Quilt, I thought I would just pull out one drawer of my stash and photograph it!  Please excuse the creases - LL does crease when jammed in a drawer! 

 
There is a range of classic designs in lawn that is current for quite a few years.  There is also a yearly collection with no guarantee that it will continue, but it may do and all these designs and the classics, have different colourways. Now there seems to be a new kid on the block "Liberty Art Fabrics".  I first saw it last year when they started producing reproduction fabrics for the big patchwork exhibition at the V&A.  I didn't like or buy that fabric, it didn't look "Liberty" to me, the colours and quality weren't up to standard, in my opinion and it was cheaper, which indicates something?

Liberty Lawn is expensive stuff, retailing at £21 per meter at the moment.  It has always has been expensive in comparison to other cottons and for decades it was bought by the upper class for their children's clothes.  At one time, when we were feeling extravagant, we actually dressed in it (I have a dismembered blouse I cut into regularly) and clothes can still be bought at the store. You would need deep pockets though!

I should perhaps calculate the value of my stash?  No - better not!

Original and mine.

I am making this tribute to the Sundial Coverlet without attempting to match either fabrics or colours.  Many of the fabrics in the original are quite strange and I have nothing like them, so I decided to make the blocks from my current stash,  just as I make all my quilts, to try and capture the essence of the original but not  attempt to reproduce.

I have always used Liberty of London and Laura Ashley fabrics because I want my quilts to have a British dimension and will certainly continue to use them in this project and others in the future.  Sadly I don't think either are produced here in the UK now, but luckily I have a large amount of both collected over many years.  I need never buy another piece of fabric, but of course I do, now mainly on eBay!


The first picture is a block from the original coverlet and the second is my version and they are not remotely alike-

As it happens this is one of the few that I have simplified - I drafted it a while ago, probably meaning to add in the extra details.  However, when I chose the fabrics,  I felt that they would work without the extra piecing involved in dividing the central square and adding others.

Writing about this block here, I realise that I could draft another little block using a pinwheel centre. I don't particularly like the "card" blocks and there is one block that I haven't a clear enough picture of, so am subsituting these with blocks from other quilts of the era and maybe a new pinwheel one?

The black and white zig zag fabric (which I have also used to border the house in the centre) and the one with tiny spots, were cut from the same Nina Ricca handkerchief that I bought in Japan.  The Japanese have departments of designer handkerchiefs in their wonderful stores and I bought quite a few to cut up!

 
.
  

A few more blocks

This last week I have been working on these three blocks and they have been rather a struggle -

As I said before, the square blocks are just a matter of coping with fairly small pieces and sewing them together in the normal way.

 
I  had been rather dreading the Sunflower block because cutting its very small pieces needed pin point  accuracy, but the first problem was to figure out how to draft it!   Fortunately I found a 360 degree Angle Measure in Staples and I did it without too much trouble.  I pieced it without papers (unlike the original which would have been paper pieced) and it went together like a dream.

It was a different story with the third block.  I worked it partly over papers to get the defined heart shapes, but I didn't get it right.  The hearts still weren't defined enough, so I'm doing it again.

Until next time!

Some little Gothic houses in Sidmouth

Last Autumn I visited Sidmouth, a coastal town in South East Devon.  It's attraction for a fan of Gothic architecture is that from the 1780s onwards when this style was all the rage, it became a fashionable place to live. The Napoleonic Wars had closed the Continent to the upper and upper-middle classes, so they had to find somewhere nice to go and many settled in  Sidmouth and built "cottages".  Sidmouth has a shingle beach which doesn't appeal to families with children and the railway didn't reach in until 1874, all of which helped to preserve its character. This is a great bonus for those of us who don't like the usual British seaside attractions!

I have no idea whether the buildings are as lovely to live in as they look, but they are certainly very easy on the eye. It's a delightful town and probably a pleasant place to live, but though  I like the idea of living in a country town or by the sea, I'm used to living in a city, so it's not  for me,  There's no harm  choosing a house though?

This is the little house I picked out and the street just beyond it -

It's a pity about the parked cars and the municipal tennis courts but that's modern life for you!  In the olden days when Sidmouth was being developed these houses would have probably looked out onto a green sward, or maybe gardens, but now we need cars and I suppose tennis courts, so we have to put up with them cluttering up the view!

And here's the one my friend Pauline chose -

It was being renovated for sale and was behind me when I took the previous photo across the tennis courts, so we wouldn't have been next door neighbours but not too far away!  Pity we don't play tennis!

I was going to talk about a finished block but this post has gone on far too long so I will do it next time. Though progress is slow I am nevertheless working hard!.

Two finished, three progressing.

I usually work at at least three blocks at a time because if I come up against a problem, I can take a break and pick up another.  Of course I have to keep up the cutting out so that I don't come to a complete halt.  Strangely  I find that quite tiring, I suppose it's the most creative bit and saps the brain power.  Rummaging for fabrics takes time too and then of course there's the tidying up!

I keep all work in progress, together with their patterns and templates, in this flat basket which I recently bought in my favourite shop. (I'm going to post about this shop on my other blog fairly soon.)  It's really good shape as finding things in it is easy as they can't get buried at the bottom.

I don't have any difficulty with piecing, it's the applique that gives me problems.  I don't really enjoy it and am never pleased with the result and no matter how much I prepare, things seem to end off centre.  I'm having to do a fair amount of it on these blocks because I have only ever paper pieced hexagons and octagons which are fairly straightforward and am certainly not up to the very complicated methods used in the 18th century when pp was used in preference to applique.

I have laid the blocks out on half of my Block Butler - unfortunately I cut it in half because usually my quilts are small but now I could do with the full size.  I did think I would buy another but when I was quoted £48  I thought that was too expensive to contemplate, so I am making do.  I will try attaching the other half somehow because careful placement of the blocks is crucial for a properly balanced design.

I have a rough plan of the layout of the coverlet which will need about 56 small blocks and 4 large corner blocks, which I have yet to decide upon.  Then of course there are the borders which I will design after I have completed the blocks - so a long way to go!

How I work

My computer has picked up a Malaware thingy which has been causing me worries and chasing technical support, so my blogs have been neglected, which isn't a good thing at the beginning of a blog's life!

I thought I would show you some of  the blocks I have already made and tell you something about my approach.  I seem to work to certain rules which I have set myself over a period of years, rules which I am comfortable with, but of course are very out of date in the present world of quilt making.

The blocks in the original Sundial Coverlet are two different sizes - 3 and 5 inches I think?  No measurements are given and it was my guess when I viewed it at the V&A, but I decided to make mine all 12 cms. square.  It is easier to draft patterns that can be divided by two, three and four so I chose this size (just over 4.5 inches) which is about as small as I feel I can work. ( I draft patterns in both Metric and Imperial depending on the size of quilt I want to make, it's very handy having two options!)

The above pictures will give you an idea of the process.  Of course I could draft on Electric Quilt, but I like drawing on graph paper and it's probably quicker though not as professional looking.  I have, however, done (the above block) on EQ because it was proving impossible to do the old fashioned way.  I amaze myself now when I look at it because I have already forgotten how I did it! 

I am using mainly Liberty Lawn because it is ideal for small blocks, but I also use vintage Laura Ashley if I can, though it is thicker and I save it for the bigger pieces.  I have a large collection of fabric and the whole process is very messy, with boxes and bags of fabric cluttering my workroom.  As it is also a through room as well as the cat's room, I can't leave everything strewn around, so I have to tidy up as I go along which isn't ideal.

Regarding patterns - this project is a personal journey for me and I hadn't thought about making patterns for teaching etc.  Saying that, I am not averse to sharing, but as you can tell from the above, my patterns are hand drawn and I would have reservations about putting them on the Internet.  However if any of you have any suggestions as to how it can be done I would be interested. Of course this would mean dusting off my rusty computer drafting skills and that takes time away from working on the project!

What is a COTTAGE ORNÉ

Maybe I've chosen the wrong title for this blog and my quilt project because most computer keyboards won't add an acute accent and one is needed over the last letter "e".  I managed to get the blog title right by copying and pasting from an already printed document.  I wanted to use the name because a cottage orné is particularly appropriate as a centre for a quilt inspired by one made in 1797, because they were just becoming fashionable at that time.  Here is a drawing of one built in South Devon in 1815 -     

This quotation from Clive Aslet's book "The English House" sums it up nicely -

"Towards the end of the eighteenth century and particularly during the Regency, when fashionable life was becoming more and more artificial, complicated and luxurious, the simple life looked deliciously refreshing to jaded palettes. Never mind that the real life of labourers was often brutal. For the first time in its story, the English house fell victim to inverted snobbery: it became voguish for houses to ape the appearance of dwellings towards the bottom of the social scale, rather than at the top."

In other words they weren't actually cottages but quite substantial houses built by the well-to-do to embrace the rustic life. Many smaller buildings were also built in the style, such as lodges and gate houses and also estate villages, but this was purely to make them look pleasing to the rich folk who owned them.

The style of build was very pretty to look at with curved and pointy arched windows and doors and lots of intricate detailing both inside and out.  It started when Horace Walpole built his house "Strawberry Hill " in Twickenham around 1750 and because it was the first of its kind, the style is known as Strawberry Hill Gothic. Here is the link to Strawberry Hill which will give you plenty to look at as there are some wonderful videos if you really want to absorb the style -
http://www.strawberryhillhouse.org.uk/about.php

This new Gothic style became extremely fashionable among the wealthy and they went to town, even Gothicising their existing houses as well as building new ones such as cottages orné. Then the Prince Regent took it to extreme by building the Brighton Pavilion, which is seriously over the top but wonderful.

Inspired by the Sundial Coverlet

Let me tell you a story?  It all began a very long time ago when I saw this picture in a book -

The book was called "A  practical guide to patchwork from the Victoria and Albert Museum", now out of print of course, but you can buy it on Amazon UK for 1p plus postage!  It has a few patterns of other quilts, but only this one picture of  the Sundial coverlet.  I didn't know much about patchwork when I first read it, but I was instantly taken with the way the maker has used  fabric and thought it very clever.  I also liked the colours and variety of the very pretty geometric dress prints, but combining them with black had saved the colour scheme from being too sweet!

Scroll on many years, by now I was teaching patchwork, quilting and embroidery and had just written my first book "House and Garden Samplers",  I had made a special sampler for the cover and chose to depict a  pink cottage orne because it was a house style that I had always admired. 

Then, because I was teaching courses on patchwork houses,  I made a patchwork version (see header picture above) intending to extend it into a sampler quilt.  It didn't happen!

Last year in the Quilt Exhibition at the V&A Museum, I saw the Sundial Coverlet for the first time.  It lived up to all my expectations and I decided that now was the time to do something based on it.  I had a file of pictures and collected writings, I also had lots of fabric, so it was time to stop faffing about and get down to it.  I didn't want to do a replica because, though I love the original I wanted it to be my own design.  I decided to put my languishing pink cottage orne block at the centre and surround it with the small blocks from the Sundial Coverlet, to make my personal sampler quilt.

So far, I have found drafting the patterns and piecing them challenging. Some of the designs are simple but others are complicated and were designed to be paper pieced, so I have had to rethink my usual way of working.  It has been the most demanding quilt project I have ever undertaken but stimulating as well.  It is a complete change from my other life in quilting, as it couldn't be more different to making Welsh quilts.

I started this blog because I thought some of you  might be interested in my progress so far but which has a long way to go.  I will be writing regularly so please tune in again..