Weekend work!

Lots of photographs to share tonight - none of it my work but all shown with the kind permission of my Missenden students. It has been an intensive and tiring weekend. We work on Friday evening and all day Saturday from 9.30 am until 9.30 pm and then until after lunch on Sunday but as always it has been a productive and rewarding weekend. I love teaching and especially love teaching adults and what is especially rewarding is when you realise that you have inspired students to go away and work on their own projects. Nickie had been on the first Machined Textures weekend. Not only did she sell the piece she made then but she has gone on to produce this second landscape which is stunning. (Colours much better in real life!)

And not only that but she made this beautiful little bag too!

Kim was also on the first weekend and she was inspired to make a stunning present for her parents' Golden Wedding... all the more special because before she came on the first weekend she was a relative beginner in Machine Embroidery. She made this beautiful envelope...

Which opened up...

and inside was the most exquisite album of photographs of the wedding - all done with image transfer and stitch. Absolutely stunning!

But onto this weekend... the ladies started by painting bondaweb which they ironed onto calico to produce a background for their stitching. Most are still works in progress (so please ignore any pins!) but all are absolutely lovely and as always all so different.

Chris made this beautiful and very precise piece which has the feel of a Chinese painting.

and was already starting on a second piece!

(photo does not do this justice!)

Judith made this lovely glowing landscape with sunset.

Another beautiful landscape below from Gill.


Sharne plans to make this into a bag which will be stunning - if she sends me photos of the finished item I will share them!

Nickie started this landscape - I love the colours in this - misty highlands with a hint of sun!

The picture below was Kim's - yet another beautiful landscape with so much depth!

Audrey made this very evocative landscape below. I think it has a wonderful mysterious feel and I especially like the poppies.

And last but not least, Marion made this lovely landscape - can you tell Marion comes from Scotland with all those fabulous heathery colours.

A wonderful weekend for me so if you are reading ladies, I hope you have enjoyed it too! And if you are reading and think you would like to try this, I'm running similar courses at Missenden Abbey in the next academic year. You can email me for information or I hope to update my website with details of courses very soon. (After assessment day... still stitching plastic bags!)

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Thank you to everyone who gave their virtual vote to Sam - he got a very respectable 12% of the votes (more than the national average for Green candidates) against a Conservative candidate (who only gained twice as many as him) and the Independent candidate who stayed in office and has actually been our councillor for many years. In Sam's words "I was still the hairest candidate!"... can't argue with that and he is still my no. 1.

Samples and Sam!

We had a good Zigzag meeting yesterday and it was great to see everyone again - I've not been to a meeting since January as the February meeting was the week Jacob was in hospital and there wasn't a meeting in March so it has felt like a very long time. Stupidly I forgot my camera so you'll have to put up with a couple more pics of my combined machine and hand stitch samples. Again these are very small and are on the front of cards. I'll try to remember my camera next time we all meet which will be in June.

Other samples made this week have been for my weekend class at Missenden Abbey. I'll be teaching Machined Textures again but this is the second weekend of two so there will be a slightly different emphasis. The first couple of samples show the techniques covered in the first weekend - lots of added texture from applied surfaces.

And the sample below shows what we will cover this weekend - lots of textural stitch like whip stitch and cable stitch (my favourite) and stitching over holes!

Just in case you think I've abandoned the plastic bags... no... there is progress... but it is very slow which is a bit worrying with assessment day just over two weeks away.

Today is an exciting day in our house because it is local election day! Much as I have strong beliefs about exercising ones right to vote that is not the reason for the excitment. We're all rather proud of Sam (son no. 2) who is standing on behalf of the Green Party for the District Council. Sam stood in these elections four years ago when he was only 18 and managed to get a very respectable 20% of the votes... which turned out to be extremely embarassing for all concerned as being under 21 he was not actually old enough to stand. Not sure what would have happened if he'd been voted in! So today, being the grand age of 22 (and almost 23) he has been asked to stand again.

I'm very proud of him because he is willing to stand by his convictions and he cares about the world he lives in. At a time when all we hear is bad press about our younger generation I think it is admirable that he is doing something like this. (He cycles or buses to work every day too!)

VOTE SAM!

Good Idea?

Well it seemed like a good idea at the time....

... several hours stitching later and still not even half way through... now I'm not so sure! Watch this space.

P.S. I sold four sock creatures on Friday... but not Lulu so guess where she is.

Socks and Swaps

Finally finished of the latest pair of socks which were very quickly claimed by Stewart who proceeded to model them for me... think he was practising his ballet moves.

mmm... possibly not

Not sure what he was doing really!

It was a Kaffe Fassett yarn for Regia but I can't remember the colour!
Talking colour... Lulu is a colourful character.


Finished just in time for my Craft Stall this evening.
If she doesn't sell she might just appear in the shop.

This morning I popped to the local garden centre - first of all for a quick cuppa and catch up with Dotty Cookie and Tiny Small. Then we had a wander around the garden centre and I bought this beautiful Clematis Cartmanii "Avalanche".


It has an abundance of the most beautiful delicate flowers. I'd like to keep it but it is a present for our neighbours who celebrate their Golden Wedding this weekend. They are very keen gardeners so hope they will like it as much as I do... and maybe plant it against our adjoining fence!


When I got home I was disappointed to find I had missed the postman who had a Special Delivery parcel for me. Suspecting it might be something nice I went back out to the sorting office to collect it and I was very excited when I opened it because inside was this...

... beautiful mini quilt from Katy!

I think it is lovely Katy so thank you very much - it will be treasured and I can't believe you made it so quickly. I have to confess I haven't even started mine yet but it will be on its way soon - I promise! Katy also sent these fabulous fabrics which I know I will put to good use.

I'd like to say I'll be working on mini quilts this weekend but think I'm going to be stitching plastic bags! Have a lovely weekend whatever you may be doing. Hope the sun shines : )

Bag Lady

Encouraged by the comments on my last post (and despite Jude's warnings) I've decided to go ahead with the idea of a honeycomb structured dress made from plastic bags. After a quick review of available colours and styles I decided bold and brash is the only way to go and Sainsbury's orange it has to be. Popping into my local store for a jar of pesto and a packet of digestives (strange combination but I always was an adventerous cook) I grabbed a handful of said bags for my project only to be told off by the cashier...

"You have to bring in your old bags!"
"Yes I know... I do... but I need these bags."
"But you must recycle your old bags"
"I do... honestly... But I need these."
"I'll give you a sticker"

I gave in and took the bags and my sticker having decided it wasn't worth trying to explain... but I need more bags and I'm not sure I can face going back. I'll keep you posted!



As well as projects involving plastic bags I've also had to face the reality of going back to work next week. I put a lot of things on hold when Jacob was diagnosed and it has been almost three months since I've taught any classes. But next week we've got a Zigzag meeting and then I've got a weekend teaching at Missenden Abbey so I really had to get some preparation done this week. At Zigzag we're looking at ways of combining hand and machine stitch and today I've made these two tiny samples that will go on the front of cards.

They are not as dark as they appear on the photos.

Finally, I must mention the Arte Y Pico award given for creativity, interesting material and contribution to blogging. I'm honoured to have been given this award by three bloggers whom I admire greatly, who all have very different blogs that I find interesting and inspiring in numerous different ways. Kitty, Mags and Celia... THANK YOU!

As always there are rules and I have to pick five blogs that I admire and feel deserve this award . I have agonised over this and even worried about it but I can't do it - I'm finding it impossible to pick five out of the many I read - all who bring something unique to the blogging world. For I start I would want to nominate the three bloggers who nominated me! So I'm sorry but I'm breaking the rules and I'm not passing this on... Always was a bit of a rebel!

Feeling better.

Thank you all for you kind "get well soon" messages. I'm starting to feel a lot better and in fact didn't mooch around all weekend as planned. On Saturday, suitably dosed with Lemsip, I went with a couple of friends to the launch of the Eastern Region Textile Forum which was held in Chelmsford. It was a buzzing lively event and there were plenty of good ideas for promoting textile art withinin the East of England. In the afternoon we were treated to a very inspirational and entertaining talk by the lovely James Hunting. He kindly brought along examples of his exquisitly stitched work which we got to handle and see up close. And as an added bonus I got to meet Purple Misses... another blogger I've known since I started blogging who was just a lovely in the flesh as she is in cyberspace! Really good to meet you Lynda.

I've not spent the entire week feeling sorry for myself either and there has been some work for the degree. I finished making my final piece of cloth - a crazy patchwork of metal scraps, made from wire mesh, tomato puree tubes and beer cans (there are advantages to living with all these men!) stitched together on the machine.

And I've moved away from the assignment on Making a Cloth and I'm now looking at Dress as a Sculptural Form in greater detail. I've become fascinated by the Japanese designers of Comme des Garcon, in particular with Junya Watanabe and his surreal honeycomb structures.

And as a result I've been exploring my own honeycomb structures - this first was made from kite fabric. It taught me a lot about the actual construction but I'm not that keen on the Christmas decoration I produced!

The next one was made from silk organdie, which is much nicer but very small due to the fabric used! This technique uses masses of fabric so given that I wasn't going to make a garment sized piece from silk organdie I investigated some other materials...

And discovered that plastic bags, although a nightmare to stitch because of the static electricity (they stick to everything!) give a very pleasing delicate result. So that is where I'm going with this assignment... dresses from plastic bags! I think my family will finally disown me!

A Bit Under The Weather

It wasn't flu but I've not been right all week... unbelievably tired and run down and today I'm finally streaming with cold! However my early night on Monday plus liberal doses of drugs, meant I escaped for a couple of days to do a fantastic book making class with Frances Pickering at Art Van Go. Frances makes the most exquisite books filled with beautiful drawings, stitch and words. Not only that she is a lovely, warm, funny and generous tutor so it has been a wonderful couple of days. These are some examples of her books.

And this was my rather meagre first attempt!


I started to fill the inside but didn't get very far.

Because I decided to make another one which I could fill with memorabilia and photos from our holiday in Cuba- which seems like a long and distant memory.

I made the book and started to fill the pages but most of the photos I had with me were very tiny - just contact sheet size and looked out of proportion so Frances suggested I made another smaller book (the original one was only 4 inches square) that could hang as a little bookmark...

And so that is what I did!

To give an idea of scale, these are french knots in the middle!

It measures about 1.5" x 1.75"

And I've finished filling this one!

The book below was made by my lovely friend Joan. Beautiful!

And you can see another one on Dorothy's blog

I'm now going back to feeling sorry for myself and to nurse my cold. Stewart has deserted me for a couple of days (gone to see his parents in Dundee) so I can stay in my pyjamas and wallow in self pity all weekend!