Resting!

As you may have gathered I have been "resting" lately. Unfortunately the "rest" is not over yet.

However I have been reading and doing a little playing. I have also been doing a doll making class at Joggles. I have enjoyed all this and have gathered lots of inspiration for when the body is finished "resting" ;0)

Hope to see you all again soon xx

Kandinsky and a Bracelet

Well I have been feeling very under the weather and very unsociable but, I have been working quietly away in the background.
I am now looking forward to catching up with reading the blogs I love and posting a little of my work.

This little 5ins quiltie was made for the April swap on Unlimited Textiles. The theme was the artist Kandinsky.
I love the freedom o his work and the colour combinations he uses.
Composition VIII is one of my favourites and this is my version of it.

In true abstract style I put it together from various experiments in needle felting.
Each section has machine stitching to blend it together and represent Kandinsky's lines.
I used hand made cord couched down between the sections.

This quiltie went to Val and I am very happy that she liked it.

The other swap on Unlimited Textiles in April was to make a piece of jewellery.
I had been playing around making fabric beads and had grabbed a handful of Roger's pipe cleaners wrapping them in Sari Ribbon.
This is how this little bracelet was made.
The centre is where I wrapped layers and layers of the ribbon on the pipe cleaner. Extra seed beads were sewn on afterwards.
The same seed beads were stitched to the ends of the ribbon and a catch added.

This went to my good friend Jan.
She liked it and it was the right size ;0)

Wings!

June Cross (who doesn't have a blog - yet!) and I decided to do a little trade.
We chose a 5 ins square mini quilt with the theme "Wings"

Well it turned out to be dragonflies at dawn!
Independently and without the other knowing we both created dragonfly quilties.

I used a hand painted cotton for the background and did a flowing kind of quilting going with the painted shapes.
The dragonfly body is painted cotton with beading for embellishment. The wings are made from Fantasy Film, they were attached to the background and the body appliquéd over them.

This is the beautiful quiltie June made.
The main body is felt and the centre panel is knitting I think - maybe June will let us know.
I wish you could feel it as it is so soft and very, very touchable.

Thank you June for a great trade ;0)

New bag - Unfinished

This bag is unfinished as yet as I am waiting for pay day for the fabric I want and is for the Textiles for Two project with Jan.


It represents the Incan Empire.
You can read more about it over at Textiles for Two.

Sanctuary

Well what with Easter, recovering from Easter and outside tensions the time has just flown this month.
I do have a little to show though and will start by showing off the wonderful work my friends ~ with some help from me of course ~ did in my garden.


Sitting here you really feel you are protected with all the plants around.

You can hear the buzzing of the bees and the hoverflies.

I'm really looking forward to seeing it all start to grow and flower.

Did you spot Mitzi Cat? She really loves it here.

Thank you Cath and Chrissy. Come back soon so you can enjoy it too.

Lazy Sunday

Roger's leave is coming to an end and I have to wave him off to work tomorrow.
Well, I won't as he goes out too early but you know what I mean.
So back to work for both of us as I start to catch up in the studio and get back on track with my projects.

The weather has been kind to us and, with the help of friends, we have rearranged the garden, seen family and generally had a relaxing time.

Today we decided to end the holiday well with a visit to Woolacombe.
I didn't go down to the beach as I didn't think I would get back up the hill, but sat on the bench(at the top of the post) looked out over the Atlantic and thought of friends and family across the pond.

The boys had a tootle around on the rocks.

I sat and watched the surfers enjoying the water, although I suspect it was a little cold despite the glorious sunshine.


The day was rounded off with a lazy couple of hours in the garden.

Cheeky Fred!

A little bit of progress.

Roger retires at the end of July.
He is using up accumulated leave and as much as I love having him home my routine has gone to pot!
I have done very little work with him home, but in his favour is the fact that we have been getting things together to do the garden this weekend. Could not have done that with out him home.
But today he is in work and out came the sewing machine ;0)


This is the continuing story of my quilted butterfly.
It now measures 1 metre square and I wonder how I let it get like that! But I think the hardest part is now over as regards it's size.

This part of it is now ready to be backed and finished and then I will work on two smaller flower quilts to hang from the bottom.
See my scribble below.


This is by far the largest piece I have done and it will practically cover the wall at the top of the stairs but I am enjoying it and have plans for a couple more large pieces.
Well as soon as I can get used to a man in my studio and a new routine.

Gothic Pattern

The theme for March at Unlimited Textiles is Gothic Pattern.
I love arches and ceiling bosses in cathedrals and I remembered a visit we made to Fountains Abbey a few years ago. In particular the vaulted ceiling of the Cellarium.
The Cellarium is only inhabited by bats now. Another Gothic feature maybe but no bats here on this quiltie.


I used purple satin for the background and cut arch shapes from dark green velour.
I wanted to continue the arch theme on the background hence the shadow quilting between the arches.
A close zig zag stitch in gold outlines the arches and golden beads represent ceiling bosses.
OK, I know there aren't any ceiling bosses in the Cellarium but let's just call it artistic license.

Close zig zag stitching finishes the edges. The quiltie measures 5ins square and will be on its way to Sandy in USA very soon.

In need of renovation.

This month at Textile Challenges I am sending my house front to Pam.
Her theme is "In Need of Renovation".

Of course I just had to do a thatched cottage seeing as Devon has lots of them
Most of them are in much better condition that this one I have to add.

I started with painted Lutradur over stone coloured cotton. The window and doors are made using scrapbook papers and roughly stitched to the house front.

The thatch is made from fancy fibres placed a stitched on in a haphazard way. I used a fabric marker to make the black "holes".
Machine stitching was next and the whole piece was rubbed with various brown ink pads.

Great fun, I hope Pam will like it.

My bag is finished.

My bag based on stone work at Teotihuacan is now finished.
I have to say I am rather pleased with it.

You can see more pics at Textiles for Two.

My head is in Mesoamerica!

I have been very busy working on a bag for our Mesoamerican project.
It has taken a lot of my time this week ~ well all of it really but I am enjoying it.
Here is a little peep and you can see a little more at Textiles for Two.

I'm hoping to be able to show you more of it later this weekend.

Eye Candy

Just wanted to show you some of the lovely eye candy I have received recently in trades.

ATC's from left to right are from: Terri, Emmy and Carol. Carol's ATC has some lovely little leaf earrings hanging on it.
The quiltie is from Val for our Vintage Flower Ladies trade.

I love each and everyone of them. Thank you for the great trades ladies.

Peaceful Daydream Blues

I made this quiltie for a trade with my good Internet friend Val.
We both love vintage ladies and both love flowers so the perfect theme to choose was "Vintage Flower Ladies"

I knew straight away the image I wanted to use. I wanted to give the impression that she was daydreaming near a shady stream on a lovely summer afternoon.

The background is my favourite.
Layers of felt, organza and painted nappy liners all stitched together and zapped with the heat gun. This was then covered with a chiffon scarf and flowers, leaves and swirls were free machined over it all.
This is my favourite technique as the outcome is different every time. I never seem to get the colours I think I will get and the texture changes every time. I just love the surprise of it all.

The flowers have heavily beaded centres.
There is a little tassel like embellishment with a "peace" disc hanging from it.
I found one little acrylic flower in the right colour way to add as a falling blossom.
The lovely lady is printed on to iron on cotton (from Crafty Computer Paper) and fused to the background.
A Sari Ribbon edging finished it off nicely I thought.
I'm happy to report that Val liked it ;0)

Before I go I wanted to tell you that I have been working very hard on my website.
It has a fresh new look, new items in the Art Gallery (with a closer look at my Mesoamerican items) and a brand new For Sale page.
I mention this as it is the only place will be selling on line at the moment.

I hope you will take a look at my website and I hope you like it.

A lovely picture and an update.

I have always loved the look of, and wanted, a photograph on stretched canvas.
Well now I have one and I am very pleased with it too.

The canvas came from Bags of Love who do lots of wonderful, high quality gifts with your photos.


This is not one of the official photos and to be completely honest I don't know who took it, but it just sums up the joy of Laura and Toby's wedding day and I am thrilled to have it now hanging on my wall.

A little update.

Jan and I have some new work to show you at Textiles for Two.

New Cushions - At last!

You would think after nearly 3 years of patchwork classes once a month I would have more than 3 nice table mats, one great bag for my cutting board and rulers and one rather dodgy table runner that doesn't fit any of my tables.


Well at last I have!
I now have 5 very nice cushions in my lounge. I was a little unsure of the calico ones as they came out a little small but, put next to my "Drunken Path" cushions I think they look fine.

And on my big comfy chair a woven wave of a cushion to match the colour scheme.


I have 3 more cushions, one bag and a rather large star table cloth to finish so watch this space as I seem to be working well this year ;0)

Flutterby butterfly!

The project at Patchwork class this time is "Appliqué".

We meet once a month and this project is to take 3 classes. Normally I would find out all I can on our subject and do several pieces. This, however has resulted in quite a few UFO's (really must do something with them).
I decided I would change tack and work on one item and give it my full attention.


I thought I would make a butterfly. I wasn't sure what it would be but I thought I could used some of my favourite scraps for it.

Maggie, our teacher reminded me that I do quite a lot of appliqué when doing art quilts, something I hadn't really realised, so what about doing reverse appliqué?
So the first class was all about making patterns for my shapes, cutting them from the background fabric and placing the scraps in place, securing them with Bondaweb.
After that I satin stitched all the motifs.


This time I outlined the butterfly and free quilted the background. I did shadow quilting on the inside of the butterfly to create a contrast.
I have beaded the butterfly's antennae and round the body.
I can't decide if I should bead around the wings, maybe I will.
What do you think?

Next time I will finish my piece.
I have decided to make a soft wall hanging. This panel is approx 12inches square so will be a good size hanging when finished.

Cracked Ice

I love ice. Well not to walk on or to drive on obviously but, when we were a little younger Jan and I used to go ice skating - yes we did have lessons. As usual she was better than me!! Sigh!

Well anyway, I love the look of ice on water. From a distance it looks so smooth and pristine.
Get closer and you can see the cracks in it. If you are really lucky it will have cracked, refrozen, cracked and refrozen again. Look into it and you can see lots of layers and notice that it isn't all white and perfect.

I wanted to try to translate that into textile for my Nature Series.
I gathered together all the fabrics that had an icy colour and look to them. Some were opaque and some sheer, others were sparkly.
I cut them into rough triangular shapes and stitched them down on to an icy blue background. I added fused and un-fused Angelina fibres for an extra sparkle. I used lots of layers.

I used a piece of white organza with little sequins on it as an overlay and stitched random straight lines with a silver thread. Like the ice, from the side or a distance the piece looks smooth but look into it and you can see all the layers.

I made ATC's from some of the fabric and two of them will be going for trades with Terri and Emmy. I hope they like ice!


Just before I go I thought I would tell you that I have posted a little of what I have been working on for Mesoamerica on Textiles for Two blog.

Sorted and something silly!

Do you remember this mess??Well it looks like this now. And I love it.
Just got that bucket with sari's in to sort but there is an empty drawer for them.
The bookcase is gone and the books are now safe in the cupboard.


Now for something silly!
Look at these two, Mitzi and Fred, chatting away like an old married couple.


Just to prove that he is a softy and a baby here is Fred cuddled in his new blanket. Sorry, just had to share ;0)

Abstract and Pink and Orange

The "lottery" challenge this month at Textile Challenges is for a Colour Combinations ATC. I drew Pink and Orange.
The quiltie theme at Unlimited Textiles is Abstract.
Hmm, I thought these would work so well together.

The result: Abstract in Pink and Orange ATC and Abstract in Pink and Orange Quiltie.
The background is a piece of cerise cotton with a pattern in the same colour but deeper shade. I stitched other fabrics to the base with zig zag stitch in orange thread. All the pieced fabrics are hand painted pieces from some of my favourite projects. One or two of my favourite commercial fabrics sneaked in too!

Wot no beads!!!
That is right. For once I think beads would have been overkill. Well I think so, hmm maybe just..... NO not this time ;0)

Wall Flowers Panel

As well as working on the big Mesoamerican project with Jan for Textiles for Two, I am working on my own project on Nature from the inspiration around me in the North Devon countryside and coast.

This is my latest piece based on flowers growing against and old wall.
The base fabric is a piece of handmade felt I did last year. I trapped all sorts of bits and pieces with wool tops between soluble film and machined a close grid pattern over it all. I gave it a vigorous wash in hot water to felt the wools and dissolve the film. And that is how it stayed for a long while!

I recently found some gorgeous organzas in a fabric shop in Barnstaple. This one was a very pale lavender with embroidered flowers and leaves.
I used it as an overlay for my felt and machined a rambling stitch between the flowers. That looked OK but was missing texture. I love texture.
So out came my heat gun an the surface got a good blasting ;0)

I expected to get a lovely crusty surface that would feel like a stone wall but I didn't expect the flowers and leaves to pop out quite as well as they did.
I burnt all the organza away from the edge to leave it quite rough. I added beads to the centre of the flowers and some little beads and sequins around the background.

I'm not sure how I will finish it yet, maybe I will apply it to some velvet, I think the contrast in textures would be good but whether it will be a wall hanging or a framed piece, I just don't know.