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.

Next Stage...

Have printed onto the patchwork pieces from previous post using the same foam stamp blocks used on my last printing binge.
The un-pieced anemone printed fabric was a pink and white check commercial cloth that went into the same dyebath as the pieced one. Am quite pleased with the results. Now what to do with them....

A bit of Patchwork.

Continuing my quest to create a "fabric paper" look from fabric alone so decided to piece some commercial print fabrics together, just using gently curved strips. The small piece in the corner and thin strip are what they looked like prior to being dunked in the dyebaths. None of the fabrics had been pre-washed, well i was on a roll! Think that may be why I ended up with a rather patchy look. Now i need to consider the next stage..... printing i think. Am trying to be really disciplined colour wise so I end up with a "stash" of farics that i can use togethe rather than a random "whatever takes your fancy" colour theme. Althought the top piece isn't quite what i had in mind that will teach me to write down previously used colours when dyeing a particular piece!!!

ATC and PC

What a title, sounds like a secret code!
The first photo is the ATC i made for a swap within the Yahoo group "Textile Challenge". Fabric paper base, painted using acrylics and stamped. The crown was taken from a larger peice of fabric i made using old bits of lace stitched onto felt then washed with emulsion paint (thanks Val). I then painted the crown silver and the fleur de lise is ..... yes you guessed it, anaglypta! Old habits die hard. Words printed onto stamped paper using a small alphabet stamp set recently purchased.

The second photo shows the first two PCs in my "series" swap with Mandi. I chose anemone's as my source material hence the flurry of printing activity previously. The first (top) is made solely from paper with and thread the second is fabric and thread. I wanted to achieve a similar effect using fabric and paint as i'd achieved using the fabric paper. Lots of layering of colour was the key, just using fabric paints and stamps cut from foam onto my own space dyed fabric.
Now number three...... hmmmm.

Number 2!

In my postbox the other day was this little beauty! The second in the "series" of PCs from Mandi. Needless to say mine in return, is as yet unfinished but hoping to rectify that today...
Thank You.