A Village Quilter

Sorry for the last lot of photoless postings - I think a photo really helps on blogs. So here are my latest magazines - Selvedge: And this morning my new Quilting Arts magazine arrived - I can't wait to sit down after dinner and have a good look at it: I also bought some fabric - here's a little bundle: I did buy a pile from the sale at Kisko - but it needs washing and ironing still - so I'll let you see that in dribs and drabs. And now the class from last week: Some of you may recognise these two. Part of the class was for us to critique an artists work - and here are two of our class doing a Ant and Dec style presentation. I also took my work in for some constructive comments - I already had an idea what I needed to do - but it's reassuring when others agree. So it was a very quick bit of screen printing - in brown: And black. When I got the pieces if calico back home I tea dyed them, cut them up and added them to the final piece. And here we are - with the words...

It was so good to meet up with familiar faces at the Bramble Patch today for our first class of 2008. I think we were all feeling a bit rusty after our break - but we soon settled in. Brenda set us all a challenge - do one thing each day towards your creativity and she calculated that we have 34 days until our next class. As you can see I've added my list on my right hand side bar to share with you all. perhaps you;d like to join in and let me know what you're going to do each day. It doesn't have to be a huge thing - perhaps just looking at a book about an artist or having a doodle. I've also decided I need to get more organised - yep that old chestnut again. And, for those of you who go to the class, you won't be disappointed to see my tea bad dying experiment with calico. Here's the recipe 1 pint hot water 3 tea bags - Tetley's decaffeinated 4 pieces of calico added and then removed at 5,10 15 and 20 minutes. I'll post you a photo of the results soon ...

...I didn't realise I hadn't posted in a while. Well I hope you are all well and enjoying the new year. Have you broken your resolutions yet? Or are you like me and haven't really decided on what ones to go for? I'm playing with the idea of joining a gym. I've got a free 5 day pass for one locally so I'll give it a go and then decide. No too much progress on the crafting front recently (hence no photos)- but the house is back to normal now my mum has gone to stay with her friend and Christmas is over. It's so nice to have it all back to normal and be able to have my sewing room back. It was also a good opportunity to re-arrange the furniture in there and give it a good clean. It looks great at the moment but I do have 2 boxes I need to empty and then I'm sure it'll look much as it did before (a bit of a mess). I also have some homework to do for my next class at the Bramble Patch. I really must crack on with it otherwise the week will fly along and i...

When I started my class at The Bramble Patch with Brenda Boardman she asked all of us to think about what we wanted to achieve from the classes, what our goals were. I’m rather bad at this as I don’t write goals well – so I never know if I got there or not. But anyway I did write the following goals: -More confident use of colour -Diverse use of different textiles -Develop techniques -Develop use of sketchbooks She then asked us to write what the reality of where we were now against these goals: -At the moment I play safe with colours and tend to use fabrics from within a manufactured range -I always use manufactured fabrics -I am open and willing to develop techniques -I’m not confident with putting pen to paper So that’s where I was – but where am I now? -I have used colours more confidently – for example with my Sunburst – very bright, red, yellow and orange. But I do still need to have more of a go with this – perhaps by making smaller pieces in different colour ranges I could dev...

Hello all and Happy New Year. I hope the start of this New Year finds you all well. I'd like to share a few links with for artists whose work I saw at the Ferrars Gallery at Staunton Harold at the end of December. They were really varied and interesting. The first artist is Blandine Anderson - who paints and sculpts. The pictures at the gallery were predominately of fares and sheep. The texture was created by mixing sand with the paint, applying whilst wet and then sculpting it when dry. The results were really interesting - I resisted the temptation to have a feel LOL. Priscilla Jones displayed some very interesting fabric pictures - in beautiful pastel colours. I particularly liked the spoons and sundae one. Next was an enormous pelican on a post ( Duncan Thurlby) - it was very large and really beautiful. I would love it have something like that but the reality is I couldn't afford it and we don't have the space. Darren Dearden angel called someone to watch over me was ...