Hexagon Love

Here’s a bit of what I have been upto lately. I wanted to make a patchwork quilt for the bedroom to make it more colourful and to have something personal in there. So here are a few of the hundreds of hexagons I have done so far. Only about 700 more to go! I have chosen fabrics with rich, intense colours and fairly small scale patterns. I wanted the patterns to be broken up and interesting when they are made into hexagons. I am hoping it will look a riot of colour when it’s done. I am finding it quite therapeutic

Folky Fun

Here we are… a bit more of the delicious folk art wallhanging. Click on the thumbnails to go to larger views. I have hung it up in the studio just to get a sense of where I am with it. After spending some time looking at it intensely while doing the stitching, it’s rather nice seeing it from a distance and it is looking good I have to admit. I really want to finish the top half so that I can then get the bottom section with the container and borders done. I might have to add in some more flowers and sprays of berries or something to balance out the top and bottom halves and make them look integrated. The whole thing badly needs stretching before I can continue with the second half as the fabric is so puckered it will affect the placing of the container and the borders so I am loathe to put them on as it is. I need to be careful about how large the images get as I will be running out of fabric at the bottom and it could look too cramped.

Nutcracker!

We went to see the Nutcracker ballet at the Hippodrome last night - performed by the Birmingham Royal Ballet. It was SO beautiful! The dancers, the costumes, the lighting, the sets. It was a wonderful magical fairytale evening and made me want to dance, dance dance! For those of us who love textiles it was wonderful scrutinizing the costumes, For example the magician had a gorgeous cloak that looked like space-dyed velvet in rusty reds and browns with suns and other symbols in gold glinting in the light. The sets were great too: there was one scene in the forest where there were layers and layers of gauze that had been painted with shadows and fused with other fabric to create pale trees as if they were appearing out of the mist. Together with generous quantities of dry ice it made a magical forest of dreams. And then of course there was the swan floating across a sparkling moonlit sky with Clara riding on it’s back. The dancing was fantastic and having done ballet myself I know how much skill, and dedication it takes to make it look so effortless and graceful. It was really something special.

I can’t wait for Swan Lake to come to town.

German Market

We had another Management meeting with the MTF group on Saturday and after the meeting I trundled up the high street on a rare visit to town and discovered the Frankfurt market which visits our city every year in the build up to Christmas. It was really fun and full of interesting crafts and yummy smells of cooking food and liquid chocolate! Mmmm! It was so packed it was hard to get close enough to get good pics. But here is one of some lovely russian dolls.

Then I had a look in a great ethnic shop that sells all kinds of stuff from all over the world. They had this great quilt which I would have loved to have bought. It’s made from scraps of embroidery fused together without treatment to the rough edges of the fragments so it’s not very durable especially as the scraps are all flimsy cottons. However I think it’s gorgeous and I just love the mix of colours, patterns and jumbled shapes. So beautiful.

I love all these little embroidered “stars”. So cute.

This one is my favourite!! Just look how the orange and turquoise sing together! Hot stuff!

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And then after that it was onto the Museum and Art Gallery and I did some sketching of really beautiful delicate chinese jewelry - hairpins and brooches with silver, gold, turquoise and pearls.

And then it was home to my nice cosy warm fire and hot chocolate. Ahh I love winter.

Closer to Your Heart

Sweet and sugary nostalgic heart. Old buttons. Old fabric. Reminds me of childhood.

Hey! My Work is in Explore!

Midlands Textile Forum Launch Day

Well the launch day for the new Midlands Textile Forum group is nearly upon us - Saturday the 27th to be exact!  I am really looking forward to it and meeting over 80 other texiley nuts! It has come round quickly since we were talking about it last year and so much work has gone into arranging it - it’s been an incredible team effort. Amazing how the time flies and we are now discussing future exhibitions and events including sketchbook days and workshops. Tickets to the launch are all sold out but you can still come to the exhibition(s) which will be at the University of Birmingham and Droitwich Library till Jan 08. See the website for details.There will also be a management team exhibition over Christmas - details to be confirmed soon!

Happy Hour

Here is a bit more detail of the folk art dream wallhanging. I spent a few happy hours stitching and adding beads while watching films this last weekend. Following the great folk art embroidery tradition I decided to fill all gaps with as much embroidery as possible! It was great fun till I decided that the large orange flower needed some more detail on it. I wanted something that would stand out well and thought this blue/purple/brown rayon thread would be perfect colourwise. However I now declare that I hate, hate, hate, using this rayon thread for hand embroidery! It is SOOOOO springy, bouncy and slippery. It moves around and gets tangled before you have even had a chance to thread the needle. I adore it’s glossy sheen and the beauty of the merging colours available with hand-dyed threads but when it comes to actually using it it’s a real no-no. Not unless anyone knows of any tricks to tame these tangled skeins? I certainly couldn’t control it and when I did get some on the needle and started stitching it started to fluff up and grow weak, losing it’s sheen immediately with just one pull through the fabric. Added to that the thread started catching on all the sequins I had used - if you look carefully you can see the thread is actually snagged on one. Oh it was a nightmare. So I tried to finish off using some hand-dyed six-stranded cotton - not quite as glamorous looking but at least it behaves long enough for you to do some actual stitches. Hey ho.

Click on the thumbnails to see the whole gallery and close-up details.

Bargain!

Ahh! We all love a bargain and never more so when it’s related to textiles. So how about this juicy little goodie found in the £1 shop! You can never have too many sequins right?!

Nevsky Bird Nearly Done

Things have been a bit mad lately (as usual)…still two more websites to finish and we had an urgent trip over to Ireland recently as Danny’s mum passed away and we went over for the funeral….it was great to see everyone but why do people always only make the effort to meet up when it’s such a sad occasion? So I am just getting back into the swing of things right now. I couldn’t face the pile of paperwork that needs filing on Sunday night so I just spent a cosy evening (well, with this terrible British summer we are having I had to get out the blanket and put the fire on), stitching more of my folk art wall hanging while watching re-runs of Ray Mear’s Bushcraft on TV. I am dying to finish this project and move onto something a bit more fluid but still on the same theme. However I am pleased with how the hand-stitching is making the relationships between the flower shapes come together into a cohesive whole.