The Queen today expressed her delight in the challenge quits so far produced by her partcipating citizens.
Gina and Cat
She reminds readers that there is no timelimit (other than the ones you set yourselves) so if you wish to play, come on over!
Wednesday, 9 July 2008
Saturday, 5 July 2008
The Royal standard quilt
From the Queen herself:
One is delighted to find that one's subjects are playing along. One started this quilt with half an hours work last night, reconvened this morning at just after ten, finished it at lunchtime today and then fell asleep on the royal couch for three hours. One has surprised oneself with what one can achieve with the selection given.
The Royal Consort said, "I didn't try to be difficult. I deliberately didn't pick your African fabrics." (Two came from the African shop at Brixton market and one from the Out of Africa stall at a show). "I picked orange because my orange lily came out today..." (More like because he is N. Ireland protestant and grew up surrounded by orange) " ...and thought that green went with it, then I liked the bright colours so I went for red and blue because the go together. Then the black was added because I thought that was something you could use to block off the colours side by side." One then added the plain black, wanting to create a resting place for the eyes
One had no idea what one was going to do with them until one typed up the last post and suddenly saw a crown shape in the blue fabric. One has never thought oneself capable of a self portrait but in 25 minutes it was done and that was that phobia over and done with. Yeah!
It was designed as one went along making strips/ parts and auditioning briefly.
I left the bit in where the machine went doolally with the preset decorative stitch - its all about fun not perfection! One made the following mental notes about the process:
1. For all the advice about using paint in journals as an initial design tool there is much to be said for making little quilts instead as sparking off experiments - for example, one likes the embroidered braids on the right and the crazy log cabins and might play with something else more thought out based on what was an instinctive 'grab fabric and cut' decision in this quilt.
2. All half made quilts on a design board will look horrible at half-ten at night.
3. All flimisies look better quilted.
4. Small pieces of fabric look very different in context to large pieces on the table ( One still has about 6 meters of the blue left!)
5. When your machine is making a strange noise do not think, "I'll just finish this line of sewing and then see what that is all about."
6. One needs to do a sample book of one's decorative stitches, playing with the ability to lengthen/ widen etc.
7. It is a pain in the royal backside writing 'one' all the time.
Thursday, 3 July 2008
Royal gauntlet is thrown down
As the land came to terms with yesterdays' quilting time proclamation the Queen today declared that the fun would start with a Royal Challenge.
"It is," she said, "designed to free my people from the fear of imperfection, from the burden of formal design. It is intended as a carefree interlude between UFOs and WIPS, a game to help us all limber up and let loose."
As the land came to terms with yesterdays' quilting time proclamation the Queen today declared that the fun would start with a Royal Challenge.
"It is," she said, "designed to free my people from the fear of imperfection, from the burden of formal design. It is intended as a carefree interlude between UFOs and WIPS, a game to help us all limber up and let loose."
In an action unprecedented since Sarah Ferguson and and other Junior Royals played Its a Knock out, the Queen declared her intention to play the game right here on the blog. "There are no prizes, she said, " but all blog links or photos emailed to this paper by participants will be showcased in the Chronicle as evidence of the mass fun about to erupt."
The challenge rules are Royally declared to be as follows:
"1. Send you partner/ child/ friend/ neighbour/ anyone you can find ( and if you can't find anyone close your eyes and do the following yourself) to your stash ( or at least the part of your stash your partner knows about).
2. Instruct them to pick out 5 pieces of fabric - any five - which they like. They are not to make it deliberately difficult for you but at the same time we all know a partner will not pick stuff that you will readily put together.
3. You may, if you wish, disregard one completely. You can add whatever you like to the pile.
4. Then, without planning or pattern, you make something including the four/ five your helper chose.
5. The quilt can be any size at all but the Queen anticipates that most of you will not be dedicating large chunks of your life to this to this tomfoolery and will make a small mini quilt but feel free to go kingsize if you get taken with what you start.
6. Email links and/or pictures of the fabric and the end result.
Let's see what spontaneity and dodgy fabric choices rescued by extra pieces can do! Let's prove to ourselves that we are all possessed of creativity and the ability to create beauty from rather dubious starts. Let's release our instincts. After all - is that not what quilting was all about before Quilt Police (Show Division) started their persnickety examinations of invisible stitches?"
The Royal Consort ( who wanted to be called the Royal Holiness but was told he was not allowed) picked out the fabrics above for the Queen today who plans her freedom quiting session to begin tomorrow and continue over the weekend. Progress will be posted. An anxious courtier (who we understand had previously knocked her bobbin case all over the floor) confided in our reporter, " I really hope someone will play along because she gets really cranky when she makes a fool of herself all alone on the blog and when she gets cranky she starts thinking about sending people to the Tower."
"It is," she said, "designed to free my people from the fear of imperfection, from the burden of formal design. It is intended as a carefree interlude between UFOs and WIPS, a game to help us all limber up and let loose."
As the land came to terms with yesterdays' quilting time proclamation the Queen today declared that the fun would start with a Royal Challenge."It is," she said, "designed to free my people from the fear of imperfection, from the burden of formal design. It is intended as a carefree interlude between UFOs and WIPS, a game to help us all limber up and let loose."
In an action unprecedented since Sarah Ferguson and and other Junior Royals played Its a Knock out, the Queen declared her intention to play the game right here on the blog. "There are no prizes, she said, " but all blog links or photos emailed to this paper by participants will be showcased in the Chronicle as evidence of the mass fun about to erupt."
The challenge rules are Royally declared to be as follows:
"1. Send you partner/ child/ friend/ neighbour/ anyone you can find ( and if you can't find anyone close your eyes and do the following yourself) to your stash ( or at least the part of your stash your partner knows about).
2. Instruct them to pick out 5 pieces of fabric - any five - which they like. They are not to make it deliberately difficult for you but at the same time we all know a partner will not pick stuff that you will readily put together.
3. You may, if you wish, disregard one completely. You can add whatever you like to the pile.4. Then, without planning or pattern, you make something including the four/ five your helper chose.
5. The quilt can be any size at all but the Queen anticipates that most of you will not be dedicating large chunks of your life to this to this tomfoolery and will make a small mini quilt but feel free to go kingsize if you get taken with what you start.
6. Email links and/or pictures of the fabric and the end result.
Let's see what spontaneity and dodgy fabric choices rescued by extra pieces can do! Let's prove to ourselves that we are all possessed of creativity and the ability to create beauty from rather dubious starts. Let's release our instincts. After all - is that not what quilting was all about before Quilt Police (Show Division) started their persnickety examinations of invisible stitches?"
The Royal Consort ( who wanted to be called the Royal Holiness but was told he was not allowed) picked out the fabrics above for the Queen today who plans her freedom quiting session to begin tomorrow and continue over the weekend. Progress will be posted. An anxious courtier (who we understand had previously knocked her bobbin case all over the floor) confided in our reporter, " I really hope someone will play along because she gets really cranky when she makes a fool of herself all alone on the blog and when she gets cranky she starts thinking about sending people to the Tower."
Tuesday, 1 July 2008
Quilting time Proclamation
Editors note: The Queen has been away from Quiltland for far longer than she intended, mostly due to feeling exhausted and not at all funny. She apologises to any citizens who have cared. However, she is now rejuvenated and returns, in a funk, making proclamations left right and centre and with intentions to post all kinds of interactive goodies on the blog in the coming months....
Today the Queen stormed back into Quiltland after a prolonged tour to the UK, spitting (white swan) feathers, and called for a scribe. A Proclamation soon followed, a harried courtier handing out copies to the press still hot from the photocopier. A pressurised Equerry paused to hiss out of the corner of his mouth, "Its the AQS magazine. Its got her all in a huff. Something about a winning quilt taking 2000 hours to make." Later, a loose tongued lady - in -waiting was persuaded ( by a bribe of a box of Maderia rayon threads) to add, "She was crying in her studio and throwing blocks about. She said she felt inadequate and pressured. Something about not ever being good enough and she wasn't having it."
Our reporter has revealed that the magazine in question showcased show winners and included a miniature quilt of only 11" square with no less than 4,129. It is assumed that this explains the comment of a sweating footman who said, "She was storming down the corridor, muttering about someone having bothered to count the damned things and how was she to be expected to do that and run a country?"
The Proclamation is swingeing and ambassadors to Quiltland have been seen making frantic phonecalls to their homeland news anchors assuring them that in a private meeting the Queen (who according to the diplomat from Paduchah looked 'controlled but determined') had made it plain that she was setting a domestic precedent only and that she retained admiration and respect for all quilters who, in the privacy of their domestic states, spent the equivalent of one year and eleven weeks of a full time 9-5 job making one wall hanging.
The Proclamation was read at 10pm tonight from the balcony of the Queen's studio. The text read:
"I hereby declare that no machine sewn quilt made in Quiltland shall take longer than 50 hours to construct and no hand sewn quilt more than 100. Thinking, shopping and stash stroking time is excluded from this. Extensions will be readily granted ( without limit) to anyone who suffers a disability or impairment which slows their progress. Others need to get a move on. Value in Quiltland is to be measured in quotients of enjoyment, fun, spontaneity and sheer ability to get on and make the next one. It is not to be measured in quotients of obsession, perfection or fixated concentration.
"I have recently undertaken a royal tour of my citizen's blogs and have noticed that my loyal citizens are generally engaged in multiple projects of practical nature. I will not tolerate any of these wonderful people - and here I include myself in this - feeling that their work is less valuable or worthy because they did not audition twenty different colour themes over six months before even starting their quilt or because they could not contemplate using 1/4" hexagons.
"There are plenty of fora which will award accolades to quilts of such nature. Quiltland is not one of them. Here accolades will be given to quilts which exude vibrancy, play and exuberance. We will applaud simplicity, inept experimentation and quilts made from love. We shall prefer not those quilts which make us sigh and wish we could make them, but those which make us smile and rush to your own sewing projects with renewed enthusiasm. Quiltland will be a haven in which quilting is a pleasure and not a competative sport. To this end I commend this quilt, seen on my recent Royal Blog tour to you as one such which caused far more Royal inspiration than the AQS winners.
"To embed this Proclamation into the heart and souls of the Citizens of Quiltland I shall shortly be announcing a new Challenge. Those interested should add this blog to their Google Readers for it shall be posted as soon as I have time.
"And to that end - and because I can, this being my country, I make this Proclamation Law."
Today the Queen stormed back into Quiltland after a prolonged tour to the UK, spitting (white swan) feathers, and called for a scribe. A Proclamation soon followed, a harried courtier handing out copies to the press still hot from the photocopier. A pressurised Equerry paused to hiss out of the corner of his mouth, "Its the AQS magazine. Its got her all in a huff. Something about a winning quilt taking 2000 hours to make." Later, a loose tongued lady - in -waiting was persuaded ( by a bribe of a box of Maderia rayon threads) to add, "She was crying in her studio and throwing blocks about. She said she felt inadequate and pressured. Something about not ever being good enough and she wasn't having it."
Our reporter has revealed that the magazine in question showcased show winners and included a miniature quilt of only 11" square with no less than 4,129. It is assumed that this explains the comment of a sweating footman who said, "She was storming down the corridor, muttering about someone having bothered to count the damned things and how was she to be expected to do that and run a country?"
The Proclamation is swingeing and ambassadors to Quiltland have been seen making frantic phonecalls to their homeland news anchors assuring them that in a private meeting the Queen (who according to the diplomat from Paduchah looked 'controlled but determined') had made it plain that she was setting a domestic precedent only and that she retained admiration and respect for all quilters who, in the privacy of their domestic states, spent the equivalent of one year and eleven weeks of a full time 9-5 job making one wall hanging.
The Proclamation was read at 10pm tonight from the balcony of the Queen's studio. The text read:
"I hereby declare that no machine sewn quilt made in Quiltland shall take longer than 50 hours to construct and no hand sewn quilt more than 100. Thinking, shopping and stash stroking time is excluded from this. Extensions will be readily granted ( without limit) to anyone who suffers a disability or impairment which slows their progress. Others need to get a move on. Value in Quiltland is to be measured in quotients of enjoyment, fun, spontaneity and sheer ability to get on and make the next one. It is not to be measured in quotients of obsession, perfection or fixated concentration.
"I have recently undertaken a royal tour of my citizen's blogs and have noticed that my loyal citizens are generally engaged in multiple projects of practical nature. I will not tolerate any of these wonderful people - and here I include myself in this - feeling that their work is less valuable or worthy because they did not audition twenty different colour themes over six months before even starting their quilt or because they could not contemplate using 1/4" hexagons.
"There are plenty of fora which will award accolades to quilts of such nature. Quiltland is not one of them. Here accolades will be given to quilts which exude vibrancy, play and exuberance. We will applaud simplicity, inept experimentation and quilts made from love. We shall prefer not those quilts which make us sigh and wish we could make them, but those which make us smile and rush to your own sewing projects with renewed enthusiasm. Quiltland will be a haven in which quilting is a pleasure and not a competative sport. To this end I commend this quilt, seen on my recent Royal Blog tour to you as one such which caused far more Royal inspiration than the AQS winners.
"To embed this Proclamation into the heart and souls of the Citizens of Quiltland I shall shortly be announcing a new Challenge. Those interested should add this blog to their Google Readers for it shall be posted as soon as I have time.
"And to that end - and because I can, this being my country, I make this Proclamation Law."
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