The silly season.......

My life seems just a tad overloaded at the moment, The Matchgirls coming up quickly, cat sitting for two sets of neighnbours, plant sitting for another, and so on and so forth.  Two escapes to hold on to though,  one is that I am excidedly waiting for the Spirit Cloth workshop to begin and when I want to shut of all together I dive into the "Celtic, Viking and Anglo Saxon Embroidery" by Jan Messent, I mentioned a short while ago.

This photograph is copyrighted and shown by kind permission of Search Press. please do not copy.

This book please on so many levels, as an inspiration and as pleasure to browse. Lavishly illustrated Jan  t decribes how she made six books  based on sources from these ancient times. She gives a brief summary of the history but the point that makes the book special for me is she emphasises the bond between stitchers now and then.  Our basic tools are the same, as are our basic stitches.In one of her books she has a page based on a Bronze Age sleeve of a garment found in Denmark, it looks very like kantha stich, so popular at the moment. 

Jan decribes the materials and techniques she has used on each page there are  beautiful illustrations.   Scattered through the book are fascinating snippets  from achives of all kinds relating to embroiderers and their work.  It makes my fingers itch and It will be a long time before I tire of delving into this book.

This photograph is copyrighted and shown by kind permission of Search Press. please do not copy.

Do click on the photos and then click again for a real close up.

Don't mention....

Sat Nav to me!!!   I trusted the *'*^ thing and where did it land me?.......In the middle of a housing estate....where fortunately I found a lovely family just going out to do their Saturday shopping.  Dad said in his lovely Suffolk accent, "Oh no, Love you're miles away".... Great! I was already late,  but he gave me excellent directions and, if by some miracle he ever comes across this, I thank him for getting me where I was supposed to be just the teensy's bit late.......well actually he wasn't the only one...when I overshot my excellent directions, there was the other lovely gentleman,, just setting out for his morning walk, who set me right.  Suffolk is a lovely county, I even saw a beautiful Suffolk Pink cottage and what looked like a Watermill as I flashed by.

Where was I going?  For a lovely day out, taking part in a Transfer Painting on Lutradur with Dijane Cevaal at the invitation of Sandy Marcoux.  I took loads of photographs because Dijane had many examples of her striking work with her but you must go to her site to see these.  These are our papers drying in the sunshine 

and these are some papers made with some of Dijane's wonderful lino cuts.

I have to admit that I was having such a good making papers and listening to the fascinating conversations that I didn't get round to getting my machine out, (watch this space) but I came away so full of ideas.  As per usual  I find it difficult to be "creative" in a workshop environment but I am hoping that the ideas are going to flow when I get into my own room.  Thank you Dijane and Sandy for a good day.

Coming home?  Well, I didn't need my Sat Nav so I did it in 40 minutes less!!!

Teesha Moore......

 ......  has produced some fascinating videos of how she makes her collage journals.  This is the second one in the series  

You can see the others on her blog or on You Tube. Makes your fingers itch to have a go.

Useful blog....

I came across this useful blog,I'm sorry I can't remember who pointed me to it. Many links to techniques from embellishing to usingg Tyvek,Textile Arts Resouce Guide

Books,,,,,

In the previous post the first thing I meant to do was to thank everyone for their very kind comments on my books. I just couldn't get round to answering each one as I like to do. To answer Vivian the paper used inside the books was professional weight wallpaper lining paper. Apparently it can be bought in several grades. I bought mine, the heaviest grade, in a local decorating company Brewers and suprised the guy by asking for one roll ,when he was obviously expecting me to say 15 or something. I just love the way it takes the colour, it has an almost satin like feel to it. I am looking forward to some warm days when I can really go to town, painting outside. Some of the other girls had wonderful success with peacock blue and greens, really yummy.

I like these.....

very different ideas.
The first one is a link to a tutorial for makover of the kind of canvas bags they are encouraging us to use thses days. I thought was a good way to reduce stash and cheer up shopping day! Corry of Dutch Blue gave me permission to use her photograph.



I guess everyone reads Maggie Grey's blog but just in case you missed it back in January, ever inventive she wrote about swoopy photographs and now she has a novel use for the scanner. swoopy scans

This is a piture of the V&A by night when I went to the Couture Exhibition
and this is same swooped!

This is swooped photo with snake skin displacement map in Paint Shop Pro


This is my TIF piece swooped over the scanner

This takes skill I might tell you!!
This is it cropped and using the reflective mirror in PSP.

Can you see a jungle idol, or is that just me.
Great fun on a dull afternoon. She knows a thing or two that Maggie!!!

From Faraway.....

Following the post below Frederique's has led me to the blog of her travels on board the Croque Pomme there are some wonderful photographs of the islands she has visited. One of the miracles of blogging for me is the ability to share the lives and thoughts of people whose lifestyle is completely different from your own. I look forward to following Frederique to places I will never be able to visit.

On Tif it is really good to see other peoples thought process as Ruth in Permutations in Fiber like her one of my original thoughts was to use a celtic design for the unbroken line, the thing I had in mind was the stone we saw in the woods near Tintagel but on closer inspection the line was broken so I discarded it for the moment.


I am not a great one for soft toys but Ullanbenulla posted this picture

and link to Veronique La Font the artist. There is a lot to drool over on this site.

Yesterday I came across a piece about the closure of the Textile Conservation Centre, there was a plea to write to No 10 Downing Street or sign the petition I thought I had marked it but if anyone knows further details can they leave a comment National Conservation Centre. I would be a tragedy if we lost such a resource.This article from The Times

What I did.... and other matters.....

First of all thanks to Gerry and Gail who like the post on Japanese wrapping. I guess you quilting ladies could make some really wonderful wrapppings. If I haven't mentioned it before(and I have been known to repeat myself!!!) what I really admire about quilters is their neatness and precision. If I could buy it, I would. I am a Virgo and we are supposed to be meticulous in all we do. I am the exception that proves the rule.....

Essential information, Sharon B can now be found here.. All the best with the new site Sharon, I don't envy her the amount of transferring she is having to do. And so To TAST. Portugese stem stitch, I really like this stitch, and will mark it as a favourite. Just a quick memo piece.


You will have probably gathered by now that even by English standards we have been having a rotten summer but yesterday the sunshine returned. Now does anyone agree with me that there is something that happens to the sun in late August, the sunshine that we had today is a compeletly different colour to the sunshine we had a couple of week ago. For me the Summer has turned toward Autumn. My son will inform me that Autumn does not start until the end of September and my husband, bless, just says "Yes, dear" when I start talking about the quality of the light! Whatever, yesterday in the golden light I decided it was a lovely day to work outside and I took Beryl Taylor's wonderful book as a starter and made this "fabric" paper. I don't know yet what I'm going to do with it but I'm really pleased with the way it turned out. I went to look for a link to Beryl's book and found she now has a web site and blog.



I also added to a piece I was making using the Purple Missus technique, I added some paper napkin images and some dried flowers, it isn't finished yet but was pleased with the way it looks so far.

Very autumnal I think, tee hee!!!!!

If you hate sticky tape.....

With Christmas coming............Oh yes it is! I saw Christmas cards on sale when I was in town last week. I was fascinated by these references to a Japanese art called Furoshiki. A way of wrapping articles in cloth. I came across it on Layers of Meaning and thought I would pass it on for the benefit of persons like me who hate sticky tape. I always stick to everything except where it is suppose to go.(my children can look at a pile of presents and say "that must be from Mother"). Seriously, I did think it would be a fun way to wrap small presents using printed cottons. This is my first experiment, I oviously need to pay more attention to my folds but I love the idea.



This is a link to the Japanese Ministry of the Environment description of folds(PDF)

The one I like in particular is the one for wrapping bottles, I'll have to practise.

Everybody's do'in it,................

do'in it........do'in it..........Rust dyeing that is, so of course I just had to have a go and look what I have,


This was the bottom of an old baking tray. I am do excitied, can anyone else see the dragon, Ken can see a mouse wearing glasses(spectacles)!!!! I really want to do something special to this but will have to think about it for a while.

I have been touched by the responses to my last post both here and on Flickr, I am so touched to have awakended memories in others, I only wish I had started to research my past at a much younger age, when there were people around, like grandparents, who could have added the "flesh" to the names that came before them.

Tuesday

I've just spent a wonderful day in workshop with textile artist Cas Holmes It was part of Kent County Council Arts Development Countywide Migration Project and I was there thanks to the Sevenoaks branch of the EG. We made a mixed media piece where we worked backward, doing the stitching first and then adding the other media. Fascinating and great fun, the theme was journeys either personal or actual. This was my piece after my stitching



In my dreams my Senior Bus pass can take me......

and this is it at the end.


Nowhere near as beautiful as Cas' work but you did get a great taste of all kinds of new possibilities. She was very generous in sharing her techniques. A good day.

Posting delayed because blogger was being awkward with photographs!!!

Now to get to grips with TAST stitch Oyster, another new, to me, one.

Sara's blog

I bookmarked Sara's blog The Fabric of Meditation some time ago because I liked her work on TAST. She has started a new blog
Little People which has some very good technique videos.