Avalon Film

Has anybody tried this stuff?
I picked some up the other day at my friend Jennifer's (Picket fence Fabrics), and I have not been able to stop playing with it. My other work has been set aside (alas!) temporarily until I can get this out of my system. Jennifer could only give me 6 feet as she has had a run on this stuff, no wonder - it is soooo much fun!

It consists of a transparent plastic film that is water soluble (don't even sneeze on it...). The idea is that you 'sandwich' bits and pieces of whatever (fabric, paper, thread etc.) between two layers of this Avalon stuff and then sew through all three layers at will. You then spritz the resulting fabric with water - voila - new fabric, held together by thread.

Above, a school of fish sandwich awaiting the sewing machine.

The stitched line

I just had a message from a fellow quilter State side, Pam Rupert.
Pam is the creator of PaMdora whom you no doubt you have heard about and seen. Just in case you haven't, PaMdora (Pam's alter ego) resides on big supersized quilted cartoons depicting the perils she runs into as she makes her way through a funny series of circumstances. In case you haven't seen the latest, here is her QN entry for 2007,

Gee... quilted cartoons, who'd have thought....? Brilliant!

Anyways, these days Pam is also looking into Artist Statements, and has asked me to elaborate some more on what I said about the stitched line on my website and show some examples. Happy to do so Pam!

I find that the quilting world (industry?) is supplying us all with a LOT of embellishment gizmos, tools threads, ribbons etc. There is nothing wrong with this stuff but we may be in danger of losing our way with our work if we are not careful about looking beyond the glitz before incorporating these into our work. Remember tyvek...?




I buy this stuff as often as anybody else as I love to muck around with new goodies. They are fun to play with and I love to make small studies to explore their potential. But they get parked over in a corner of my studio where I can watch them until I am ready to 'press them into service'. By that I mean I have no intention of ever using them as embellishments.


I find that it is much more powerful to work with the expressive qualities of these items. That usually needs a bit of thinking before acting.


The stitched line, be it cotton thread, couched wool or silk floss does not appear on a piece unless it contributes to the overall design of my composition.












For me, the design rules what is used in a work not the ingredients.

Any thoughts?

Needlefelting and a running stitch

This little piece was done in the car earlier this week. Done with a barbed needle, an old car sponge, a piece of felt backing and a few bits of wool roving...
Then over to hand dyed silk thread, cotton floss etc for texture and optical mixes. Gotta work a bit more on the compoisition, but I love the way the wool and the silk threads glow.