Festival of Quilts

Like many of you out there, a trip to the Festival was the highlight of the weekend. Sharing it with a like minded friend was a brucie bonus. It was certainly a visual feast with something for everyone interested in Quilting and Textile Art. Will take a long time to digest all that my eyes feasted on. Three treasured purchases pictured above! The Stitching to Dye is by C.June Barnes, an Artist I have admired for some time and waited patiently for the release of her book,(very excited). The other two are by the talented trio, Leslie Morgan, Claire Benn and Jane Dunnewold. I spent some time in the Virtual Studio watching and talking to Leslie Morgan, who was by the way wonderfully generous with information, got so excited by all going on i started to drool!!! Intend to savour these purchases and more importantly explore their content fully in the coming months.
Have been creatively idle for the last few weeks combination of life and work(enjoyable just not creative) it's set to continue for a few more but will be active again very soon. Always good to have something to look forward to!

....part two!

The second "project" of my weekend was this book! A few years ago, my mum in law bought me two wonderful books on "Bookmaking" and to date. I'm ashamed to say, hadn't explored them. Well now I have and am HOOKED!
The photographs are a little out of order but am not IT literate enough to rectify this on my own and my daughter's in bed!
Picture number 1 is of papers I painted and/or stamped with a selection of pre-cut and handmade stamps. Number 2 is the front cover of the completed book, number 3, the inside of the completed book and finally number 4 the back and fron inside cover.
I mixed a few bookmaking ideas included in the book(Textbook), (very confusing too many book references!) just to make things interesting(hard) and challenging! Learned a few valuable lessons as well.
I included a few stitched pockets on some of the pages and some accordian folded pages which aren't clear from the photographs. There were 4 sections(signatures in bookmaking terms, now i am one!) each with a decorated paper spine. In the photo number 2 it's the paper you can see where the tassel is attached.
Better get cracking on some more as i think they'll make really nice gifts for christmas.(not sure in which year!)

Busy, fun filled, weekend....

What a busy weekend I had! Went to stay with a friend(Mandi) and we managed to try out Rust Dyeing as described in detail by Lynda (Purplemissus Blog) using Caustic soda, teabags and ferrous sulphate. Here are just a few snaps of my wonderful uncontrollable results. Due to inclement weather we were forced to do it inside with windows and doors open i hasten to add but the aroma isn't terribly pleasant i have to say
The first photo is one of fabric that was pre soaked in a washing soda solution prior to dunking. As you can see the russet tones are really vibrant. The second photo is of a selection of handmade papers and vilene plus a rather nice paper towel courtesy of Premier Lodge, many thanks! The final one is of fabric thats been pre-soaked in a vinegar solution, Lynda suggests white vinegar but ours was half white and half malt as that was all we had and can be very resourceful, not sure if it makes a difference.
I much prefer the "latte" colours of the paper and vinegar soaked fabrics. Thanks Lynda for fab tuition we had great time.