A Village Quilter

 Hello all. I hope this post finds you all well and hopefully dry. I thought I'd start my post by sharing a photo with you that I took last Sunday of our local church, St Peters and the beautiful snowdrops. It really was a lovely day. I've also had a great time with the Lutterworth Embroiderers Guild at a talk and then a workshop with Nicola Jarvis .  You may recollect I have attended a workshop with her previously. You can see our group here, all working very diligently.  It was a very quiet class. The photo below is what my piece should look like - after a lot more work. I learnt and perfected some great stitches: long and short stitch, stem stitch, split stitch, laid work, trellis stitch, buttonhole, satin and Turkish Rug.   Nicola was a great teacher - she spent the whole day demonstrating stitches and offering encouragement. Nicola's talk was really interesting.  I had no idea that May Morris had written a book and it was still in p...

Hi all, Hope you're well and enjoying this beautiful dry sunny day. I've been to a couple a really good classes recently. First was a class with Hilary Beattie  at The Bramble Patch .  It isn't the type of class I would have normally picked, but I've seen her at a few events and knew I'd have a great time.   So the class was painting stylised flowers.  And here are the results: As you can see I've painted the flowers on both plain and lightly patterned fabric.  The aim is to combine this panel with other fabrics and painted elements.  I'll let you see how it progresses. The next day I had a class with Ineke Berlyn with the Leamington Embroiderers Guild .  A great day. So - in the Black Magic workshop I learnt how to use a discharge paste with Thermofax screens.This is activated by a steam iron.  Once this part is complete I used the same or similarly themed screens with metallic paints.  I think I may have overdone...

Hi all, I hope you're well and dry.  Yet again it's rained hard for most of the day.  We had a sewing day with Leamington Embroiderers Guild where the aim was that we all sewed name badges.  And this is my effort. It was interesting to see how we all came up with such different designs. And you can see some of the other designs on their blog . And here is the current work in progress.  It's taken from the latest Quilting Arts magazine.  Although the magazine provides ideas and a pattern you can really make the houses your own.  This still has some more embellishment to go.   Promise I'll show them to you when it's finished. Take care all.

 Hello all. I have been working on the next piece in my Walk series. Below are some of the photos that inspired this - harvest time.   I collected grasses which I took home to study further.  Some of the seeds dropped, I photographed these, traced them, scaled them up and had Thermofax screens made.  I have screens made by Thermofax . They are always very good quality.  If you don't want to use your own designs you could select one of the vast range they have ready made.  Again, great quality and design. Here are the design pages for my screens. I really enjoy this part of the design process - focussing on one small element. Before going any further I needed to draft out the background  - colours and ideas about stitching.  These may change as a result of sampling. And here is the fabric background with some screen printing (bottom and on the right on the yellow fabric).  I used a subtle yellow fabric paint from Colourc...

Hello all. Just a very short blog to wish you all a happy and healthy 2014 Here's to lots of creativity...

Hello all. Aplogies.  I'm rubbish at posting at the moment. Anyway, I had a very nice day out recently at Chatsworth House.  It was a beautiful sunny bright Autumn day. Here are a few photos of the interior and interior. I have been sewing - but can't share the results as the majority of it is for Christmas presents... Take care

Hello all. Apologies again for the lapse in posting.  Work really does get in the way. But, don't think I've been sitting around not doing anything. I had a lovely day yesterday meeting up with 3 other like minded ladies (yes ladies) who I find inspiring.  I'm sure that by meeting them on a regular basis I will be inspired to be more creative.   We had a very nice time, talking, drinking great coffee, eating biscuits and cake and showing each other our latest work.  One of the most interesting things to come out of our meeting was that each of us has a distinct style that the others easily recognised, but the individual did not.  So now at least I think we all know our style. No photos this time - but I promise I'll have some for next time.