Preparations

Tomorrow, I'm going to my next workshop at Studio 11. Colourfun, once a month for the coming year. What pleasures to come!

The first session is resist dying, which was what I did for the mini quilt workshop, so I've been preparing.

pre-stitched/tied pieces waiting for tomorrow

I've done

cotton stitched in wavy lines, with points pulled up to make spiderswebs

the wavy lines all drawn up into exotic looking ruches

Silk wound round a plastic tube, then bound with, in the one case, fine cotton, in the other, rough thick twine. I'm interested in how the different binders affect the pattern; whether the texture of the twine will appear in the resist.

 More cotton, a strip this time, folded into triangles, concertina style, then stitched right through at the borders with, perhaps, the arms of a snowflake pattern. The stitching then drawn up on two sides, and on the snowflake arms, for texture. I'm hoping the stitches on the long edge will resist right through and leave a little ant trail at the folds end make the final arms of the snowflake. Alternatively, there'll be a jumble of textures, reading as nothing!

Then there's the old linen tea towel, probably Ganna's; folded, again concertina style, (linenfold) then folded again and wrapped, not too tight, with a rubber band

Lastly, some leaves, perhaps, or maybe little fish ...

stitched into the single layer of fabric, drawn up tight and tied off, with a little spin round the nubbin for added texture

 then I pleated (as best I could) the fabric across it's width, leaving the little nubbins sticking out. We'll see.

Where are the ideas coming from? From Janice Gunner's Shibori for Textile Artists. It is full of so many interesting things. You may remember the video I posted on Shibori a while back. It's the Japanese art of tying  binding, pleating and otherwise adding resists to cloth with thread, clamps and "stuff". Having absorbed plenty from Christine's last workshop, I really wanted to have some ready prepared cloth as well as doing some more folding and clamping tomorrow, with the other bits of cloth I've not shown you!

I wonder what pictures I'll be posting on Tuesday!

rain

 

another transformation

almost Suffolk Pink

a little time with slow trees

A number of things are giving me delight in the garden at the moment;

Woodpecker is getting bolder, perching at the very top of the two tall spruces, even when we are in the garden. Hawthorn berries are dancing down onto "Things Stored Behind the Shed", pinging off the ladder, knocking on wood


the tomatoes are ripening and butterflys flutter by in delighted, tumbling clusters, shimmering over the verbena's purple nodding heads

Today after work, I spent some time talking with my slow trees

fly away

Fuzzy

Pruning; editing; no wiring, it seems too forced; just taking what nature offers and refining it to a more considered shape. Asking them how they feel; what's rubbing, what's blocking the light, how air could circulate more freely, which branch is feeling awkward

tamed

slightly less fuzzy!

aged

mossy

 being quietly, midfully outside, you notice the planes flying overhead, on their way to Gatwick or Heathrow

and the sunset this evening was simply lovely

Tomorrow, this blog will be two years old!

Ta Daaa!!

OK that might be a bit OTT, but I've been trying to post this for days and seem to have been very busy. I finished it on Friday evening.

Here it is on the patio on a sunny day with the light streaming across from the west as the sun started to sink. As yet unbound - which sounds rather liberated!

Particular favourite bits are

Moons drifting over the downs

in particular, this little one with it's own lonely pine

fields of flowers

Bracken and dandelion clocks

butterflys, forest moons, rippling water

I really am ridiculously pleased with it

And some lovely music

Show and Tell!

Had a little show and tell with my Aunt Sylvia yesterday, who is a spry soul of middlin' years and who was married to my Dad's twin brother Andrew until she was widowed in the late 1990's. She is a sweet soul and I don't see her often enough, considering how close she is to me, being another South Downs dweller. So here's what I showed and told!







Some embroideries old and new. There was also my quilt, which has been trimmed and awaits binding. I cut the binding strips today, the final cuts, so to speak

But now to the garden, which is full of sunshine too good to waste

Varieties of patchwork

I've been working steadily on my quilt, moving it to and fro under the evenly bobbing needle, twisting and folding to get the fabric where I need it to be, to stitch where I want to stitch. I have managed to do all of the "decorative" - for which read rather trembly, wavering, slightly rambling stitching. Here is the back, so you can see the patterns, as in front view they tend to get lost in the pattern of the fabric itself. The colour is all wrong as it was taken in artificial light; it could do with a good press as well, but you get the picture.

I'm really rather pleased with it, as I've not done any machine quilting before and only a tiny bit of hand stuff, I'll post a picture of the front once I've added the binding - the next big challenge. Before that I have all the loose ends to sew in and lose in the layers of the quilt, but that is rather pleasing to do when sitting down watching the TV of an evening.

Meanwhile another kind of patchwork is taking place, in our side yard, the one I mentioned as being destined to be a courtyard. Well, progress is taking place, though first you should see it's original incarnation to appreciate the change

Crikey! It's a bit of a jumble isn't it? Bits of quarry tile mixed with bits of crazy paving mixed with bits of shingle and the odd row of brick edging to catch the feet of the unwary. It's where my slow trees live for the most part, so I can appreciate their seasonal changes from the kitchen window. From the opposite end it looked like this when we first arrived, with a scruffy, but extremely useful shed that has been housing odds and sods.

It is part way through it's transformation now

further on than this, in fact, but you can see the patchwork analogy. My dear one has been acting as labourer, digging holes, filling them in again, moving vast quantities of earth and "stuff" into the skip out the front, salvaging topsoil and barrowing it down to the kitchen garden, cleaning off the black quarry tiles as I want them reused as part of the final design and generally being all round useful, while Ray has been doing the skilled work.
The scruffy looking wall will be painted eventually but before that happens, yet another type of patchwork is being done; pointing, to fill in all the gaps between the bricks where the old pug has fallen out. This, along with the pointing between the pavers, and eventually the painting, is being done by another expert

My daughter