Nearly there

Week five of the encrusted CQ course. These are my four blocks before the last stages of beading.

We will remember them.......

Today is Remembrance Sunday in the UK, when we remember those whose lives were cut short by war. Four more British soldiers were killed today in Iraq. Yesterday many young men of Iraq were killed as they applied for work. Where is the reason? In over two thousand years mankind has learned nothing! At my age one knows only to well the shortness of life.

Block progress

These are the additions to block#s two and three?

Hussif

I have given my daughter the hussif which I made for her so I can now share it with everyone. A hussif is a corruption of the word housewife and is simply somewhere to keep all your sewing requirements. (Well not quite ALL as most of us have whole cupboards full of the stuff)
I would like to thank the contributors to CQ Magazine http://www.cqmagonline.com/index.html where I first heard of a hussif. If you link to them and search for hussif you will see the beautiful things that inspired me.

Ugly Bug Ball

Another great day with Sam Beresford at the Sevenoaks Embroiders Guild. This is my bug after some skilful surgery by Sam.

I like to think that I will finish the second one.........

Sewing frenzy

My husband must think my needle is welded to my hand!!! The third of Sharon's lessons arrived and this is the result on the first block, (Gipsy gold). So now my gipsy has a basket of pegs, a caravan and a violin , the motif in my corner made me think of the signs gipsy's used to leave on gateposts to show whether a house was friendly or not. The centre and the corner are waiting for lesson four!

Visit from a stanger

A very colourful visitor to our bird feeders, unfortunately in my excitement didn't manage to catch his wonderful red beak.

Progress report

Here we are a bit more embellishing, fell I'm getting the hang of this now. For those seams which are still empty I am waiting to see where lesson three leads me.

Happiness is...

Thomas and Elcectra or, as they should be known these days, Darby and Joan sharing a sunbeam!!

Better than Google.......

I decided to search for some crochet motifs to make for the later stages of my Encrusted CQ. I paticularly wanted a fan, so into Google it went and what should come up but a reference which had the inaminuteago url. I smiled and clicked and lo and behold I found Sharon had already done all the work and there were all and more motif instructions that I could ever want.

This is the first block with the seam stitching. It looks sort of bitty and I'm not too happy with it but I am hoping that I know where I am going with it. In my mind I have called it "gipsy gold" a bit more inspirational than 1st block!! When we get to the motifs, beads etc I hope I can spice it up a bit.

Now going to try second block which is now called "gilded cage". Hoping I can get to be more spontaneous on this one.

I'm on a roll........or not

Sharon suggested that we make a sample of stitches on a roll of material. I'm not too patient so I started but then the desire to get going on my blocks won so I turned to them instead and that is where everything ground to a halt. Talk about stage fright.... Now let me say here I do know a few stitches (not very good at them but I do know them) and being left handed I have had to teach myself how to do them. (Domestic Science teacher at school wrote me off as useless) so I thought it would be easy, but no, you see now I have all this added information about texture and paths etc. It took me ages to get going.
I think one of the main reasones is trying to visualise what it will be like when it is all encrusted and what you would like to put where. The other thing is because on three of the blocks I have used images I feel I need to tell a story with the embelishments. This probably comes from altering books which is what I have been doing for the last year.
Anyway I finally took the plunge on the basis that if I don't like it I can always pull it out. Here is roll and story so far on first block.

The great Lace Debate

I sat for hours with my bits of lace and my blocks trying this bit here and that bit there. These layouts are the story so far. They are only layed on so things may happen when I start Stitiching.





Just printed off the second lesson, all 49 pages of it!!! Should keep me occupied.

Marks and Spencer a question.

Why have Mark & Spencer started playing muzak in the Bluewater store, I do not want someone wailing about their love life when I am buying my knickers or trying to decide what to have for dinner. It drives me nuts!! I may have stop shopping there. M&S probably won't notice but my bank manager will be happy.

New enchantments

Look at this gorgeousness. This is the lace I dyed, I used Marabou Silk and Dynaflow. I tried to combine the colours to tone with my blocks for Sharon's class and then just left them to do their own thing. I was thrilled with the resulting colours.
This is a bit of Dupioni I used to mop up the plastic sheet, I then screwed it up and left it to dry and look what happened, a piece which is just dreaming about embroidery.

Now to try and position the lace.

How to measure success !

"School trip a huge success - not one child asked if it was dinnertime (which they usually start doing about 10am)"

This from a friend who teaches primary school.

Gold star and Painting yourself into corner

I was thrilled by some really kind comments from members of the class on my colour exercise and Sharton awarded me a gold star so I am tickled pink.
I started on the blocks. It started off fine but as soon as I started on the second round of piecing my troubles started. See below. It really was like painting yourself into the corner, you can see on the first block a sort of large ugly rectangle, same happened on the second block where quite frankly I cheated. (Bows head in shame) I am finding this great fun but quite difficult and am not at all sure about the results. Here are several lessons that I have learned.

1st: Don't finish off the stiching of your pieces because if you make a mistake they are a pain to unpick.

2nd: Move your supposrt fabric well out of the way before you trim your seams!!

3rd: Make sure you have overlapped your fabrics otherwise nasty little holes appear. Perhaps that's where embellishing started!!

4th If using a picture as a pivot make sure it has enough border as it gets eaten away as you go round. Heare are the four blocks I've made so far, holes and all

The blocks are about 9 inches square (at the moment).

Off to dye some lace for the next stage. What fun!

Look and see

My online Crazy Quilting has started, Sharon suggested a colour exercise which I found fascinating

I have never done anything like this before, it makes you realise how little we actually see when we think we have looked at something. Can't wait to get started on the actual blocks but am trying to make myself think before I start intead of my usual leap into the middle and having to muddle my way out!!!

Val Campbell-Harding

It is with great sadness that I have learned of the death of Val Campbell-Harding from a massive heart attack. One of the things on my list for the Knitting and Stitching show was her new book, for through her books she has been my teacher and inspiration. I give thanks for her life and for the joy she brought to mine.

This is a link to her website where there is a book of condolence for the family. http://www.ctdg.co.uk/home.htm.

Autumn is here

I love this time of year, for me this is New Year rather than the January version. I don't know if it springs from the years of conditioning to the academic year or because my birthday is in September but I always feel that this is the time to start planning and looking forward. Life seems to pick up its momentum after the lazy days of summer.

I have been to the theatre three times this week, one was an amateur version of "The Witches of Eastwick", it was a competent offering, the second was the last preview of "Wicked" which must be one of the most hyped shows ever to reach the West End. I enjoyed it! The two leads were very good, staging was impressive , the costumes were stunning and the Oz jokes were fun but there was something lacking which I can't put my finger on. When I have seen something that really grabs me I feel "Oh I wish I was going again tomorrow" it didn't happen though I would like to see it again sometime if only to get a closer look at the costumes! My last theatre visit was to the Youth Theatre of the society who performed "After Juliet". It is always touching to see young people who you have know since they were small pushing into the adult world.

Re my crazy patchwork adventure, I had a blue block which I had started some time ago and I thought I could incorporate it into my "quilt" . This is what it looked like

I decided I wasn't happy with it so I distressed it a bit, this is what it looks like now!!

So I don't think this is going to make my quilt, though I quite like it so far and may play some more with it.

Back to the drawing board!!

I work in whatever medium likes me at the moment. Chagall

I found this quote and thought how aptly it fitted my butterfly mind!! For my birthday my son gave me some new storage boxes for my workroom which promted a three day orgy of re-organisation. This was not without pain whilst I made myself throw things away(five bags for re-cycling) Then my room was finished and tidy my two desks were clear and I hadn't an idea in my head!!!!!!
After a few sterile days, as I mulled over how I could use all the goodies I have accumulated, a little seed began to grow. I have played about with crazy patchwork/quilting before, I made a bag to keep my needles and scissors handy.(see pic) I did a bit of surfing and was stunned by the wonderful work out there. Soooooooo I have started a quilt, I am making it in blocks so that I can do the hand sewing wherever. Further inspiration is going to come from a site I found this morning called In a Minute Ago.
http://www.inaminuteago.com/blog/ Sharon Boggon is the creator, she is just coming to the end of a wonderful series of 100 stitches for 100 days which I intend to follow (started back in June 2006). So as the saying goes watch this space................

Birthday blues

It would appear that I have managed to survive my 65th birthday, don't now know why I had such an attack of the glums in the couple of weeks leading up to it. Anyway whilst I was down I made a book so here it is.

Silly season

When you spill a sticky drink on the floor do you wipe it up as quickly as possible or do you put three traffic cones round it? That's what they do in Primark in Gravesend on one of the hottest days of the year. As I stepped round the cones I was expecting to see ankle threatening broken floor tiles but no, just a bright pink drink congealing nicely.

A company in Kent has deemed the use of the word "wife" as offensive, after 45 years of marriage I would be highly offended if I was called anything else. When we burned our bras did we know what we were starting????

Don't you just love summer?

Summertime

What a strange nation we are, we must, collectively, spend millions every year seeking the sun and yet as soon as it we have anything like warm we moan loud and long about how hot it is.......
One comment I heard this morning was "Oh it's too hot to look!"

Unblocked

After not being able to create even a mess, suddenly became unblocked thanks to Karen on Altered Books group and her mention of an article by the wonderful Maggie Grey in "Cloth Paper and Scissors". Here are the results of my experiments so far,it is a very exciting technique which I am sure I will use over and over again as the possibilities are endless. I have to say the scans don't do them justcie in the depth of the pieces.

What is it about stamps?

I wonder what the fascination is for the shape of a stamp, it it all those little perforations I wonder. They are collectors items and are beloved by collage artisits. I found a very interesting snippet in the Englishwomen's Domestic Magazine of 1860 where a correspondent was informed quite briefly that "used postage stamps have no value". Just think of all those Penny Blacks etc that must have been thrown away. Gillian Allen of art-e-zine has just done a great tutorial, here's one I made..

Ah well... Farewell...and Fancy that!

England out of the world cup, I couldn't watch and I kept my fingers in my ears hoping that they would do it but.... Ah well........At least the nations blood pressure levels should drop.

I certainly did watch Andre Agassi in his last match at Wimbledon. It's not going to be the same without him, he has been so entertaining over the years, from "long hair" to "no hair" it has been such fun, Thanks Andre, visit us sometime. The world needs characters

and then Murray beat Andy Roddick.... Well his language leaves a lot to be desired if my lip reading skills are to be trusted but he played a good match...we shall see.