April TIF

The 30th of April already and I have missed the deadline for my TIF Challenge. I have every intention of finishing it, but possibly quite a bit late this time. I thought I'd show you a few more of the embroideries I made when I was young. Those little changes in style over the years that I intend to create a piece of work from.


This is part of a large tablecloth and this bunch of flowers is repeated on every corner, plus a border around the side. This was made for my 'bottom drawer', but I still have one corner to finish. It was started around 1958-9 I wonder if it's the record for a WIP?


Another from the same era, but finished and used for years. there was far less work on this one.


This one goes back further and is part copied from a book and part designed by myself. I used Reckitt's Blue, I think that was what it was called. Normally used to whiten clothes and it was mixed into a paste with sugar and a drop of hot water if I remember correctly. I then painted the design onto baking parchment, let it dry completely, then placed it upside down on the fabric and ironed it. It transferred the pattern to the fabric as good as any commercial transfer paper.


This was part of a dressing table set which also went out of fashion before I finished.

Ann Rogers

Last night we had a wonderful talk at the North Wales Branch of the Embroiderers Guild. The guest speaker was a lady called Ann Rogers from the Wirral. Ann gave a most interesting talk and slide-show about 'Spirals' and how they have affected her life. The four pieces of work she brought with her were wonderful and these were the only ones left from a collection of 40. All the others were sold at an exhibition that was held at the Heritage Centre in Northern Ireland.


This is the work I'm doing just now for my journal course with Sue Bleiweiss. I've just received Lesson 5, which is the last in this series. What a pity it has come to an end. But there's another class with Sue beginning soon Mixed Media Surfaces for the Fiber Artist

I am also exited to be doing a class with another friend Terri, this is her website StegArt and this is the class I have joined - Paper Quilting Explorations

I think I need to stay off the computer for a while to get some of this work finished!

Angie Hughes

This is work in progress that I started in a great class I went to on Saturday. It was taken by Angie Hughes. Have a look at her website here - Angie Hughes Embroiderer: Welcome. It was a workshop arranged by North Wales Branch of the Embroiderers Guild. I hope to finish it soon, so watch this space. We all worked very hard all day but didn't quite finish the project, but there's so little work left to do, I'm sure they will all be finished by now.


This box of Ferrero Rocher Chocolates is a very important and neccessary part of the supply list and Angie had to pop one into her mouth now and then as part of the course. We had lots of laughs during the day and we all had a great time and learnt a great new technique.


The quality of the photos is very poor as I used my very new tiny camera and used the wrong settings.

The Gocco Printer

Doesn't life have a way of taking of over at times, stopping you from doing the things you enjoy? I think I'm back on track and will try to catch up this morning.


These three smiling 'girls' here are very good friends of mine who had a fun day together last week and how I wish I could have joined them. They are Liz of Dreaming Spirals who set us all off on the Gocco printer. Gill of An elegant sufficiency and Sue of The Magic Armchair Traveller in Stitches. They all have very interesting blogs, so do go and have a look if you haven't come across them before. They had a day playing with the Gocco Printer. The above is a printout they sent all their friends. It was taken with a camera, then played with in Photoshop and printed with the Gocco machine. Isn't that great?


I love this, don't you? I think I will try and repeat it to myself often. Perfection often stops us from doing great art!


For those of you who have never seen one before, this is the Gocco Printer I bought from Liz recently (she might have more for sale), but I haven't had time to play with it yet.

My April Arch

This morning I had a lovely surprise as my April arch arrived all the way from Florida, USA. Thank you Lyn it's just beautiful. I'm afraid I don't have your blog url although I have searched for it. I know you are Lyn Keil of Barefoot Creations but that is all. I have yet to start my April arch for Judy.

Slow Internet connection

Blogger is very slow tonight, so it will be a short post.
Today has been busier than usual as I went to Chester this morning and on the way home I stopped at Hobbycraft for some things! Then I was dropped off at the SerenTex meeting on the way home.
Here is a taster of what you will see on the SerenTex blog during the next few days. You will see textile birthday cards sent to Carol on her birthday and a few more Ton Shulten inspired work.


This is a work of textile art by our talented Mary Spence.



These two are close-ups of Joan Park's work and the whole piece is wonderful. You can read all about Joan in the next issue of Fibre & Stitch Zine and she's also written us an article.

April TIF (rather long)

My TIF challenge this month will contain as many stitches and styles as I can fit into the piece, as a reminder of all the changes I enjoyed so much during my life of stitching.

I have been giving a lot of thought to my Take it further challenge for April « In a Minute Ago. Like all the challenges Sharon has set us it makes us think. My thoughts on this one haven't been too deep. I am still thinking 'textiles', which have become so important to me along the way. Immediately I read the challenge, my thoughts went back to childhood and how very much textiles have been part of my life, but also how much fashion in textiles, like everything else has changed. In my opinion schools don't give enough attention to textiles these days. When I first started teaching, children in the junior school could spend a couple of hours each week learning to knit and stitch. The curriculum does not leave enough time for this any more.
Going back to my own childhood, when I went to a very small village school. I clearly remember the disappointment I felt that the 'big' girls, 5 in all were allowed to make a nightdress case, whilst I, the youngest couldn't as there was not enough fabric left over. I remember the print clearly, it was a paisley cotton with oranges and greens on a white background. I do remember making a handkerchief with a basket of flowers embroidered in one corner which we also had to hem.

So down memory lane to look at some of the work which I still have, some in a very sorry state, needing a wash and a bit of startch perhaps? I did not want to iron them to photograph as I was afraid the stains would then be very difficult to get out.


This is the earliest piece of work I have, an appliqued traycloth, made in 1947, my first year in the grammar school. This one won a prize in the Urdd National Eisteddfod of Wales and I still have that certificate. This was not done in a needlework class, but during dinner times, I expect they would call it a dinner time club these days. The French teacher taught us and we had to make the design from scratch, which I think changed me for ever as I have always hated stitching a design made by someone else.


This one is also from the same period and designed with the French teacher during dinner time. I enjoyed making this one.


This one would have been stitched around 1950, again for an eisteddfod. It was a nightdress case.


Another nightdress case from around the same time and I used this one for years to protect whatever embroidery I had going at the time. It was made using a white flour sack. This was just after the war and fabrics were scarce and I suppose expensive.


I have a cross stich tablecloth which I made when I was 15, again using white a flour bag. which was still in use until recently, but I can't find it tonight. So there's a gap here and this one in another of my designs, this time for college finals. Art was my main subject, but we were allowed to design anything we chose for one section of the work. Looking back, I think this one was quite modern at the time.

I was just having a little break from doing my Fibre & Stitch - An Online Mixed Media Zine article!

Embroiderers' Guild Playday

Yesterday we had a Playday in the Embroiders' Guild. Moya and Alison demonstrated how to make some of their favourite tassels.


Here is their tassel tree, not a very good image I'm afraid with the window behind it. It was very enjoyable, but unfortunately I had to leave after a couple of hours to visit my dentist.


Everyone was trying to get as many tassels as possible made in the time they had.


My friend Edith is busy as usual.


Here is the tassel I made at home today.


I know how much some of you enjoyed the stitched cartoons that were made in Plas Tan y Bwlch. Here is another one for you, this time made by Valerie Mary who has a website in the process of being built, but still worth a visit, it's called :: Healing Scarves ::. This cartoon has 'comfort blanket for' repeated all round the edge.


This is the cushion I made this afternoon for my sofabed as the seat was too deep and it made me slouch when I used my laptop. It has worked really well and now I'm sitting in a much better position. I love the fabric!

Journal Lesson 3

I hope all my blogging friends will forgive me for not thanking them personally for their comments the last few posts, as I'm going through a busy patch, but they are really appreciated. I have also been too busy to visit all my favourite blogs and will have a lot of catching up to do when I have some free time.
This is the journal I made from Sue's 3rd lesson. It is such fun! I am going to make another one a size larger when I get the opportunity, this is for a journal project I'm doing with Dijanne Cevaal's group.


This is the journal front using bought fabric. I also bought a little pack of white wood at Oxfam ages ago and knew they would come in useful one day, so I have used a piece cut with my hacksaw.




Above are a few pages from the inside and below a closeup of the closure.

A sketchbook journal

A very short post tonight. I just finished my Sketchbook Journal a day late. I decided to follow Sue's (Sue Bleiweiss) directions to the letter and everything went really smoothly even though I was rather rushed. Great lesson.


Front cover.


Inside front cover.


Closure.

Award

I am very proud to have been given this special award from two artists I really admire. The first to award me was Helen Alexander of hebart journal who is a wonderfully creative artist as I'm sure most of you know. The second to award me this honour was Emmy of Cramzy who is a very exciting textile artist and another great favourite of mine. Thank you both.


1. You have to pick 5 blogs that you consider deserve this award for their creativity, design, interesting material, and also contributes to the blogging community, no matter what language.
2. Each award has to have the name of the author and also a link to his/her blog to be visited by everyone.
3. Each award winner has to show the award and put the name and link to the blog that has given her/him the award itself.
4. The award winner and the one who has given the prize have to show the link of Arte y Pico blog, so everyone will know the origin of this award.
5. To show these rules.

Now I have to follow the rules and award this honour to five other Bloggers I think deserve this honour.

Dijanne Cevaal Dijanne has been my inspiration for many years and my aim has always been to have a blog as inspiring as hers.
Sharon B of In a Minute Ago I have been a fan of Sharon's blog from the word go!
Maggie Grey of magstitch must be high on my list. She's a fairly new blogger, but we all know and love her from all the work she shares with us and the encouragement she's always given me . Thank you Maggie.
Gina of Fan My Flame who is again fairly new to blogging but has turned out ot be wonderfully inspiring and adds a lovely touch of humour to my days with her lovely sense of fun.
Ro Bruhn Art must be added to my list. She makes beautiful jewellery, but I also love her colourful altered books and journal pages.

I could go on for ever nominating you all for this award, so I shall just thank everyone in this blogging community of ours for sharing and giving so much pleasure.


This is how my triangle is slowly developing!


Thursday afternoon was spent in Mary Spence's company and she brought with her the finished work of art she created at Plas Tan y Bwlch under the tuition of Louise Gardiner. I had only been sent a photo of the images previously so I had no idea how big they were, this one below is about 1 metre in width and 1/2 a metre in height. It is absoultely wonderful. No photograph can ever do it justice.

Party

Unfortunately I missed my friend Carol's birthday lunch today as my bug hasn't quite cleared yet and I couldn't face the thought of rich food, especially the sweet, which I always find irresistible! Mary kindly sent me a photo to show me what I'd missed.


Here's a peep at what I'm playing with recently. I mentioned triangles before and you have seen the papers I was painting, so here's what I did with some of my papers. I loved the way those papers turned out.

Spring

After this morning's snow showers, these flowers survived with the promise of spring round the corner.


I spent a lovely hour relaxing and throwing paint around like mad this evening. I can't wait to see what they are like when dry. I needed these colours for something special.
The first week of Sue Bleiweiss Journal course is over and people have made the most wonderful journals. Some of us have already started on the Week 2 Lesson already, I'm starting mine tomorrow.

My 2nd Journal with Sue Bleiweiss

This is my second journal from Sue Bleiweiss's first lesson and I love making them. This one is for a friend's birthday and she is an artist. So it's an artist's journal with a pocket at the back to hold pencils. I hope she will take it with her on her next cruise.


A pocket for her tags. I'm going to write a few inspirational words on the backs.


Another pocket here. I live by this quote!


I quite like the way this page turned out.


This pencil pocket was an afterthought, so it's been made first and atached at the top and bottom. Now I can't wait for the next journal lesson from Sue.

Journal 1 (Sue Bleiweiss Online Class)

I don't seem to have many spare minutes in my days any more, but as many as I have, I've been using them to make this journal. I am taking an online class with Sue Bleiweiss, who is the publisher of the zine 'Fibre and Stitch'. She still has a few vacancies and if you click on the title it should take you straight to her website. It's a great group and the lessons are well worth taking.


Journal 1 is going to be a journal about the women in my family. By the way Sue's first set of lessons here does not teach you how to journal, but how to make the journals to suit your needs.


This photo shows the inside of the cover, unfortunately for some reason there's a lot of blue coming out here which was not there. It's supposed to be beigy grey. I have a new printer which I don't yet understand properly, although photographs print out beautifully anything I have made in a paint program looks very insipid, so I need to have a poke about, read the instructions online and tweak a little I think. It's a Kodak all in one. Then I need to print out new tags for this journal.


The print for the cover was chosen as a reminder of the large wraparound aprons my Nain(GM)always wore. The green on the inside is the colour of her kitchen walls and the antique lace reminds me of the lace border on her mantelpiece. I wanted this journal to have an aged look, so I have used teabags to colour all the pages and I've machine stitched most of the page edges and pocket tops as shown below. Tonight I am going to start another for a friend who is having a very special birthday this week.