Outfit of the Day Bargello Quilt Kimono Jacket

On a fine spring day we decided to take a walk along the prom at Sumner and of course have an ice-cream.  What else would you do on a trip to the seaside?

According to the Christchurch City Council website the stroll along the promenade and return is 1.25km long - not quite far enough to burn off the ice-cream calories. Luckily I didn't have one due to the blustery easterly wind blowing in off the sea. It seemed more coffee than ice-cream weather.

I wore a recently completed jacket for our walk along the prom.  It is made from a bargello quilt which was always intended to be a garment it just took over fifteen years to finish. We took photos for the blog using the mosaic taniwha as a prop but the blog post never happened.

The outfit

It is worn with an Icebreaker merino tee, French Dressing Jeans and United Nude Jacky Lo Black, Blue and Silver ankle boots.  The FDJ Olivia straight leg jeans were altered by me many moons ago to be a slim leg.

Sumner

Sumner is a  coastal seaside suburb of Christchurch, New Zealand and was surveyed and named in 1849 in honour of John Bird Sumner, the then newly appointed Archbishop of Canterbury and president of the Canterbury Association.  The Māori name for the area is Ohikaparuparu ("o" means place of; "hika" means rubbing, kindling, or planting; "paruparu" means dirt, deeply laden, or a preparation of fermented cockles).

Trip Advisor rates Sumner as number 20 of 249 things to do in Christchurch.

Aptly named Beach Bar which thoughtfully provides a lap rug if you sit outside on a blustery day

Looking along the beach to Scarborough head

Majestic Norfolk pines

The mosaic taniwha has lost some of his mosaic but is still an impressive sculpture.  Taniwha are supernatural creatures in Māori tradition, similar to serpents and dragons in other cultures.  They were said to hide in the ocean, rivers, lakes, watery dens or caves.  Some taniwha would eat and kill people, or kidnap women.  Others were believed to be guardians for a tribe, and people would offer them gifts and say a karakia (a prayer).

Sumner is also a haunt for surfers - maybe you can spot a few in these pictures. There were some out on the water honest.

Cave rock, a small tidal cave, can be explored at low tide and scrambling to the top is a favourite past-time for kids.  There is a plaque on the tower at the top which remembers the (ship) pilot Joseph Day who saved many lives between 1867 and 1880.  There is also a Māori legend associated with Cave Rock.

Tuawera is the Māori name for this large rock.  Tuawere figuratively means cut down as if by fire and refers to the many people who died from eating the flesh of a great whale that was stranded on the shore. It is said that the rock represents the carcass of that deadly whale which was beached by means of black magic.

The Story of Tuawera - Tūrakipō, a chief of Ōpawāho sought Hineao, a daughter of Te Ake of Akaroa for a wife. She spurned his advances so Tūrakipō cast a spell of death upon her.  In revenge Te Ake her father went to the hill overlooking Sumner and sent forth mighty karakia against Tūrakipō and his people.  In answer to his prayers a whale was stranded on the shore which the people of Tūrakipō eagerly cut up and feasted upon. Those who ate the whale fell asleep and subsequently died.  Tūrakipō, feeling that the stranded whale was the result of makutu (black magic), did not partake with his people. However, later, having few followers left to help him he was duly slain by Te Ake’s party.

The Earthquake - On 22 February 2011, the 6.3 magnitude Christchurch earthquake destroyed or made uninhabitable a large number of the local houses and commercial buildings. This was followed my many smaller earthquakes including another 6.3 magnitude earthquake on 13 June 2011. These two earthquakes caused many of Sumner's iconic cliffs to collapse, and many areas to be cordoned off using fencing and shipping containers.  Since these earthquakes a lot of the cliffs have been further dismantled to make them safe. The shipping containers have finally been removed and vegetation planted so overtime the large scars in the cliff face blend back into the natural environment.

Sumner container wall c.2015

Summit Road - As the weather was nice we decided to drive along Summit Road between the Gondola and Godley Head, for the first time post earthquake, to be reminded of the amazing views.

Sumner

Heathcote Valley

The Estuary

As luck would have it when I flew to Wellington on the Monday morning we took off to the south and flew over the city going out to sea at New Brighton with Sumner just visible at the top middle of the photograph.

The making

The idea was to finish the quilted jacket in time for Symposium in October but that plan didn't quite work out.  Now that the garment is finished I can't see it having a life in regular wardrobe rotation.  It would have fitted in really well at the quilt symposium but not sure it does anywhere else.

When I signed up for the bargello quilt class at Bernina Dress Sundries in the early 2000s I knew that I wanted a brightly coloured quilt based on the colours in a bundle of Laurel Burch Fantastic Felines fabrics sent to me by Cath. The strata of my quilt ended up being the colours of a rainbow (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet) and these five Laurel Burch fabrics just blended into that theme.

I started making this jacket quite quickly after finishing the quilt using a kimono quilt pattern from a book. All these years later I have no idea what the book was or even where the pattern I traced is.  It never made it to completion for two reasons: (1) the kimono sleeves resulted in a lot of fabric under the arm which looked ugly and was uncomfortable; (2) I was obsessed with making double sided garments and I could never decide what the second side should be. So the original jacket was reverse sewn and the pieces put away in a draw for maturation.

Roll on 2017 and I looked at a number of different jacket patterns but was really limited by the fact that I didn't want to chop up the quilt more than I had to and the shape of the previous kimono jacket.  After much head scratching I remembered a Laura Lee Fitz garment quilt pattern "Fruit Garden" bought at either my first or second trip to Houston International Quilt Festival back in 2008 or 2010. This worked perfectly having more shape whilst still blending well with the original garment. I created my own facing and lining pieces and used pattern 1007 Kimono Jacket and Vest by Purrfection Artistic Wearables (now called Dana Marie Design) for the kimono style collar band.

The quilt is quilted really simply, going corner to corner diagonally across each segment of fabric, using invisible thread. It is quilted onto a heavy cotton flannel.  This was before I discovered heirloom cotton quilting flannel which is fantastic for garment quilts.  This heavy flannel makes the jacket quite heavy (but warm).

As the quilted fabric was thick I used herringbone stitch (embroidery stitch name due to old age mental blank on its sewing name) to catch all of the seams down.

One of the challenges with completing a project so many years after it was started is having enough fabric.  I had stitched the embroidery designs on a Jinny Beyer fabric and always intended to use the same fabric for the kimono collar.  Now of course I wanted to use it for the facings as well. Even the quilt shop that used to stock all of the Jinny Beyer Palette Collection is no more. So I popped into Bernina in the hope that they still had some left and yay they had a lonely fat quarter remaining. With this fat quarter and the other remnants from my original purchase I managed to cut all the bits I needed with some judicious piecing using left over bits of the bargello patchwork.

The lining came from The Fabric Store, a lovely silk satin.  I did try to find a cheaper fabric but none of the other lining suitable silks worked nearly as well as the snakeskin print.

The machine embroidery was the other feature of the garment. All of these designs were from the OESD Laurel Burch Fantastic Felines Collection.  This took ages to sew out on my previous Bernina Embroidery machine (Artista 180).  The biggest hoop I had was 200 x 155mm (roughly 8 x 6 inches). So the fabric had to be hooped many times and everything carefully positioned to line up with the previous stitching, to get a strip of fabric long enough to go around my hips.

As an art garment I love the look of the finished item.  From a sewing perspective there are a number of imperfections and I would give myself a "could do better" rating.  It will be interesting to see if it gets worn as an everyday garment when the cooler weather comes.

Creative Construction Quilt Symposium 2017: The Exhibitions Part 2

As promised here is part two of the Creative Construction Quilt Symposium 2017 exhibitions with those quilts at St Andrew's College that particularly caught my eye.

It took me a while to sort out the artist statements and their associated pieces, random photography can be quick at the time but problematic later on.  Not to mention the fact that all of my photographs seem to have a definite lean to them - seemed straight at the time - wonder if I stand lopsided? Hopefully the quilts speak for themselves and my hopeless photography doesn't detract too much.

St Andrew's College was the venue for a number of different exhibitions: Tutors Exhibition; Hoffman Challenge 2017; Aotearoa Quilters; Orange Challenge.

Aotearoa Quilters "Fragile"

Golden Years by Sonya Prchal

This tiny elderly lady seemed frail with her stooped posture and oversized coat. I repeated her image, fading each time to represent her increasing fragility.

Unknown Future by Kat Martin

As fragile as life itself, as fragile as a newborn and as fragile as our endangered species - this baby gorilla represents all of these.

Fragility of our Land by Donna Cumming

I wanted to show something that was thought provoking, heart touching, as well as allowing us to come to realisation that we are only visitors here.  Black is our national colour.

Broken but Beautiful by Julia Arden

The Japanese art of kintsukuroi, "repair with gold" gives broken porcelain new life.  The golden cracks become an integral part of its new beauty.

"I wish for..." by Lynda Thrower

In my childhood my sisters and I would blow on dandelion purrs and make a wish.  The slightest breath would blow them away.

Blowing in the Wind by Gloria Scanlen

We have dandelions on the lawn and I often watch the delicate seed heads floating off into the air.

Gertrude by Sonya Prchal

One of the quilts in the silent auction (and the only one I photographed)

The Hoffman Challenge 2017

Regal Cat by Clare Dixon

The Regal Cat is inspired by my Burmese Cat and artist Andrew Gonzalez's pre-Raphaelite cat.  The beading has turned out very sculptural on this fabric design.  The background quilting has been kept very simple to highlight the Regal Cat motif.

It's a bit lonely at the Top by Annie White

I cut up the challenge fabric in an attempt to remove all the background colour creating in the process a fragile lacy effect.  Perched aloft is a preening bird looking for a bit of company - he needs only to glance in the reverse to find his mate!

Best Overall: By the light of the Silvery Moon by Hayley Scott

An owl, flying through the night, by the light of the silvery moon.

Boat Sheds by Beverly Howe

The challenge fabric immediately reminded me of boat sheds when I saw the surfboards.  Living by the Pauatahanui inlet and Porirua harbour I regularly see groups of boat sheds in their many colours. My design is loosely based on these.

Orange Challenge

Waitarere Sunset by Barbara Freeman

My inspiration comes from watching, while sitting on the beach at Waitarere, the bright orange orb of the sun sinking towards the horizon.

Tour de Reve by Kathy Grimson

Orange is the perfect back drop for an old fashioned bicycle and map of Paris.  The perfect "dream ride" or "tour de reve". 

Exploring with Sir Edmund Hillary by Melanie Martin

A combination of two challenges using the word "explore" and colour orange. Thank you to the Sir Edmund Hillary Foundation for giving me permission to use his image.

Venetian Evening by Sonya Prchal

Created as a reminder of some wonderful evenings spent in Venice.  I had fun stitching the picture first, then painting it. Enjoyable technique to explore further.

Tutors' Exhibition

Tranquillity by Sue Wademan, New Zealand

Tranquillity is a textile piece from my Soulscapes series in which I try to capture the feeling of the landscape rather than the exact details.

This piece is a winter piece where the colours and simple format create a sense of quiet and calm that comes after the snow has fallen.

Many of my artworks like this have won awards over the last 20-years and are held in collections around the world.

This is the form of fabric collage I am teaching in my class at the NZ National Quilting Symposium in Christchurch in 2017.

Style: Fabric collage, framed behind museum glass that is reflection free.

Remains of the Day by Lyric Kinard, USA

In the end, what is left?

Time has fled.

The work is finished

Memory of light

The stillness of the dark.

Style: art quilt

Wheat Field by Melissa Burden, New Zealand

This piece represents to me the warmth of the sibling bond. Style: Pictorial Quilt.

I have seen (and photographed) this quilt before - displayed in Houston in 2016 - and this time I got to see it closer to home.

My Wabi Sabi by Julie Haddrick, Australia

A Japanese aesthetic that embraces transience, imperfections and the impermanent. Greatness is in the overlooked details and in the art of ageing graciously, of beauty in decline. My Wabi Sabi is outdoors in quiet, insignificant and inwardly orientated places. My treasure is in the discarded, a feather, a stick, a shard of china. This is what I value. This is who I am.

This self-portrait was created for a juried exhibition of the same title. Wanting to express my irreverent, non-traditional approach to quilt making and art textiles, I had painted the portrait fabric, splattering it with colour that seeped and ran down the face. Referencing a cheeky, freckled face that had enjoyed a life lived to the fullest. I added a textured feather to morph into my hair. This sari fabric, embellished with beads and screen printed fabrics not only added an applique, textural element, but illustrated one of my favourite collected items and personal symbols, the feather. The discarded, the insignificant, used and weathered. Beauty in decline. My wabi sabi.

Style: Wholecloth, hand painted fabrics using Kraftkolor fabric paints, Fabrico fabric pens on new and recycled materials, including cotton, silk, rayon and organza. Machine and hand-stitched / quilted, beaded and embellished.

Sarah and Getty by Debbie Williams, New Zealand

Sarah and Getty were fashioned from the Hoffman 2016 challenge fabric.  The fabric featured the Eiffel Tower above apartment buildings with pastel striped skies. The towers reminded me of giraffes, tall and slender above the vegetation, which inspired this creation.

Bitter Sweet by Clare Smith, New Zealand

In some textile manufacturing countries, water treatment is expensive and rivers often run blue or pink or turquoise with waste-water run off from the textile industry. The dyes are so strong that it is possible to predict fashionable colours for the season ahead by looking at rivers on Google Earth. That river water is then used for drinking, cooking and to irrigate crops.

Materials: Cotton fabric and thread, fabric dye
Style: Contemporary quilt based on traditional Korean Pojagi

Really Truly Blue by Jan Clark, Australia

What could be bluer or more Australian than fairy wrens? The little Superb Fairy Wren is well known in urban gardens of Eastern Australia, but the bluer wrens found in Inland areas are less familiar.

The birds represented here are (left to right): Variegated Fairy Wren, found coast to coast and central Australia; Superb Fairy Wren, from Eastern Australia; Splendid Fairy Wren, from central and Western Australia; White Winged Fairy Wren from central and Western Australia; Lovely Fairy Wren from the tip of Cape York.

This quilt is built in many layers, seen and unseen.

The background is dye painted in swirls.  The next layer is the nest mono printed with print paste and grasses. The swirl is further embellished with overlays of dyed organza and laces.

The little birds are thread drawn onto lace and sewn down to the surface with tiny dots.

Style: Art quilt

Structure #16 by Jane Dunnewold, USA

This quilt continues my exploration and use of old, unfinished quilt blocks and designs. I purchase blocks created by another maker, and complete the story by assembling the blocks on my own terms. No longer soft and pliable. Comforting from a new perspective? Quilt / Not Quilt? I welcome the viewer's opinion!

Style: Mixed media quilt

Fragility: Kina on Rangiputa by Mathea Daunheimer, New Zealand

This quilt is inspired by walking on the beautiful beaches in the Far North of New Zealand.  It is a real privilege to be able to experience the beauty of the environment here. And it is a reminder of how fragile our environment is, just like the kina shell. Resilient but fragile.

This quilt is created from coffee and tea dyed white cotton, painted with Derwent Inktense pencils, and densely quilted on my domestic machine.

Style: Art quilt

Life Cycle - Albatross by Charlotte Yde, Denmark

This quilt about the albatross is one out of my series about nature, passage of time and seasons used as a metaphor for life and death.

This quilt not only depicts the life cycle of the albatross but also addresses the issue of endangered species.

A lot of albatrosses are found dead because they have swallowed huge quantities of plastic floating around on the open sea, we ought to do something about all our waste.

Cotton and silk organza, deconstructed screen printing, oil paint sticks, digitally programmed stitched drawings, reflective thread, machine quilted.

Style: Modern quilt

Licorice Allsorts by Chris Kenna, New Zealand

"Licorice Allsorts" is a quilt that grew organically as a result of having a lot of fun with a box of striped fabrics.  The only thing that stopped me was running out of some of the striped fabric.  It's named Licorice Allsorts because that's all I could think about when I made the quilt!

Style: Art Quilt

Pink Bird by Judy Coates Perez, USA

I like painting images inspired by nature often using photos of real plants and animals as references for the pose, then changing them by simplifying details, altering the colours, and patterns to create unique stylised birds and plants.

This is a whole cloth quilt.  The background is painted with acrylic inks on cotton fabric and the imagery is painted with textile paints. It is free motion quilted on a domestic sewing machine.

Style: Art Quilt


For these quilts my photographs of the artist statement were so bad (mainly out of focus) that I couldn't actually read them.  I haven't included those quilts were I couldn't read (or remember) the tutor's name.

ViVid by Helen Godden, Australia

Ode to New York by Hazel Foot, New Zealand

Inspired by art deco relief  on the Chanin Building in New York, the glass designs of Frank Lloyd Wright and the green, open spaces of New York.

Daisy Paths Again by Deborah Louie, Australia

My Tangled Garden by Jenny Bowker, Australia

And finally in putting this post together I have realised that I have a bit of a thing for Sonya Prchal. Of the quilts included in this post three are by Sonya.