Catching up

When I think I'm about to clear my to 'do list' something else crops up. I had a call last night from my two 7 and 8 year old grandsons asking please would I make them clothes to wear to school, wait for it.... this Friday. which meant I'd have to post it today. They are celebrating European Day and needed to wear a fancy dress from another country for school. One wanted to be a Spanish Guitarist and needed a black waistcoat with buttons! The other wanted white trousers to be one of the Spaniards that run in the street before the bulls. Not very creative perhaps. But here is a photo

Ton panel

The SerenTex textile group are having an exhibition of work inspired by Ton in November and I had decided to exhibit some of my bags made with the Janome Embellisher and inspired by Ton. Unfortunately there will not be a display cabinet available and as the exhibition will not be stewarded we decided it would be better to diplay wall art only this time. Today I was busy trying to make another piece of work using the embellisher and it is almost finished. I'm not particularly happy with it and will probably try and find time to make another one before the exhibition. I have also been busy preparing my next article for Issue 6 of Fibre & Stitch


Tonight there was a beautiful sunset, but what was even more beautiful was this plant on the hall table reflecting the sun.

More Eye candy from the EG Playday

The work below was made by two of my friends on workshops with Ruth Issett at the Knitting and Stitching show at Birmingham last week.


I'm ashamed to say that none of these lovely things here are mine, but the work of my friends at the Embroiderers' Guild who gave me permision to share them with you.

Embroiderers' Guild Playday

This morning I went to the North Wales Branch of the Embroiderers' Guild Playday. Everyone had brought their Soldering Irons and had fun creating. Alison (Reynolds) gave us a reminder of some of the techniques we had learnt on a course with Margaret Beale (margaret.beal@onet.co.uk) recently. Most of us had already been on a couple of Margaret's courses and brought some of the finished work to show. I hope to be able to show you a few more in the next day or two.

This and that

I promised you could see Joan's finished piece of work once it was finished, it's not yet framed though. As you know I love all Joan's work, but I think she has really excelled herself this time. It was started in PSP using a small part of Ton's work, so it's another piece inspired by him, but how different to the original.



This is quite a large piece work about 15" x 21" in my rough estimate and I had Joan's permission to show you some details from the work.

I didn't get very far with my shell work at SerenTex as you can imagine with being rather talkative and taking all the photos, but I did get this far after coming home. If you would like to see what we were enjoying yesterday just click here SerenTex.



This photo was taken at about 7.15 am yesterday. It was such a beautiful morning and I took loads of photos which I will try and post on both my photoblogs DG's Photos and Digital Art and Only One a day in the near future.


This is taken of some relief work on the outside of Chester Cathedral where I took so many photos. I've called it 'We are One' as I'm not sure if it is one head with two bodies or two little animals having a cuddle. What do you think? It looks as if it has been repaired at some time.
I took loads more photos, specially of the old gravestones that have been used to pave the outside. There were two people sitting on one of the benches looking strangely at me, so I told them I wasn't really mad. She said she had begun to wonder :}

Gothic Arch

I finished my arch yesterday and I'm quite pleased with it. The colours in the photo haven't turned out well, but it's near enough.
This is a 12 month swap of one arch a month. This one is for Carol of Taylor's textile trials who's the owner of the TextileChallenges Yahoo Group. Carol wanted a Gothic, metalic. patternated arch using burgundies, blues, purples reds and metalic her favourite colours.
I found this Letter C with a sort of Gothic background of a dragon and I thought it would be very suitable as she is Welsh like myself. I played with it in PaintShopPro and printed it out on Heat Transfer Paper for light coloured fabrics (yellow grid) from Crafty Computer Papers. This is not shiny or thick and difficult to stich into as the ordinary TShirt Transfer paper. You peel it off the paper backing and place it where you need it before covering it and ironing well with a hot iron.
This was the first time I had tried it and I think it could be very useful. I ironed it on a smooth cotton fabric, but next time I will try a coarser fabric, linen perhaps or even a hessian as I find it a little too perfect on the cotton.

detail
I'd felted some wool tops onto a dark purple base using my embellisher and cut out a letter C from it, which was then stitched down using a gold metalic thread and a triple stitch, this is one of my favourite machine stitches.


This afternoon I have a SerenTex meeting and we are all going to have a demonstration from Rosemary on how she makes her lovely shell pieces, then everyone who wants to is going to have a go. so I must go and choose some threads and fabric to take with me.

Gothic arch

Sharon's Challenge this month mentions Lists. Now, I haven't yet started on the September TIF yet, but I do have a rather long 'To Do' list which is thankfully getting shorter! I am on the 4th phase of tidying up my workroom. It was a big contract, so I have decided to split it up into phases. It will look a lot better on my list if I can say I have finished Phase 1, 2, 3 and am now on phase 4. I think it will turn out be be about 10 phases altogether and I'm doing it in between creating.
I have started on my Gothic Arch and below is a Gothic window from Chester Cathedral taken last Wednesday, but I decided not to use this as my inspiration. My designs almost always involve a lot of research and as I search through my photos I'm sorting them out at the same time. Another very 'big job'.



Above is a large dovecote I also photographed in Chester last Wednesday.
As I was going through my photos I looked at these photos from Plas Tan y Bwlch.


This is a copy of a Celtic Bowl found in the area which is displayed in a glass case among some other relics.


A detail from the handle.


I just love this hinge with the letter 'M'.


These are also part of the same door and below is an example of the studs covering the door which are all star shaped.

Arches

This morning I had this wonderful arch inspired by an Egyptian Cartouche from Judy Bartel in Canada. I'm afraid I don't know if Judy has a blog or not, but if I find out I will post about it again. This arch is so beautiful I would like to see a lot more of her work. Even the envelope itself is a work of art. She put a mixture of colourful stamps on it.


Labels are very convenient for envelopes and parcels especially as we can print them out on the Internet, but I feel sad that real stamps are becoming rare.


It's a good feeling to be crossing out some things off my 'To Do' list. This arch was supposed to be done in July. This Summer in the UK has been so wet everything has grown more than usual and I have tried to capture the foliage in my arch.



My next arch is to be influenced by Gothic architecture and Chester Cathedral seems to be a good starting point. Here are some photos I took yesterday.

SerenTex

This is a taster of the new post on SerenTex and it was made by Joan from an image she created on the computer at our Summer break at Plas Tan y Bwlch. Joan and I spent time on the computer and as you can see, it was time well spent. This work is going to be really special and I will be showing the finished piece soon. I'm also putting a few more images from a previous meeting in another one.