Quite a hiatus since my last blog. My beautiful mother died and I am all at sea………

The progress on our new Church has been very slow- the continuation of the pandemic has not helped our cause. As there is no urgency for the triptych to be completed, the poor thing is languishing in the spare bedroom!

Progress to date

Cutting and auditioning pieces on my design wall. With this project I am pre-fusing the fabrics with Heatn’Bond Lite (iron on fusible). I am paying close attention to the distribution of lights and darks. There is no planned focal point. I need to make sure that my blue-violet medium fabric is dominant, so I begin with blocking that in.

This process cannot be rushed. Viewing photos on my phone really helps with making decisions in progress.

Here the blocking in is completed.

Adding text.

There are lots of ways to add text. I thought about stencilling or hand drawing/painting but that can a bit risky. So I have decided to stitch the words. The problem here would be to how to make the stitching stand out. I would have to use a thick weight thread and contrasting colours/values.

I also tried to fit the text in by using a computer program. Alas, my technical skills were not up to the task, so I decided to use my own hand writing (this will be more personal anyway). This photos shows the use of tracing paper to see how it will fit. I use a chalk pencil to mark the quilt before I baste it.

As you can see, my pins do get rather tangled!

The next thing is to do a small test piece to try out some quilting ideas and threads.

This is very rough, but you get the idea. In the upper left corner you may be able to just see some sketches of possible designs.

This is where I leave you until the big reveal!