Little kantha bags . . .

. . . made for the last Quilters' Guild meeting, Three Corners Workshops, in October. There were three workshops on offer and everyone circulated round the three, with about an hour and a quarter for each. I felt very honoured to be asked to teach one of them, alongside Carol Dowsett (my long ago C&G tutor) and Becca Balazs who runs an amazing shop in west Dorset. Something to get a good start on in that time frame is not easy to think of, and with Carol doing postcards I had to come up with something else!

Also we had to provide packs for everyone - about 50 people. So I dyed some fabric and found threads, and invented these small bags, supplying too the templates for the designs, and some beads etc.

It features 2 of the many types of kantha stitching; 1. the general background filling in, echoing the motif or in patches worked in varying directions, and 2. for the motifs, outlining them then filling in with the running stitch, again either following the shape, or just filling the space.

Becca did some lovely shadow quilted cards, using glitzy sheers as the overlay and some nice butterfly motifs under it.

Where's the stitching then?

West Country Embroiderers this month had a workshop with Becca Belazs using Stewart Gill Galactica paints - well glitter really in a glue base that dries clear - and stencils on velvet.

We all had a lot of fun trying out different coloured glitter. It is made to a special formula and is quite amazing stuff. Costs a lot though, I couldn't afford to buy any, and however would you choose, from a dozen at least different hues, if you only bought one?

These 2 quilts ( 2' square and 2'x about 4') are what has been keeping me busy lately. I've made them for an exhibition being held at our church in March on the theme of third world problems, trade justice, helping etc. I haven't made 'message' quilts before, but got interested in the idea of hands, and all the prepositions that can be added to the word - hand over, hand out, hand back, hand round, a hand up, a hand with etc etc. So one uses an African fabric and stitched eyelets as found on Nigerian traditional robes, and the other recycles bits of indian fabric using a kantha-type running stitch.

Kantha sample

I should have done this in the TIF colours, shouldn't I, it nearly is apart from the pink! Silly woman!
I started trying out the various forms of kantha stitching - outlined motifs filled with running stitch either random or echoing the outline, pattern darned motifs and fillings, and background quilting. It built itself up into this composite.