Celebration

I haven't posted because I've had a family celebration to organise. We all met up in Bedford where my youngest daughter Lorna lives as it was the most central and had a lovely family meal at The Barns Hotel to celebrate John and my Golden wedding! The girls brought the beautiful cake and here is the youngest member of the family, Becca, just three weeks old with my girls having a cuddle and being glad they don't have to do the sleepless nights again!

Granddaughters Ella, Ellen, grandson George, Lorna with Becca and Emma Becca's mum.

Eldest daughter Emma and baby Becca

More Christmas Dangles

Today's offering for the Textile Fair Charity stall at Wolterton Hall, September 14th and 15th. It's an interesting fair with costumed characters roaming the halls and lots of textile stalls, many selling antique items. There is an Organics Garden Day on Sunday. It is an interesting building build in the 1720's by Thomas Ripley for Horatio Walpole, a diplomat and younger brother of the first Prime Minister. The grounds are interesting too, and there is a lovely view down to the lake.
I shall be there demonstrating my craft and hoping to add a few new members to the Quilters Guild.
These little decorations are made from hot-washed blanket and snowflake buttons. I had hoped to take these on holiday to sew but never got around to it. A whole morning hand stitching! They probably need sequins and beads but I'm not much of a fan of the shiny stuff.. and I think they'll go quite well with my little folk art offerings from yesterday.

Damsels and Dragons

Flies that is.. we went up the river for a picnic today, it was very hot and there were lots of dragonflies, huge like little helicopters and the most beautiful turquoise damselflies. One came and sat on the side of the boat and I put my hand beside it and it climbed onto my finger and sat there for minutes, long enough for me to look closely at the dark patches on its wings and the iridesent blue on the upper edges. An amazing creature.
I didn't take a camera but there are wonderful pictures of Banded Demoiselles here: www.stephenburch.com
We also saw several swan families with cynets almost fully grown, two with Five and one with seven, so it's been a good year for them. Near the bank after lunch we were treated to a good view of the local iconic butterfly, a Swallowtail. On the way home we saw a gannet and John who was driving saw a kingfisher dart across the river.

And here are the little Christmas hangings for the craft show. Patterns I've had for about 20 years, from an American designer I think.

July and August Journals

I've had some nice comments from a girl in Australia, asking about my fabric paints. Since Blogger doesn't seem to want me to reply on site here's a copy of what I wrote.

I am using fabric acrylic paints, and the white was a matchpot from the hardware store, wall paint!

 

I am not trying to make things for sale, and anyway the journal quilts are experimental pieces, so I am not concerned about archival quality.

 

Off now to photograph the next two journals -also fabric printed on hand dye -as they have to uploaded to the Contemporary quilt site before the end of the month.

 

I've been making little Christmas mini quilts for a local Charity stall today and may get a picture of them up 

 

 July's Quilt has Daisies Marigolds and Convolvulous flowers, but the background is darker as things are much drier.

July Journal Quilt

 

 August has less flowers, and again the background is darker as there has been so little rain.

These have been printed with more home-made funky foam print blocks. I remember using pizza trays for this when I was teaching 6 year olds!

 

 

August Journal Quilt

 

 

CQ Horizons Exhibition

Wed Aug 14, 2013 6:29 am (PDT) . Posted by:

"christine_seager" christine_seager

I have put photos of the stand and all the quilts on the website I set up for entry for the CQ Horizons challenge. Here is the link:

http://cqhorizons.weebly.com/cq-horizons-photos.html

These are well worth a look!

Sad that my entry remained in my head... Must do better.

FOQ

The Festival of Quilts is always an exciting place to be. I bought stencils and more thermofax screens, threads and interesting scrapbags with dyed felt and scrim.
And I looked at the exhibitions. It was difficult to photograph work but I have captured some inspirational pieces: there is another of Linda Kemshall's wonderful Corvids, and some pieces by the Australian artist Dianne Cevaal.

Dianne Cevaal's Reef, close-up

Laura Kemshall

 

I was pleased to be able to see the Traveller's Blanket at close range. There is some wonderful stitching on it!

 

 

Dianne Cevaal's Traveller's Blanket

More later!

Fabric printing

Yesterday was my wedding anniversary - I thought we might go out for lunch or take the boat out and have a picnic. We had to wait in for a parcel - new shooting boots! Then he went off to do his shooting training. I got out my paints and started fabric printing, aiming to make some more journal quilts on the meadow theme.. good job I'm a self-sufficient woman!
Here is the first, which may be July's journal, but maybe the background silk is a little too dark in colour. I have made several pieces which are available should I decide this doesn't fit.

Wayside flowers - convolvulus and dandelions

 I outlined the printed convolvulus (another print block made with funky foam and double-sided tape) with a Tsukineko fabric pen I bought in Houston several years ago.. amazed that they hadn't dried up! The dandelions are the print block I used to print daisies with before.

Two more Linen Bookwraps

Ooh! tempted not to take these... but I know they can be easily reproduced.
Yesterday's potato masher bleach print with some lovely linen printed in red, with French handwriting from an old ledger.
And the third one with another bleach print using the potato masher and a foam sponge circle. This linen is printed with historic images from the French Fashion industry.

Linen bookwrap 3 - the back

Potato masher bleach print

Linen bookwrap 3

"Decide - Commit - Focus"

..is definitely my mantra for the previous few days as I have been working hard to get my remaining eleven note books covered before the Festival of Quilts in Birmingham. I made two on Tuesday and got two more half done. I finished those on Wednesday morning before getting stuck in traffic for ages on my way to a meeting.

Eight done! Half Hour Bookwraps.

 I'll aim to post some individual pics into the bookwraps page.

Bleach print on dark batik.

In the evening I made another four, getting the method grooved they took half an hour each!

Bleach print from potato masher.

This morning I have made Number 9, with some handstitch it has taken a little longer, and number ten is under the machine! These last three are using some lovely linen printed in French and with some of my bleach printing experiments. The one currently under the machine is a bleach print from a potato masher on shot cotton.