March 6th - Edwina MacKinnon - Colour Stories - Zoom lecture

Edwina began her talk by explaining how important colour is in her work. She explained about the colour wheel.

This first quilt called Ashes of Roses uses an 8" Kaleidoscope block and started with one fabric and the swirling feel was achieved by the use of colour within each block. It was machine quilted in circles with added seed stitch.

She collects together fabrics within a colour palette and then plays. This quilt is using  a cut and come again technique . Without the pinky red this would not have been as exciting.

Using the same technique she used a range of indigo dyed fabrics and then added a complementary X in orange . She also used orange within the quilting.

Edwina has always enjoyed using indigo fabrics and here she added compementary orange squares to 2 1/2" strips to create a 'Potato chip' quilt . She says this is a useful way of using up small strips from a stash or using a 'Jelly Roll' selection of fabrics.

With  14 former members of her first City and Guilds class 2 years ago  they put in a metre of fabric within a colour range and then had back a piece of that metre. Together with a piece from each member they added one more fabric of their own (the background in this wall hanging) and produced a selection of wall hangings, waistcoats , table runners etc for an exhibition.

The cups are the 13 other members and the cupcakes are for the 20 years celebration.

Edwina's next challenge was looking at food, in particular Sushi.

She used the colours and shapes of the Sushi and drew these onto fabric using Procion dye applied with a pen. These shapes were applied to a linen background and quilted in circles and seed stitch to represent the rice.

The next quilt shows how Edwina took the colours from hydrangeas and dropped mixed dye into soya wax shapes . The quilting uses the word Hydrangea many times and the shapes of the Hydrangea

The next piece was influenced by her visit to Matera in Italy and combines the subtle colours of the buildings with small amounts of jade to represent the colours of the doors. The honeycomb shapes come from the caves.

Edwina used Matera again to create a Screen printed piece using masking tape for the shapes of the buildings.

This piece was inspired by lichen at Coughton Court

Edwina is currently working on a Dear Jane quilt . It comprises  4" squares some containing up to 50 pieces , using a selection of indigo, potassium permanganate dyed and cream fabrics

Thank you Edwina for a fascinating talk. We were all so inspired