Hetty van Boven

Progress?

What did I do since my last post?
I tidied up the cupboards in my sewing room, re-organising the fabrics so I at least knew what I had and knew where to find it.
I expect my power bill to be way up, as stood there for days on end ironing each piece of fabric.

It not only looks good, I enjoyed meeting up with these fabrics again, some that have been in my stash for a long time.
I also sorted beads and anything else that comes into making textile art.

I visited family in PNG and taught a patchwork class there for the local ladies. I'll do a separate post on that.

Next I wanted a new design wall. What I had was a sheet of Masonite, covered with a padded and gridded piece of calico.
I wanted something larger and lighter and covered a 5 x 190 x 120cm piece of polystyrene first with bleached calico, then pinned a gridded flannel sheet on that.
I wish the sheet was white instead of medium grey, as the colour shows somewhat behind thin fabrics and make them look a bit darker.  Apart from that, it works well. The patches adhere to it and if necessary, I can push pins right through. The whole design wall is light enough to move it around and will fit behind the sofa bed in my sewing room when not in use.

What you see here is 2" squares and on the right is the border fabric.
It is more a colour wash than a Trip Around the world, I don't mind it, but once I stitch this together I don't have enough light coloured background for the actual design.
So I'll sew these up, but it won't go into the ACE quilt and I will buy a single background fabric on Wednesday at the Craft Show in Brisbane. I have some gorgeous cream background fabrics, but not enough of any of them.
I may even get another border fabric, if I can find something with apple green in it.

And this, dear reader, is how my design process goes: two steps forward, one step back. I am grateful for having been given carte blanche and not have to submit a final design for approval.