A Little Stitching in the Garden

Yesterday was a perfect summer's day. I spent the afternoon sitting in the shade of our fig tree, gently stitching the hours away in the company of a good friend. She was hand quilting and I was finishing my 'going for gold'

piece for the Guild exhibition in October.We sipped iced tea and caught up with each others news whilst our respective husbands were at a local steam train yard doing men type things with engines and such like. We were joined in the evening by our family and friends for a meal together in the garden. Next year we will be able to use our new sunken garden as work on it progresses at a steady rate.

A day last week was given over to preparing 25 books for an altered book course  to be run during a Guild meeting in November. As the classes only last two hours we knew we would have to do the initial procion dying up front ready for everyone to embellish the open page.So Biddy, Bev, Fran and myself set to and had a great time sploshing the dyes about. They took a good twenty four hours to dry completely as we really did drench them in colour. They looked a bit garish the next day so I spent a few hours with some metallic rubs and pastels and softened the edges and toned back some of the colours and  stacked the books for storing. At this point I realised how lovely they looked in their unadorned state and decided to photograph them. I have stored them in their open position to let them settle a bit and know that when I get them out in November I will remember the fun we had in July dying them. 

Printing Yardage

My stash of my own hand printed fabrics has run low, probably because I usually dye and print outside during the summer months.  I can't stand wet fabrics and prints hanging around the house for days so I have been patiently (ha-ha) waiting for some sunny weather to turn up. I'm going to have to give in on that one and utilise the green-house if this present spell of monsoons keep up.

 To that end, I've started the process by using a little bunch of spoons I found in a bric-a-brac shop. I have made some positive and negative lino cuts from them and started to mess about on paper using them to see what I can come up with. It has all started very neatly and and in regular  patterns,hopefully by the time I have filled a pad up with designs it should get much looser and informal - ready for printing on to fabric. 



 

I have also been loving my sweet peas this year (there has got to be a plus side to all this rain). I found them very difficult to capture at first, probably because I  haven't drawn for a few weeks but in the words of my late drawing master ' after the first hundred sketches of an object everyones drawing of it starts to improve'.  These would look lovely painted onto some silk.

My Embroidered Bead course that I ran at Beecrafty last Saturday was so enjoyable and productive. Everyone produced a very accomplished sample each and also got to grips with some more complex stitches. I think the four hour class was much better than the two hour one that I have done before. The shorter course crammed everything in but felt too rushed. The shop was buzzing with activity - a quilt class was going on in an adjacent room and all helped produce a great atmosphere to teach in. Looking forward to teaching Embroidered Buttons in the Autumn.  

 

A Little Beadwork

It doesn't feel like much craftwork has been going on around here lately but somehow a few more beads have appeared on the scene. I guess it's because I'm not spending all day creating but rather snatching a couple of hours here and there to stitch.

 I'm bead minded at the moment as I am teaching these frivolities at Beeing Crafty on this coming Saturday. It's an inexpensive course for four hours of intensive but very rewarding stitching with the bonus of a lovely shop to browse round afterwards.

A few more buttons have appeared as a taster for a course at the same venue later in the year.

I did manage to make a floor mat for a baby shower for my yet to be born first great grandchild. Dreadful photo - but beautiful fabrics from Bee Crafty and lots of handstitching produced a gift that was very well received.



Presents for boys

 

I would not have thought that I could be inspired by a football strip - in this case Norwich City, however the design elements are all there waiting to be used in (dare I say it) a more creative way than on a t-shirt. This is part of a  present for a great nephew whose christening I will attend in late July in needless to say - Norwich.

I made the letters first on a heavy watercolour paper, I used a big brush fibre tip pen to colour them in with canary yellow. Then using a selection of fine tipped pens I zentangled them all over. This doodle kind of art is so soothing that meditations have been based on them. Next I cut the letters out and blackened all the edges. Using a large piece of watercolour paper 22"x15" I stencilled on the lion motif and when it was dry I applied a procion dye wash to the paper. Then it was a case of measuring up and laying out the design before finally gluing every piece down.

At this stage I was going to give the whole piece an acrylic wax seal but I just spotted in time that one of the pens wasn't waterproof. This will not be a problem as the finished piece will be under glass in a simple frame. Note to self - check labels on all pens in future, I could have easily ruined a piece of work I had spent several hours on!

Ipad Art Addiction

It's been quite a while since I last posted as I've been enjoying time with my son, gardening, cycling, cooking -  in fact everything apart from stitching. The arrival home of my son ( besides being a great pleasure for me) meant I get to play with his Ipad.

I invested in a 69p app for making art, very quickly I got to grips with it ( trust me it's easy) and produced some quick 'paintings'. I can't say it is easier than actual drawing and painting but it is a much faster process than doing it in 'real time'.

 An obligatory sunset made want to use a more complex app. For the grand sum of £5.95 I down loaded 'Brushes' which is the app that David Hockney uses. What fun!! At first it was quite daunting - seemingly lots of different 'tools' but actually it soon became almost intuitive to do and very addictive.

I love the way this looks so 'textiley'  the lines look so threadlike. My son will obviously take his Ipad with him when he goes back to Shanghai in 9 weeks time (sob).  I will not be purchasing an Ipad in the near future so I shall just enjoy it whilst I can. I would never get any stitching done if I had this to play with all day.

The first sweet peas

Look at the elegant curves, the folds, the in-between colours, the almost silk like appearance of these first sweet peas, they are like precious babies at this time of the year. They will soon turn into riotous toddlers demanding of attention ( all that tying in) and covered in pollen beetle but for now the sheer sensuous beauty of  the first blooms has captured my heart. This is the stage where I should announce my intention to draw and paint them, the idea is in my head but I fear motivation is on the back boiler at the moment. All I can focus on is collecting and seeing my son from Heathrow (for the first time in a year) on Sunday.

In the meantime I seem to be putting a lot of work into this 'time-piece'. I'm using freezer paper to make stencils to place the letters but there is still an awful lot of tiny stitching to do. I need to push on with it before I start getting bored with it. 

  

Little bits of stitch

I've made about twenty more beads for my collection over the last week or so - nice little pieces of stitch that have not taken much thought but are very satisfying when seen altogether.

I have so enjoyed the sun and high temperatures this week but a cooler week to look forward to might inspire some more demanding work. I'm not feeling very pro-active at the moment with regards to crafting but that's part of the cycle of creativity for me. I'm lucky to be able to treat it as a hobby (all  be it a very obsessive one) and not have to worry about deadlines and commitments. I know that when the muse strikes again I will be churning work out at my usual rate of knots.