I've been "schwabe'd"

Seriously - a few weeks ago when the floods and tsunami roared through the neighbourhood I happened to end up in an email with Alison Schwabe and Jenny Bowker - they'd been having a conversation in SAQA - and since then I've been indirectly inspired to be more than usually exuberant and "why not?" in the studio. This super activity could be the reason behind a brief hospital stay last week - and when queried by the Doctor about what I'd been doing immediately before the event - I replied "hand sewing at my studio table."  I know he didn't believe me. So, confined to quarters for a short while, I'm being very restful and quiet and catching up on a whole lot of overdue reading.

Why I start reading quilt books and the like from the back cover will remain one of life's mysteries. My interest was perked by what was clearly a plagiarised version of Alison Schwabe's free motion cutting tutorial (available from her blog site). I couldn't believe that someone would be so brazen to actually copy her process almost word for word  into a book. I only accessed it from her blog site in recent weeks. And then I turned forward a page and ... it was an article written by Alison Schwabe.  Everyone relax - I'd just been "schwabe'd". The book is a great art quilt resource from the Quilters Guild of  New South Wales - Quilt Skills. Sadly, I need to return it to its rightful owner .. thanks for the loan Maxine.

Flood #2

Flood #2

This morning I've been playing with free motion rotary cutting - direct from Alison Schwabe's website - click on "blog" and scroll down to her Lines and Edges entry from 3 November 2010 for full instructions.
Instead of using two layers of fabric I started with the piece of practice machine quilting from last week (in readiness for the Civil War Vicksburg quilt) and coloured it in with gold shiva. It was then cut into 3" squares. A piece of complementary fabric was then quilted in long river-like runs and also cut into 3" squares. Using Alison Schwabe's technique different free-motion pieces were cut and restitched. I used a narrow satin stitch to rejoin the squares (which is quite different from the way Alison S instructs on joining fabric pieces). I liked the rawness of the edges and finished these with several rounds of wider satin stitch. I've included a few of the "as it happened" pictures below. A great exercise, a new technique, loads of fun and thanks Alison Schwabe for sharing.


In the beginning ...



Coloured with gold shiva stick

Cut into 3" squares

Complementary 3" squares



The fun part ...