Great inspirational evening

Tonight I had a most enjoyable evening at the Embroiderers Guild with Voirrey Braithwaite of
Voirrey Embroidery
Her talk was called 'Textile Inheritance'. She started by showing us some things she herself had collected over the years, then went on to show us some beautiful clothes she inherited in a suitcase from her mother in the Isle of Man. If you ever have a chance to hear this talk then don't hesitate as I would have not missed it for the world. We were very lucky to be the first to hear this new talk.


This is a Royalty Free photo I'm showing you here. But we had the opportunity of studying closely some work like this. Voirrey also had some similar reverse embroidery from Sough in China.

We were also shown a beautiful jacket made by refugees in tents in Palestine, who were given black fabric and embroidery threads and created this beautiful work using Jordanian cross stitch free hand. This part of the talk was particularly interesting for me as I studied some of this work when I was doing City and Guilds.
The rest of the talk was even more interesting as we saw some historic pieces of clothing from the 19th Century, which is all I will tell you.

Mixed-media sculpture

I do hope these mixed-media sculptures give you as much pleasure as I had from looking at them. The photos were taken at the La Malmaison Museum in Cannes. This is somewhere I always like to go and browse in every visit. Unfortunately it wasn't open this time, but these sculptures were outside in the courtyard, but I couldn't find the sculptor's name and I have searched and searched for his identity to no avail. I Googled the museum but couldn't find the sculptor's name anywhere. so I hope he or she will forgive me for sharing these with you. They are so textiley! The one doing the 'cat's cradle' is my favourite. But I love all the others too. If anyone out there know who created them I would love to know too.

Day out

As I'm off for the rest of the day I thought I'd show you a few more circles before I go.


New York


Stratford upon Avon, UK


Menomite farm USA



Menomite Country.

My car boot

I thought you would like to see what my car boot is looking like now.


A closeup.

I haven't heard from anyone using the Embird software yet, but I must correct one thing, my friend says that actually she has a Janome 300E embroidery machine and not a Pfaff! I'm sorry to have misled you on this point.



I also found the original tree I used to create the winter tree in yesterday's post and I have now printed out part of the tree on a new piece of fabric so I can have a little practice to see if what I have in mind for it is going to work.

SerenTex

Today I printed out myself another winter tree, I think this one will have machine embroidery rather than embellisher felt work which I felt was heavy compared to the other trees. This tree has been played with in Paint Shop Pro, but I can't find the original ATM, it's a tree just round the corner from where I live. Today was SerenTex day and I had intended to start off some computer lessons, but instead we had a really companionable time chatting and drinking tea.
I have put a few photos up if you want to visit.
On the way home I stopped by at my friend's, Joan (SerenTex)as I have promised to call for ages, but have been too busy. We printed out onto fabric some wedding images that she will use to make a box for her grandaughter who was married recently. We struggled a little to understand the printer which is a Canon. But it's a lovely printer and gave no trouble printing on the fabric.


This photo was taken at Ruthin on Saturday and I quite like it. It may be used for something one day.


Here is another one of my circles images.

Lazy morning

I seem to be having a very lazy morning. When I sat down to open my emails, I found myself quietly opening Paint Shop Pro. At 9 oclock in the morning! Anyway I was having a bit of circular fun and this is what I created. Both images need to be clicked to enlarge for the effect to show up properly.


I'm sure this could be used as an inspiration for embellishing using a strand of some twizzly yarn? I'm sure I have some to try it out somewhere. But maybe this could be machine embroidered?


This next one I think begs for some embossed stamping using gold. I'll share the results with you if I ever get around to doing either of them.

BTW, I have a friend who is interested in the Embird software for her Pfaff sewing machine. If anyone uses it and would be willing to share what you think of it, could you emailme privately about it please? margaret.rbts@virgin.net I know my friend would be so grateful as she doesn't want to buy something that might not work for her.

Maelgwn Male Voice Choir Annual Concert

I've just arrived home from a wonderful concert at Venue Cymru our local theatre in Llandudno. Cor Meibion Maelgwn is the choir my husband belongs to and they won the main male voice choral event at the National Eisteddfod of Wales 2009.



The main soloist was Sain Cothi, the well known versatile Welsh star. She has her own TV show, has starred in Andrew Lloyd Webber's 'Phantom of the Opera' in London's West End.

Another up and coming 12 year old star of the future, Lucy Kelly sang at the concert. She has already sung at the Royal Albert Hall in London. She won all our hearts with her beautiful young voice. Her first record has just been released by Sain.
Safle Gwe Sain/Lucy Kelly

They were both accompanied by Wales most well known and popular pianist-Annette Bryn Parri.

Ruthin Craft Centre

Today I went to see this interesting exhibition Follow A Thread, Innovative Craft - Dedicated to positioning craft of international quality at the heart of 21st century culture at Canolfan Grefft Rhuthun - Ruthin Crafft Centre

I Googled the artists when I came home and here I share what I found with you. I must admit that personally I found Linda Green's work very appealing, with Anna Ray and Sara Brennan following closely.

Anna Ray
Linda Green
Jo Barker
Sara Brennan
William Crozier
Matt Hulse

As usual I took lots of photos while I was there, but I didn't take any photos of the artists work. A few autumn leaves and circles.

Member's Day

I spent a very pleasurable day at our Embroiderers' Guild Members' Day. One of our members, Joyce Honeysett gave us a workshop on the Japanese art of NOTAN. The one above was mine and I must admit I need a lot of practice to learn what to do and what not to do to get a well balanced image. Learn more about the meeting here on Croesew the North Wales Embroiderers' Guild blog.

Busy

I've been rather busy recently with one thing and another and the image above is a little peep of some Embellisher work I've been doing for an article I've been writing. That is only a small part of it and is rather wild and wacky compared to the rest of the article. I have just sent off the article! Now I can get on with my car boot and my new tree for SerenTex hopefully.

I can see a few people would like to know where they can see the article. Hopefully it will be in the Computer Textile Design Group Design-It magazine in the next issue. I used to write fairly regularly for this magazine for some time, but then I suppose life took over and I was doing other things. But I recently went on a course with the group and found they would like to have some more articles, so I started again. This is an online magazine now.

Circle Design - Cd Histoires

Circle Design - Cd Histoires As some of you know I love circles! I have always loved this website as it's full of circles and such fantastic ways of using old CD's.


These lovely logs were photographed at a pub we stopped at when I went to Christleton to the Computer Textile Design Group Summer School.


This photo was taken many years ago at Sway in the New Forest in Hampshire.


Today I finished a cushion I started some time ago.

Explore Experiment Embellish

What a wonderful day we had yesterday with Sheila Smith! She wrote this book - Embellishing, Embellishing Fabrics. I use my embellisher quite a lot as some of you might know, but it was wonderful to experiment and go in another direction completely with Sheila yesterday. It was such fun and I was introduced to some wonderful new techniques, meaning I will play even more with my Embellisher from now on. Thanks you Sheila. See the book for all these new ideas.




These are my three experiments from the class. If you would like to see some more, then do have a look at some of the other work here - Croesew, this is the new North Wales Embroiderers' Guild blog opened recently.
The members have promised to work on these to create exhibits for the NW Biennial Exhibition, at Rhos on Sea at the end of October. (Please see sidebar)

The estuary today

I just have to share this wonderful red sunset with you tonight. I've seen a few red sunsets since I have been living here over the last 20 years, but tonight's was the best yet.




It was very misty early this morning, which gradually disappeared and this was taken just before it dried out completely.


There were also more heron's than usual and I did try to take a photo of a pure white one that was standing near this one, but it didn't turn out well. Pity!

Dotee and ATC's

This is the cutest little Dotee doll that I received from Kari. Kari is now the list mom on the Mixed Media ATC UK Yahoo Group.

Below are all the ATC's I have received from the Surface Design Yahoo Group. There were 10 of us in this trade to show a technique and I have had most of mine delivered to me now. It has been so very interesting and I have many new ideas that I can use and develop in my own work. Thanks to everyone who took part.





I'm sure you are wondering why on earth I needed to take a photo of the boot of a car. Please watch this space (smile)