The Trouble with Lace.......

is that it is bumpy!!!! Well the one I used was. This is a continuation of my TIF piece. Leave now if you can't stand to see a woman in pain.

I had decided that the way I wanted to represent the Queen and her endless round of handshakes was by a string of pearls. Pearls for her favourite jewellery and also to represent the white gloves she often wears. When I came to add the pearls they wouldn't lie flat on the lace (surprise!)and after several aborted attempts I came to the conclusion that ever pearl had to be put on separately and then threaded back through the others to make it stay in place and the lace was stiff because of the painting.(Forgot to mention the layer of foil that I put there in an effort to keep in with the colour challenge.) Well all I can say is, if the Queen has suffered, as she must have done on occasion, from over firm hadshakes, as much as I did putting on these beads it is a true representation of her dedication that I was trying to express!!!


Life then became a little easier, to represent the never ending line of people I wanted to represent every race, colour of politics and creed that the Queen has met.
So I made some bead soup!!
and from this I made a LONG string of beads which I couched down against the line of pearls.


Wasn't quite happy so scattered pearls inside of the unbroken line to represent the press,police, ladies in waiting, organisers...all the support staff.

When I looked at it the colours weren't working, (during the next bit I became so engrossed with the problem I forgot to photograph all the steps) not giving me what I wanted so I decided I needed at frame. I chose some purple material, obviously to represent royalty and also to tie it back into the TIF colour challenge. The beads round the edge were representative of the honour guards, Trooping of the Colour etc.
With the border round it, it still wasn't quite right so I reached for my beloved Treasure Gold and rubbed it into the areas outside the unbroken line. This served to highlight the line and I felt I had brought the piece to a point where I could do no more.

What would be lovely is to put it into one of those very deep, very ornate gold frame---but part of this challenge is supposed to be about stash reduction and I don't have one to hand so ........
this is Paint Shop Pro cheat.


I can't say I am in love with the piece but it the first time I have taken an abstract idea and turned it into a piece of work so in that respect I am pleased.

Textile Conservation Centre....

Thank you Susan, yes this was the link I had lost. Anna Nowicki was where I read about the intended closure of the Textile Conservation Centre. This is the link to the Petition

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

Visitor from faraway...

Frederique left a comment on the piece about Sandy's card and I went to visit her blog to say thank you. I was amazed to find that she is, at the moment, sailing round the world and is at the moment somewhere in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. This is her blog Quilting, Patchwork and Applique, I left a message and I hope to find out how she came across me.

Taking It Further.....

is turning out to be a real challenge. It started out all right. 1st page of a new notebook. (Don't you just love first pages?)
.
At first the colour scheme didn't immediately appeal to me. It took Vero in
Au Fil du Jardin and she translated it into things like lavender and olive trees. That made me look at the colours very differently. By then I had decided to go with the concept. Admiration! There are lots of people I like, a few precious ones I love and there are many artists in all spheres who give me pleasure. My choice of Queen Elizabeth may suprise some people and may be ridiculed by others but the Queen has been a constant in a changing world. Now in her eighties, her sense of duty and dedication to the job she inherited is unfailing.

I wondered how best to represent these duties and then I thought of the handshake. Goodness knows how many times the Queen must have exchanged this greeting. An endless line of people!!! I wanted the line to be never ending, swathes of people at the garden parties at Buckingham Palace, people lining the streets and reception lines all over the world.
These are some try outs.




Then note to self: Give more thought to your background!!!!I had an idea for the background of a map of the world which I wish I had developed.

You can see here that I was now trying to incorporate the colours. Suddenly I found myself painting lace and this is when life started to get difficult.

.
I will post further on my learning curve, when hopefully I will have resolved some of the problems.

My first postcard......

A lovely surprise when I arrived home to find this package, I somehow in my excitement of making cards for Postcard Girls 2008 forgot that I would actucally be receiving cards as well. Here is the lovely card I received from Sandy backed by the super piece of material she had used as a wrapping.

When Sandy first posted this picture I was taken with the transparent petal what I didn't appreciate was the different textures of all the other petals and the stalk and the leaf feel like suede.

Here is one more take from me on the January picture. It is not really a serious contender but I received some transfer paints for Christmas and wanted to try them out. I must say I was really pleased with the result. I first painted the green and transferred it to some cheap stretchy white velvet, it "took" in the most satifying way, a couple of days later I wondered if I could transfer onto the already coloured material and hurrah! yes I could, so this is the result. It was a beast to sew, I really must educate myself on stabilizers which might have helped.

The other exhibition...

we visited at the V&A was called "Out of The Ordinary: Spectacular Craft" this one does not finish until 17th February 2008 and is well worth a visit.
This was part of one of my favourite installations
made of fragements of lace and net
more here, Anne Wilson look at her Portable Cities,
When I was a child I used to love to make house with playing cards, with holes in the roof so you could see into the "rooms", these pins and lace and threads had a similar effect on me you could get down on a level with them and see whole town and land scapes.



This may look like a cloth put down to protect the furniture from paint splashes, but those paint "splashes" are stitched!!! More on the artist here.Susan Collis gives links to her works showing "paint stain"

These are more pictures of the other installations on the V&A site, it was an added bonus to the Couture exhibition.

Well I never.....

No copyright breach intended.
I didn't think there was a musical film of the forties and fifties that I hadn't seen but the other evening I watched "The Harvey Girls with Judy Garland and a very young Angela Lansbury. Now as a movie it wasn't one of the greats except for the romantic costumes and the famous "Atcheson, Topeka and the Santa Fe" sequence but it was based on and dedicated to the real Harvey Girls. I knew nothing about them so trusty Google found me these links. The brain child of a man called Fred Harvey to provide food for travellers on trains in the newly expanding country Harvey Girls Railroad Museum
Apparently they tamed the Wild West. Fascinating stuff.

Day of the Queues

On Thursday my friend and I headed for the V&A to catch the Golden Age of Couture exhibition which ends on Sunday. Unfortunately, it would seem that the whole of South East England had decided to do the same thing!!! Had I thought I could have booked tickets but no, do it the hard way Pat. We joined the queue just before mid day and about twenty minutes later we purchased tickets, (half price thanks to our Art Fund Cards )for 3.45pm. Fortuately the V&A has enough treasures to fill weeks of investigation so what to do with our time was not a problem until we fancied a little lunch. Yes the queue was enormous, now we didn't really feel like popping up the road to Harrods for lunch so we waited patiently. I have to say it was worth waiting for. After lunch we took in the costume court and then thought we might just be able to sneak in a little early. So we queued, in vain, "No you must wait " said the young lady "Please step over there and start a queue!!!!!

So that is my Create Something Everyday for Thursday. I created a queue at the Victoria and Albert Museum.

The exhibition was amazing and as always with these big exhibitions too much to take in, in one visit. I particularly liked the area which showed the all the parts which went into these creations,details of the tailoring, the beading and the less than glamourous working conditions of the seamstresses. This is a picture of my mother in a non-couture version of the New Look.


Best of all were the ball gowns, beautiful fabrics and incredible beading and embroidery.

When I first came down to London to work I can remember how we discussed what length hemlines would be this year and what was Vogues' colour for the season, African Violet was the one I always remember. I bought a sweater which cost 29/11d (£1.50 in todays money) and nearly a quater of my wages. On day's up to town I would look out for sylishly dressed women,envying their elegance as the stolled carrying a long rolled umbrella.

Heigh Ho!!



There was another exhibition but I'll save that for another day.

More sunflowers........

Can you tell that I am really enjoying the Calendar Girls 2008 challenge. I don't expect to do this much every month but the sunflower theme just seemed to get me going.

For this one I manipulated part of the original picture in Paint Shop Pro printed it onto cotton and then added some free machining.

This one is done completely freehand on my embellisher and I was thrilled to find I could "paint" with my embellisher in this way. The scan doesn't do it justice because the centre of the flower is very raised.
I have two more that I may or may not finish depending on how they behave.

If you love colour I found this this morning. The text of this site is in french but the pictures speak for them selves Sophie Gelfi, I found this link from Solange who has some beautiful work herself.

Getting started......

Good things go in threes they say so I have just signed up for a third challenge. This one which I found via The Lavender Loft. The challenge by Leah of Creative Everyday. I was attracted to this because the goals are small, creativity is not just a piece of creative work but can be as small as tidying a shelf, (actually that's huge for me but that's another story(, I just felt that in conjunction with Calendar Girls 2008 and TIF this could keep me on track this year.

Sharon's TIF challenge cetainly made me sit up and take notice and THINK. My goodness. I think I am going to go with the "Who do you admire and why" but just how I am going to do that, at this moment I don't have a clue. But I have started a note book for it, so that's creative!!!.

Cyndi of Layer upon Layers has posted a link to the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, The Artist's Toolkit, a fun interactive site for design which may help out with any of the above.

The decorations came down today so here is the end of Christmas 2007.

Good madness......

I have just read this on Neil Gaiman's Journal and I hope it is allowable to quote it here.

"May your coming year be filled with magic and dreams and good madness. I hope you read some fine books and kiss someone who thinks you're wonderful, and don't to forget make some art -- write or draw or build or sing or live as only you can. And I hope, somewhere in the next year, you surprise yourself."

He missed out "sew" but otherwise I think it is the perfect wish.

Surrounded .......

by sunflowers!!! The Calendar Girls challenge has me seeeing sunflowers everywhere, even in my dreams. You have to understand I am working with some pretty creative and talented people here.....so it's a bit scary. But this is how January Mark 1 came about.

This is the picture we are all working from. One of the first things I noticed was the little turned over petal on the big flower in the vase.

This is the same in my sketch book...Van Gogh eat your heart out!

Then this happpened
.
So I painted some fine cotton

and embellished some blue scrim from Purple Missus to a piece of dark blue felt.

I completely forgot to photograph where I drew the pertals onto the yellow cloth and cut them out but one bonus happened here, I treated the petals with fray stop and they curled so that the whole thing had more volume than before.I also neglected the bit where I added the beads to the brown felt and put wadding underneath it to raise the surface, here we are with the petals half added.

and this is the completed card

Here we go then......

nearly the end of 2007. I'm not a great fan of New Year, yet another one speeding by I suppose but this one has taken my life in a new direction for which I am thankful. There are many people I should thank for making this year as interesting as it has been, particularly to all those who have visited and laughed and cried with me. Thanks to Sharon B for opening up a whole new world as I linked up with the people taking the TAST challenge and I am looking forward to the Take it Further. Thank you to Lynda and all the other girls who invited me into that world with the Calendar Girls Challenge for 2008 and Britt, who sent me a little scissor keeper that boosted my productivity by saving me hours of searching for my scissors!!!! Thanks to friends at the EG who have been such a fun part of my life this year and to my best friend Pam who I don't see often enough but is always there for me.

I wish you all the very best for the New Year hoping that we share many exciting journeys of discovery together.

Secrets are out......

How quickly Christmas goes! After all the secret phone calls, shopping sneaked into the house and general preparation it is over in a twinkling. It was worth though.
My wonderful family bowled me over with a new sewing machine, I am particularly impressed with DH who masterminded and executed the whole thing. It is a Bernina 240 he knew this was the one as he had seen me drooling over it when I bought my embellisher. It amused me that in the manual it is not called a sewing "machine" but a sewing "computer". It has 99 instead of 27 stitches and three alphabets. I have had one little play and we are friends already.

It was my son's 40th Birthday on Boxing Day and I can now reveal what was keeping me quiet in the run up to Christmas. I have wanted to make him something for some time, having made the hussif for my daughter.
He likes things celtic and medieval so I decided on a presentation box and based it on the reliquaries in the V&A

As per usual I forgot to photograph all the stages, these are the embellishments for the lid and the panels which I made on Romeo vanishing fabric.

This is the front of the box

and the back

and the side which are both the same

I completely forgot to photograph it after I had put the feet on it, I'll have to go visit and do it at some later date. The body of the box is made up of a sandwich of velvet(inside), pelmet vilene, cloth which was painted, stitched and foiled, a layer of printed chiffon(of an old skirt) stitched with metallic threads, a layer of black net veiling, and then the stitched panels on top.
I am happy to report that he liked it.

Well here we are then.....

the end to the TAST challenge. I has been a wonderful journey, it has brought me in touch with some interesting and fun people, expanded my horizons and hopefully improved my stitching skills. Over the year I have thanked Sharon but I am going to do it one more time. Thank you Sharon for the time and dedication you have given to this and, of course, for the original idea. I am looking forward with excitement to the Take It Further challenge for next year. So here they are weeks 51 and 52. I could resist keeping the seasonal theme and the last one has beads just for Thomas. (Thanks you for all your kind thoughts, I hope I have managed to thank you personally)


"Paper" Chained Bar and


Spanish Feath Stitch... not sure this one is quite right and you can see the beginning wobble, one for further investigation.

and here is one I made earlier...

to Wish You All a Very Happy Christmas

PS
I came across this interesting looking blog this morningfree craft articles, thanks to
Pat Winter and Pamela Kellogg who laid the trail. I haven't had time to really delve but there seem to be some good articles and free patterns there.

Thomas the Great.......

is no more. For some weeks now this once magnificent animal has been losing his weight and his strength, Yesterday his back legs gave way a few times and today a visit to the vet decided that the time had come when it was kinder to have him put to sleep.




As you see I will miss him. He loved to sit on my knee when I was stitching and was a great scatterer of beads!! The other thing he liked, apart from food, was a sunbeam, He would adjust his position to stay in one until it disappeard.
He first arrived amongst us about 17 years ago by dint of whipping in through the cat flap and finishing off whatever food our then cats had left. He was almost feral, a large cat with a big barrel chest. cock of the walk and probably father to hundreds of kittens!! One day he came in and I noticed that his neck was in a terrible state, almost open to the bone. He was too wild to catch so we hired a trapping cage and warned the vet how wild he was. When I collected him the vet said "Can you put the cream on his neck" I don't think so. So he gave me tablets which I wrapped in chicken and gradually Thomas started to take it out of my hands. Little by little I was able to touch him and then to stoke him, one finger only. By the time his neck was better he had decided that he had found a pretty reasonable billet and so he stayed with us. A great character and companion.
Rest well dear litle friend I hope you find an everlasting sunbeam.

Tis the season....

Overheard in Sainsbury's(supermarket) this afternoon.......
About 8 year old boy to his mother....."You said you weren't going to over do it...and I think you're overdoing it"
Wonderful... out of the mouths etc...


I came across this this morning, a bit late for this year but a great idea for next from Happy Mundane how to theme all those old decorations.

Impatience.....

Well I know the challenge isn't supposed to start until January and I know I should be doing things domestic for Christmas but my little brain has been working overtime on the January picture for the Calendar Girls 2008 challenge. This will be Mark 1, I tell myself this so that if it goes pear shaped I can just day "Oh, no problem that was just Mark 1"!!
This is the first element of Mark 1

and this is the second,

The beautiful blue is some embellished scrim from Purple Missus. Just check out these gorgeous colours!! This is from the blues pack.
At the moment I think I know what I am doing with this, we shall see.

Found........

I actually found the missing page of my little Somerset trip book, I have to say it was in a very safe place. Right in front of my eyes. I am actually not too thrilled with the pages now. I think I rushed them a bit but I love the way the covers turned out.
So here they are with the lost page. The title is sliver off a piece of slate we pinched out of a skip in Wells.(Wish I'd had a bigger bag with me!)







If you like fabric books Ruth Rae fabric book has a beauty and decribes how she put it together.

And Beate works a little bit of magic with some scraps on Beate's Fabric Art

Tis the season 2.....

As you will have noticed my last couple of TAST sample seemed to be determined to be seasonal, it seems to have caught Sharon as well because lo and behold this weeks stitch (Week 50 my goodness) was Berry Stitch a double detatched chain. Ho,ho,ho thought I!!!! So I decided to make a simple Holly spray with beautiful red berries and look what happened..............

Tis the season.......

when all kinds of exciting things happen. Who would think that I my time of life I would become a Calendar Girl......it's true. Those who know me personally can relax there will be not revealing pictures....I am honoured to have been invited to join a group of very talented people to take part in a swap for next year based on pictures in a calendar. You can follow what happens on the new blog, Calendar Girls 2008, I have put in a link. It should have a pretty picture something like this but my blogger wouldn't play.

fun and games....and a few snowflakes

It's a bit late in the day for this Christmas but I am certainly going to keep some of these techniques for next year. Demonstrations of Christmas Tags by Tim Holtz. Thanks to Dapple Designs for the link.

and this was sent to me by a friend who warned me not to have a drink in my hand when I watched it!!!
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And this weeks TAST,pistil atitch. Is it my imagination or are the stitches at the moment lending themselves to all things Christmassy? Stars or snowflakes, take your pick.



Lynda thank you for your help with adding videos and yes as far as I know this is Babara Cook at 80,I think it was in Melbourne this year.

Test

An amazing lady....

No copyright breach intended

Yesterday evening I was lucky enough to go and see Barbara Cook in a concert to celebrate her eightieth birthday. For many years she has been one of my favourite singers, her distinctive voice and wonderfully clear diction make her a joy to listen to. Last night was no exception. The closing number when she sang without a microphone was a memory to treasure. You can see her here singing one of my favourites.

And now for something completely different...

Ever wondered what to do with your old buttons? Craft magazine has a suggestion.Marvellous!!