BuDa workshop -Part II-Eye Candy

Like I said in my previous post, I just HAD to do another post on the BuDa Folklore Quilting Workshop. But first, lets feast our eyes on some eye candy..

In one of my earlier posts, I had mentioned that India is a non-quilting country. That is not true. What I really meant was that India has no history in the Western style of quilting. However, there are many traditional styles unique to various parts of the country. The Jaipuri Razais, The Bengali Kantha, The Himachali Khind, The Kannadiga Kaudhis, and many more. The sad thing is that these styles are fast dying as commercially mass made quilts become easily available and we are losing precious indigenous knowledge of these crafts in the bargain. 

All traditional Indian quilts (whatever the style) were hand quilted and made primarily with the object of using up every square inch of spare/used fabric and converting them into highly functional bedding. The craft was passed down from mothers to daughters and motifs were drawn from their daily lives and folklore. 

At the BuDa workshop we were taught to make a 'Kaudhi' (quilt) and all the rules, conventions, etc. that normally apply to the Western style of quilting had to be left at the door. The differences in the two styles were alarmingly glaring! Exact opposites, in fact!! To mention a few...

1.First off, no scissors, no rotary cutters! Fabric is snipped and then ripped along the grain turning the scraps square or rectangle shaped. Not an inch of fabric is wasted.

2.No rulers, no measuring! In western styles, precision cutting of fabric is recommended along with agonizing decisions on design and colour. Here, the design keeps evolving depending on the size/shape/colour of available scraps. Eyeballing is good enough for alignment and symmentry in design.

3.In western styles, the top is pieced first, then assembled with the backing and batting. Here, the backing and batting are first laid, and then the top is simultaneously pieced, sandwiched and quilted!

4.Quilting lines are not stitched from the inside out. In fact, the border is first bound and quilted all around and then the quilting progresses inwards!

5.In western styles, the motifs are first appliqued/pieced and then the quilt assembled. Here, the motifs are also appliqued simultaneously along with piecing, sandwiching and quilting!!

Whoa! That was a lot of 'unlearning' and 'relearning' I had to do. Lucky I did it all at the perfect spot on Earth - Savita's house :-) !! Savita, the inspiring lady behind BuDa Folklore, graciously opened up not just her beautiful home to us for the workshop for 3 days, but also her lovely guest room for the outstation participant - ME !! Ah bliss! More eye candy, take a look...

 

Hats off to you Savita! (pic above) May the Force be with you!!

(Oh yes, I'll do one more post on the workshop :-))

My first quilting workshop!!

Good things lead to more good things. Soon after finding the India Modern Quilt Guild (IMQG), I find BuDa Folklore, an Organization run by the fiesty Savita Uday, started with an aim to understanding and recording native language, oral tradition and folk culture in and around Uttara Kannada district in Karnataka, India. It promotes experiential learning, preservation of traditional knowledge systems and sustainable development of indigenous communities and the environment.

So what's this gotta do with quilts? Well, BuDa organizes workshops, internships and study tour programmes, and, as luck would have it, they had JUST announced a 3 day quilting workshop in the traditional quilting style of the local communities of Honnaver. Serendipity! 1.Its a quilting workshop. I've never attended one..only been (darkish) green with envy reading other peoples experiences on their blogs..yay!! 2.Its in the traditional style..what a superb opportunity to learn this fading art and that too from Nirmala-akka who is probably the best in the world at this..yippee!! 3.Its a 3 day thingy at Bangalore..I could do with that break..yay yay yippee yippee!!

And so I went. And since I am dying to show what I made, here it is :-)..

We were 5 participants, with day jobs as varied as an advertising professional, a software engineer, a corporate lawyer, a manager and a businesswoman. 2 were total newbies, 2 had some experience in embroidery and sewing, and then there was me. Suddenly, I was the most experienced person in a group at quilting!! Barring our teacher, the sweet sweet Nirmala-akka, of course, who's been making quilts for the past 20 years :-). So with a small puja, we started our endeavour to learn this unique form of hand quilting from an unlettered lady who did not even speak our language (and mind you, between the 5 of us, we knew at least 9 languages!)

To give you a brief idea about this quiltform, it is made exclusively from used scraps of cloth and whatever is at hand. Used cotton sarees are used for backing as well as multiple layers of the same for batting. The sari border is first separated and the backing and batting-layers arranged to the desired size. The border is then attached all around this topless sandwich with small, even running stitches. The quilting lines are spaced 1/2" apart and go round and round and round and round the square/rectactangle sandwich. Kubbis (sparrows!) are attached to the four corners and give the quilt an instantaneous, joyous look.

Typically, a Gali Patta (Kite) motif is made on a white background on all four corners of the quilt. This motif can be adapted to be huge or tiny depending on the size of the quilt.

So the corner white cloths, the colourful scraps, AND the motifs are all quilted simultaneously with each progressive row (round?) of stitches. And stitch by stitch, row by row, round by round, magic happens...

Holy Scrap! Aren't they beautiful? Magic, right?

I think I shall do a couple more posts on the workshop. There's still so much more to tell. And show. So, until then,

Happy quilting!

January IMQG 2012 challenge

It was a happy day a month or so ago when I stumbled upon The India Modern Quilt Guild. Wasted absolutely no time in signing up. Was the 26th member and was sooooo glad to find there were 25 other crazy people who found messing with fabric absolutely normal. Lack of supplies didn't seem to be too great an obstacle to these brave (and crazy!) women and I was in la-la land to be part of this group :-).

When Shruti, the founder-member of IMQG and a fab quilter-blogger proposed a monthly challenge, all of us jumped at it. Here was our chance to do what we loved to do, not all alone, not all by ourselves, but with a group of yes, thats right, with a group of brave and crazy women (56 at last count) who spoke the same language. True, its just a virtual group right now; true, the members are from varied backgrounds/ cultures/ countries, but what a sense of belonging! I haven't had this much fun since school! :-)

Anyways, the rules for the January challenge were simple and straighforward - Use only warm coloured solids. I added another straighforward but not-so-simple rule for myself - NO fabric buying. Determined to work only from my stash of scraps, I pulled out all warm coloured solids, threw in some neutrals and unsheathed the rotary cutter.

Didn't plan much, just cut out as many 5.5" and  3" squares as I could from the available scraps. One look at the no. of pieces and I knew I'd have to scale down the project from a double bed spread to single. Not sure what these blocks are called, but 3 days of piecing them and I'm ready to scale it down to a tablecloth!

So thats what I made. A tablecloth. Though it still beats me why I bothered to add the batting if it was going to be a tablecloth!

Started with a darker centre and progressed outwards with lighter colours..Browns, maroons, reds, hot pinks, oranges, yellows. Alternated light and dark neutrals.

Quilted straight lines through the block centres. Lesson learnt : Do NOT use variegated thread when quilting straight lines. Its no point. Unless the lines are very close together I guess.

Backed it with blinding red fabric. Yes, from my stash :-). And hand bound it. A first for me.

(Oh, I did further scale it down to an octagon coz I was a bit strapped for time, heh heh!)

So that's my entry for the Jan IMQG 2012 challenge. Best part? The leftovers :-)...

So waiting for the Feb challenge. Bring it on I say!

One last look?

Did I say one last look?

When did I say one last look?

:-). Happy quilting!

Shutting up and wiggling

I rather like Leah's Mantra - 'Shut up and quilt'. So without further ado, here's my second attempt at shutting up and wiggling..

(Here's my first if you want to take a look)

I wiggled up and I wiggled down and I wiggled all around. I found myself agreeing with Leah on...
-my machine feels better with the feed dogs up
-my hands really ARE better at certain curves than others and I need to practice getting my machine to match that
-I tend to get lost/stuck with random wiggling and prefer some method in the madness instead.

Now that I had wiggled a bit, I felt tempted to do the same with the leaf pattern that I was trying to learn as part of the 2012 FMQ challenge...

Leaves? Heart? Butts? Never mind :-). I think I'm beginning to get the hang of it. Now all that I need to do is perfect it :o).

Linking this up with Quilt Along Wednesdays on Leah's Free Motion Quilting Project. Loving it!!

Its a bird! Its a plane!..no, its FMQ!!

Now why isn't this....

...looking like THIS?....

Yup, more practice needed. But whats practice without some play? :-)

Now that looks kinda cool I think. Maybe this is how I'll make my final block for the 2012 FMQ challenge this month. (button on the right --->) Of course, AFTER I practice some :-).

Happy playing!

And I thought I was ready

Its Fresh Sewing Day at Lily's Quilts and unlike last time, this time I'm all ready and waiting.

Or so I think. Ha!  Now they tell me I can also showcase my entire year's finishes if I like!! Like? I would've loved to do that but I absolutely refuse to not use my mosaic of December's finishes! Yes, the one that I had already prepared a day in advance and was all ready with!! Anyways, here it is :-)..ta-da...

Ok, ok, that's a cheat mosaic. Its only actually two quilts. On the left is First among Equals and on the right, Bundle of Joy.

This year, I seem to have bitten off more than I can chew. Yet again. I have signed up for three (or was it four?) monthly challenges, so am hoping to learn a lot and have many more finishes for my 2012 Fresh Sewing Day mosaics :-).

Happy sewing!

First among Equals

Thats what I'm calling this quilt designed by my 9 yr old.

Ok, thats weird quilt and thats a weird name for a quilt.

First, the name. In early January 2011, when I was charting out a design I quite fancied for a quilt for my sister (I was still a beginner, remember?), my lil one, then 8, whipped up a handmade calender for me with dates of the month on one side and a blank sheet on the facing side. For my quilt designs, she said. I decided then and there that I was going to try and make at least one quilt a month. Am happy to say that I have indeed managed to make a quilt a month. And as the year came to a close, I wanted to make her a special thankyou quilt for giving me that slight prod that I seemed to so badly need.

Now the twist. When your 9 yr old has 2 cousins the same age, you can't obviously make just your kid a quilt. No, you make three! And mine is the oldest by a month or two, so she's the 'First among Equals', see?

And now the design. Well, what d'ya expect?!..its designed by a 9 yr old!! I told her I was going to make her a bug jar quilt and she could choose what she wanted to put in it. And she said, cool..and chose the creepiest  fabric I had..so we have slime, and eyeballs, and berries and cupcakes, and rabbits and fish, and frogs and crabs, and bugs and butterflies..

..and circuit boards (she loves pulling things apart and trying to fix(?!) them)..

..and did I mention snorkelling frogs?..

And then she says, "Ma, put Didi (older sister) and Akka (again older sister, referring to her cousin) in a jar and throw away their hairbrushes and phones". How do you refuse a 9 yr old with puppy dog eyes??...

So the jars are done and now she wants a wolf..a howling wolf !! (I suspect Didi's 'Twilight' obsession may have had something to do with it). And a wolf howling at the moon from behind a shelf of jars makes perfect sense to a 9 yr old..what can you say?

She drew the wolf...

..and I drew the moon..

..both of which I appliqued with a silver metallic thread and quilted some echoing lines around the shapes.

The back had to be pieced. She likes it.

For the quilting, I just stuck to some good old quilting in the ditch around the jars and shelves and some free hand waves for the sky.

Didn't add binding. Just folded over the fabric from the front.

So thats my last quilt for 2011. I have learnt a lot along the way, quilting some, blogging some; and I hope to learn a lot more in 2012, especially some FMQ and some cool blogging tricks! Also hope to open an online store for quilts and supplies.

Wish you all a Very Happy and Prosperous New Year! Have a wonderful 2012!!

Love. Peace. Joy.
Tina