batik – tierneycreates

It is day 7 of my fifth blog anniversary celebration goal to post daily for the 31 days of October. So far I still have new material and have not resorted to reposting old posts…yet…

Surprise Goodies in the Mail

During the past couple of months, crafting related treats/surprises keep appearing in my mail (it’s a pattern, and I like it!).

First in the mail appeared a surprise of a collection of wool scraps from the Isle of Harris from my friend Kathy’s trip to Scotland (see post Scraps from Scotland):

Well a couple weeks ago, my longtime blogging buddy, Cindy of A Quilter’s Corner with Cindy Anderson (inastitchquilting.com) surprised me with a collection of Heirloom Batik scraps that she picked up at a quilt show!

Heirloom Batik

As it mentioned on their website handloombatik.com, Heirloom Batik batiks are exquisitely handmade batik fabrics. They are exotic and beautiful fabric that begin with ,with Indian block prints; and many are one of a kind.

They are only available at craft shows/festivals, you cannot purchase them directly online.

I first learned about them when Cindy was using them in her amazing improvisational quilts such as in her piece Bits & Pieces which you can view on her 09/13/18 post FUZZY, AP # 62.

I’ve admired the fabrics she uses in her pieces for a long time and asked her what specific fabrics she was using and she told me about Heirloom Batik.

I was so disappointed when I learned I could not order them online and they did not appear to come to quilting shows/festivals in Oregon. So you could imagine my surprise and utter delight when a collection of Heirloom Batik scraps showed up in my mailbox!

The scraps are amazing and I unfolded each scrap and pressed it out, then reorganized it by color into the bag. Here is a photo of all the scraps laid out for me to admire and daydream about using in a future project:

.Cindy also included a lovely handmade card by a fiber artist featuring the State of Wisconsin (her home):

I felt very very very lucky to have received such a thoughtful surprise.

Surprises Continue!

The surprises in the mail are not over, tomorrow I will share the 4th mind blowing craft related surprise that arrived in the mail earlier last week!

Update: If you would like to see the completed quilt top for the abstract art quilt piece I discussed in What’s on the Design Wall: Working Through a New Art Quilt Piece, check out the post on The Wardrobe Meets the Wall blog In Progress: Abandoned Structure. It is awaiting quilting mastery by Betty Anne Guadalupe my collaborator in the The Wardrobe Meets the Wall.

If you don’t want them, I will take them…

In a previous post What’s Was On the Design Wall: Rescued Blocks I discussed the pleasures of working with “abandoned blocks“. Abandoned quilt blocks are blocks that another quilter does not want and gives to you or you find at a thrift shop or garage sale and decide to adopt!

Recently a quilter friend gave me a cool stack of batik freely pieced abstract blocks that she no longer wanted to work on in addition to a pile of coordinating scraps of fabric. I love batiks and I love her combination of colors so I was very excited to adopt these blocks! As a bonus I discovered that the trees that I printed on batik fabric during a fabric surface design workshop I took in April (see post What’s On the Design Wall: Fabric Surface Design Experimentation), appear to work well with the newly adopted blocks!

Below is the piece in it’s very early stages (I threw all the adopted blocks and my tree printed blocks up on the Design Wall in a random manner) and we’ll see how the piece progresses. You know I will post updates.

My friend who also likes working with abandoned blocks (she collects them from thrift stores, garage sales and guild meetings) and I joke about someday having an exhibit of our collection of pieces made from other’s discards!