the dyers hand

the one that didn't make it...

2009-07-08T19:24:00.004+01:00

The reason I've been so quiet recently is that I've been making a project for Festival of Quilts. Never one to shirk a challenge, I've been making an artists book with double-sided see-through pages (one of my neighbours said "Isn't that ... sort of ... difficult...?" which has to be the understatement of the year) using silk organza, silk tulle net and pelmet vilene all hand-dyed/hand-painted. It has been a lengthy process and a testing one and I am now looking forward to getting it finished so I can get on with something else (like normal life perhaps?).

During the process there have been some cast-offs and casualties. The moth above is definitely not a cast-off (apologies for the inadequacies of the photograph though), merely the other side of something that really did not work, namely a dragonfly that looked as if it might sink if it ever managed to launch itself. The metallic thread seemed like a good idea at the time; by the time I finally admitted it wasn't the two halves of the page had been sewn together, and ditching the dragonfly meant I had to - very reluctantly - give up on the moth as well.

wet

2009-05-21T16:05:00.004+01:00

Django came in out of the garden this morning very very wet and looking extremely sorry for himself - and couldn't understand why I was not exactly delighted when he insisted he needed a cuddle. I did point out that there had been grey clouds overhead but he had still insisted on going out but he still insisted it was my fault, the way cats do.

Luckily the other cats were kinder to him. Here's Pepper checking he's OK (though the concern did not extend to letting him share his footstool in front of the fire):

and Bixy helped him to lick himself dry.

Then tried to hypnotise me into thinking that he'd worked so hard he deserved a second breakfast. I ask you, does he look like a starving cat?

As you'll have gathered, I haven't much to blog about at the moment. Most of my time is taken up with either decluttering the house or with a project for Festival of Quilts which I want to keep under wraps for the moment. And the weather is too awful - rain and hailstorms - to go for any interesting walks.

Bixy says I should mention that the above photograph is cruelly unflattering and he is losing weight (admittedly at a rate that means he will reach his target weight in about two years' time) and that I am actually starving him to death...

to the woods, to the woods!

2009-05-13T14:57:00.006+01:00

Same area as last week's walk: I bought a season-ticket which allows me into any of the car-parks on the estate, which is owned by the Duke of Devonshire - a lot of good walks around here and I hope to be to the more strenuous ones by the time it expires. Walked up the other side of the river this time, more up and down but with a high-level walk along much of its length. Paused here to draw breath, and to let a lively but pleasant school party overtake me. Having a camera gives you a good excuse for a pause when you need one.

LOTS of photos this time - some (not all shown here) taken for a project based on woodland. I started near lunchtime and paused to eat at the top of the climb in a shelter which looked out onto this view:

I also had some interesting company for lunch - part human, a very pleasant group of local people - and part avian:

Some walkers bring bird-food specially apparently. Makes a change from the rapacious sheep in seach of sandwiches elsewhere in the Dales!

Love these tree-roots on the exposed slope.

The high-level bit on this side of the river was punctuated with amazing views,

including the one above, a different angle on The Strid. (By the way I am amazed to learn that Brenda, one of my readers, has actually kayaked down the Strid)

And there were of course plenty of amazing trees: could you have predicted the shapes of some of these branches?

Or the shapes in these trees?

And finally, some time later, back to the other side of the river with its beautiful range of colours - very inspirational!

haiku festival

2009-05-11T13:22:00.005+01:00

Not a great haiku but it was hovering around at the top of my head...

the flowing waters

of woodland rills and rivers

refresh my spirit

and I had a nice piccy to go with it!

may with its light behaving

2009-05-04T10:26:00.006+01:00

Yesterday I made a return visit to Bolton Abbey in the Yorkshire Dales - a place we used to visit often when my husband was alive, but which I have not been to since his death nine years ago. The best bit was walking along the river to the Strid and beyond. The Strid is a narrow chasm in the river through which water rushes. It looks fairly mild here but it has been dry in the last week - it is more spectacular when in spate.

Though it looks harmless - in fact it looks as if you could jump across it - beware of trying: the pool below is thirty feet deep and it has claimed many lives over the centuries. Here's sa shot looking downwards:

I love the colours of the river, the mosses and the rocks, and despite the weekend crowds, I found a number of other equally appreciative people along the walk:

Not to mention the bluebells in Strid Woods - a real bonus.

A really magical walk - maybe the inspiration for May's journal quilt.

And in case you're wondering about the titles of this post - it's the first line of a poem by W.H.Auden one of my favourite poets, who was born in York and also loved the Dales:

May with its light behaving

Stirs vessel, eye, and limb

Spring

2009-04-27T08:52:00.002+01:00

Snakeshead fritillary botanical name fritillaria meleagris. Also come in white and is also called chequered lily in the U.S. I believe.

My birthday

2009-04-25T09:58:00.000+01:00

Journal Quilts

2009-04-23T14:59:00.006+01:00

I've got my Journal Quilts (for the Contemporary Quilt Group) done safely inside the deadline.

To remind you, my theme for the year is "steps", and each of the first four features feet in some way.

In March I began the redecoration of the house with the bathroom and loo: easy rooms or so I thought (especially as I'm not going to do any tiling myself). Looked drab with just paint and tiles and fully tiled wasn't an option, not with one curved and four irregular Edwardian walls. Wallpaper seemed sensible and I found a pretty but fairly sophisticated blown vinyl washable paper. And yes it did have a large repeat but hey I work with fabric so that isn't a problem.

Two days later and I was tearing my hair out - or I would have been if it hadn't been stuck firmly to my scalp with wallpaper paste. The paper didn't stick to itself and didn't allow for overlaps: eventually I did manage to fudge it so it looked OK but the air turned blue in the meantime and the cats hid under the bed. And fudging involved the bottom corner of the loo with a thin line of acrylic to disguise a narrow gap (and it did work thankfully).

So inevitably, I had to use the experience for my journal quilt: it's my first experience of doing a full year's worth and I want to record actual events wherever possible. Here's the finished item:

I've used hand-dyed felt and wadding for the main fabrics (two layers for the shoes) and bonded print fabric to tissutex for the wallpaper. The whole thing's machine stitched and quilted, with fancy yarn couched with a zigzag stitch round the edge. The wallpaper is 3D which I haven't done much of before.

The April one celebrated (if that's the word) minor surgery to remove a distorted and ingrowing toenail. I'd been told to sit with my foot up (I'd managed to steal the footstool back from Pepper when he wasn't looking) and was beginning to get bored (why is it than I can sit for ages doing nothing if there are things I really ought to be doing, but the moment I get told I have to do nothing I get restless and want to be doing things?). Turning over ideas for a journal quilt, I realised that the foot with the bandaged toe was pretty well the right shape for a JQ, so out with the sketchbook.

The first version was too close for comfort and rather too gruesome (especially after I'd stitched through the edge of my finger sewing the bandage on and got real blood on it):

So I decided something less realistic was needed, and came up with the idea of a blue foot. The actual foot for this one started not from the sketch but from me drawing round my foot and I think I had the pencil leaning in slightly, hence the elongated shape, emphasised by the fact I gor the ankle in the wrong place:

This one was pretty straightforward to make: the print fabric based on Gaudi seemed to work well with the shape, giving it a slightly art deco feel, and the spirals on the blue fabric seemed to go along with this. Straightforward fused applique, edges with satin stitch, and with details drawn in freehand using a triple (stretch fabric) stitch which gives a chunky line. Plus pale blue scrim folded and stitched for the bandage. All finished with satin stitch edging - all a great improvement on earlier attempts at satin stitching.

The first group of four together look like this:

Easy Little Gems

2009-04-14T13:08:00.006+01:00

You don't have to be an expert to make a Little Gem: this is an example of a quiltlet that can be made by a beginner, or anyone with limited time.

This is one of three Little Gem Quilts I made for the Quilters Guild Tombola at the Festival of Quilts 2009 (see previous post for details)

The secret of making an attractive little quilt without having to have extensive quilting skills lies partly in choice of fabrics. It's worth using interesting fabrics because you get interesting results and with Little Gems being so small (A4 size) you can experiment with fabrics and still have plenty left over for another project, so it's a good way of trying out ideas about combining colours/prints and so on.

So the first stage is to audition your fabrics: if you're a perfectionist who can take three weeks over this, set a time limit.

There aren't many short-cuts which include coffee-breaks but this is one. When you can no longer see the fabrics for looking, leave them out and go and have a cup of coffee somewhere where you cannot look at them. When you come back you will see instantly what works and what doesn't.

After you've removed the cat, that is:

The next stage is to decide how to divide up the surface of the quilt. I like asymmetry (it also helps to make a very simple design look more interesting/complex). There are many ways of producing a sort of balanced asymmetry (of which more in a later post) but a useful one to start with is to divide into approximate thirds, which will give you a vertical division of between 3 and 4 inches.

Cut an oblong of one of your more interesting fabrics in the chosen width or a little wider (plus half an inch for seam allowances) for your narrower section and a length somewhere in the region of two thirds of the length of the finished piece (don't worry about exact - approximately eight inches works well) plus half an inch seam allowance. Add on narrow strips of fabrics that blend or pick up individual colours (small prints, solids or less defined patterns are useful for this) until you reach 11 5/8 inches (or a bit more - it can always be trimmed back later): stitch together using a quarter-inch seam allowance.

For the larger section cut one or two pieces of more interesting fabric the size you want, plus narrower strips of toning or contrasting fabrics. Join together to match the length of your first fabric strip.

Decide how you want to arrange your two strips of fabric, and whether they need a further strip down the middle ot not. Press each strip, pressing seams to one side, going one way on one strip and the other way on the other. Either join your two strips of fabric together as they are, or join to a vertical strip. Press again.

Cut a fabric backing slightly larger than a piece of A4 paper, plus a piece of wadding the same size. Lay your Little Gem on top, and then either pin or stick the layers together using a spray fabric adhesive such as 505. Quilt in any way you like. Free-machining is good but if you feel nervous about that, straight or gently-curved lines with a normal foot is fine too.

Place your Little Gem on a cutting-mat and place an A4 piece of paper on top parallel to the edges. Using the paper as a guide, placing the ruler on the paper and lined up along the edge of it, cut to trim to size. Make sure the paper is lined up on the cut edge(s) before cutting each side in this way. If you don't have a rotary cutter you can pin the paper to the Little Gem and cut round the edge of the paper with scissors.

Finally bind the edges (see Little Gems website for links to sites telling you how to do this).

Have fun with it - it's a great way of experimenting with fabric-combinations!

Little Gems

2009-04-09T20:16:00.011+01:00

For anyone who doesn't know by now, Little Gems are A4-sized quilts, being made in aid of the Quilt Museum in York, for a tombola at The Festival of Quilts in August. This is being organised by The Quilters Guild of the British Isles with particular input from one of its sub-groups, Contemporary Quilt, of which I am a member.

I had planned to make a few to send, but I ended up getting hooked. First two I made earlier - my first attempts at doing "arty" quilting a couple of years ago:

Next, one I made last summer, one of several on the theme of bubbles: this one has been cut down from a slightly larger piece, and is cut back applique with free machine quilting:

Together with friend Chris, I'm working on a session on Little Gems for my local quilt group, Night Owl Quiltmakers, in Leeds and thought I ought to try and expand the range of Little Gems that I had. The first uses a collection of quirky folk-art cat fabrics I have in my stash and is simply a collection of squares of different sizes:

Next I experimented with free-pieced squares and oblongs from my hand-dyed fabric stash:

And next, strip-pieced base with fused applique, attached with free-machine stitching and FM quilted:

From there I moved into print fabrics with the following view through a window:

There will be more - at present I am having loads of fun playing with print fabrics and asymmetrical compositions - of which more later! In other words, Little Gems are addicitive, and enormous fun. Above all you can use those precious fabrics you've been saving and try them out on something small so you'll have plenty left for later! Try them for yourself: you don't have to be a member of The Quilters Guild, or even British, to contribute.

More information at:

http://littlegemquilts.wordpress.com/

http://quiltersguild.org.uk/
http://quiltmuseum.org.uk/

It's a ...

2009-04-04T10:55:00.003+01:00

coral - a brain coral to be exact (you can see the resemblance). A Number of people got the right answer: Jan's was the first right answer with coral; Mags Ramsay was the first with the full answer of brain coral and also provided extra information (know what you mean about starfish Mags - once found an undamaged whole one on the beach near Bamburgh and put it on the wall near our holiday cottage to dry out - you can guess the rest!). That bit was easy - so goody bag to each of those. The two most interesting was more difficult but eventually settled on Nearby Tree's new government road system to prevent traffic congestion which made me laugh out loud; and Aischa for nearly making me lose my tea with stomach turned inside out! I don't have emails for Nearby Tree or Aischa so if you like to email me with details of where to send and preferred colourway I'll get goody-bags to you by next week. (email address on my profile page).

There was a serious side to this. I'm fascinated by the patterns you get in nature, and the way these patterns recur in different places. Helen Parrott's talk at the Contemporary Quilt AGM really got my ideas churning and I dug out the following:

Close-up of patterns on a stone in Whitby churchyard;

A drawing I did a while back of a savoy cabbage;

fungus on felled timber in Wytham Woods.

The photograph below, taken by my late husband, has a different kind of patterning but just as fascinating:

what is it?

2009-03-30T11:07:00.004+01:00

The (almost complete) view:

closer...

and closer still...

The first correct guess wins a goody bag of dyed stuff in your favourite colourway, as do the two most interesting/funny/ingenious wrong answers!

I'll announce the winners (and the solution to the puzzle) on Friday.

Please write your solutions in the comments box below.

February Journal Quilt

2009-03-24T11:53:00.003Z

Yes I know it's March - but though this was designed when we had all the snow in Feb it was a long time getting finished - I tried various techniques and ended up with Shiva paintsticks. The format for Contemporary Quilt JQs this year is 6" x 12", hence the shape which has turned out to be real fun to work with.

Inspiration - as my cats and I get older we enjoy snow less - at least when we have to go out in it. In my case I have a fear of slipping and falling: despite being a lot rounder than I used to be I don't bounce as well as I used to. In Django's case - the only one of the three felines willing to venture beyond the door - he has short stubby legs and soon discovered the snow came up to his armpits and froze his belly. The JQ shows my tentative footprints (in my new walking shoes) and Django's few footsteps before turning back.

The fabric is a silk mix that my nephew brought me back from Thailand. First I made a rubbing from my shoes, then tried to get a rubbing on tissue paper from one of Django's paws but Django wouldn't play nicely and kept tugging it away, though I did manage to get a sort of rubbing in the end, which gave me the right size (with my footprints being lifesize I felt the cat's prints should be too. Drew on the pawprints, ironed to set, then FMQ'd which I really enjoyed on the silk - some areas where the fabric was totally flattened, others forming a sort of drifty pattern.

All in all the final version took a lot less time than all the experiments that led up to it, and this was the simplest of the techniques I tried.

more scrim and a journal quilt

2009-02-18T12:20:00.007Z

It's no secret I've been fascinated for some time by the effects you can achieve with cotton scrim dyed and layered, ironed flat or crinkled or scrunched; layered and cut back or not you can get the effect of various types of paint: I especially like the watercolour effect of layering scrim that has been stretched and ironed flat.

During the last few weeks I've been trying out various things - here are a couple of samples:

This one is based on the fungus on the felled logs I photographed when I was walking in Wytham Woods - just bits of layered scrim - not ironed, but as they come with free-machine zig-zag over. I love the different effects you can get with this stitch.

The second piece is more formal. Layers of pressed-flat scrim to start with, then the shapes are stitched in abd cut back through the payers with great care using reverse applique scissors (also called lace scissors) - an essential and sometimes difficult to find piece of equipment for this technique.

The third technique I tried is probably the simplest: layered as-it-comes scrim plus hand stitching: thicker threads - various kinds all hand-dyed including all six strands of cotton embroidery thread, perle and various silks and rayons - and big stitches so they show up (fine stitching tends to sink into the scrim and get lost):

The next piece is a finished piece using a technique I developed last year: ironed-flat scrim layered over hand-dyed wadding, free-machine stitched and cut back. In this one I was exploring the brighter-than expected colours of a rainy landscape through the window:

And finally, January's journal quilt for the Contemporary Quilt Group's challenge. This year's quilts all have to be 12"x 6" which is a good size to work with. This one is also as it comes with hand-stitching in thick thread, using hand-dyed wadding. The buttonhole-stitch appliqued shoeprints are also hand-dyed along with all the other materials used.

I've chosen a theme for the year (though I reserve the right to change/adapt if this doesn't work out) which is Steps. Instead of resolutions (I did make some but didn't keep up to them very long!) I decided to follow a really sensible suggestion of having a word that would keep me focussed on what I want to achieve, and the word I have chosen is steps. Literal steps in that I want to start going for long walks again, an activity I enjoy and which I had to give up some years ago when I had ME/CFS and something I need to do in order to get fitter. But also steps in terms of getting things done by dividing them up into stages (I find the decluttering is coming along wonderfully since I limited myself to one hour at a time); plus steps in terms of learning to do things a stage at a time rather than all at once!

Oh yes, the JQ - for January so it's a bit late - is called Magic Shoes.

monoprinting

2009-01-19T14:29:00.003Z

Last Thursday I started a printing course, one evening a week, at Leeds College of Art. Our first week was spent monoprinting: for anyone who doesn't know, this involves inking up a sheet and then making designs by painting on inks, masking off shapes or areas or scratching in lines, wiping out areas and so on. The advantage is it doesn't involve lots of dangerous equipment and is very easy to do - especially for beginners (apart from some roller printing and lino printing I've not really printed before); the disadvantage is you can't print multiple images - hence the "mono".

Our first exercise was to ink up a piece of plastic, then place cut-out shape or shapes on top and print the result:

- not the most sophisticated shapes in the world, but this was designed to be a play session: I can be more seriously creative when I've learned the basics.

You can then re-ink the plastic and turn the shapes over to get a print of one shape on top of the other: you have to work at speed for this, before the ink dries on your mask - I was slower than I should have been, which resulted in a misty-looking print:

In the next one I used the end of a paintbrush to scribble lines in the ink, as well as blotting with scrim (there are also some fingerprints where I forgot and held it):

One of the things I really got into was layering the ink on the plastic in different ways - curved lines, varying the pressure, using the edge of the roller to get narrow lines and so on - the following print is from the basic inked up plate:

You'd never guess I'm into a woodland theme at the moment, would you?

The last two involve masking off, this time with torn rather than cut paper; this gives a softer, subtler effect:

-though the effect is subtler than I intended - forgot again to add more ink before inking up the roller, but it does give some very subtle colours, which become even more subtle when the strips are turned over on the re-inked plastic:

This week it's drypoint which means we have to take a line-drawing to use, so off to practice my drawing skills. I also have some other prints which are waiting in the drying-rack.

Keeping Going

2009-01-18T22:08:00.002Z

At last I seem to have got through my midwinter doldrums. I'm working on several things - so far so good - and I'm back at art school, having added on a printing course of which more in a later post. I also have the mammoth task ahead of decluttering the house and preparing it for sale in order to downsize, hopefully to large studio with living accommodation and space for cats, if such a place exists!

I'm also getting more motivated to continue with The Artist's Way. The next week which deals with issues such as anger, criticism and growth seems to be just what I need at the moment, having been dogged by self-doubt recently; I am ready to turn things round and look at life more positively.

Thanks to "Brenda from the Boro" for the comment on my last posting! Comments like this help enormously.

Finally (it's getting late and I need to get ready for bed), the photo above is the view from bedroom window at my brother's house - just to prove I wasn't exaggerating about living in the woods!

the artists way

2009-01-11T13:26:00.004Z

At the beginning of this month I joined up with Marie - http://zquilts.blogspot.com/ and Judy - http://tiedyejudy.blogspot.com/ - in agreeing to work our way through Julia Cameron's The Artist's Way, a book I bought two years ago, intending to work my way through it. I did work through a few chapters and found it useful despite my initial reservations about its manner and philosophy (summed up in its subtitle - A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity) - I'm basically a down-to-earth practical person so I tend to miss a lot in veering away from the high-flown stuff. Maybe it's time to put that right.

So far I've been going for one week and so far I've learnt that it's not the end of the world if I don't do everything 100% all the time. Last time I worked through Chapter One, a whole lot of rather surprising feelings from the past surfaced, which I worked my way through. This week has been an odd week - difficult to concentrate on much else but keeping warm - and I don't think I've been as thorough as the last time. One of the features of the course is the morning pages - free writing for about half an hour at the beginning of the day. This week I managed this for only five out of seven days, though on one of those - today - I foud myself writing for more than an hour, working my way through something I hadn't resolved last time - the whole idea of people wanting you to be different from the way you are and so on (I'm sure most people will be familiar with this so I won't say more - anyway I don't really feel like spouting my innermost thoughts and feelings in public). This bit I really did find useful and today has been a useful reminder of the value of doing the morning pages consistently - any yes I do find it useful to do them near the beginning of the day.

One of the other features is the Artists Date - the idea of taking a piece of time out of your week to do something different to foster your creativity. This is something I'm not very good at so it will become a priority in the next week. This week the nearest I got was going into town to spend my Christmas tokens - token-givers were very generous this year and I got:

Reef - a book and DVD of inspirational photographs by Scubazoo;

RSPB Visual Guide to the Wildlife of Britain

The Drawing Book by Sarah Simblett -more than just a how-to guide, it has a wonderfully varied selection of interesting drawings by a vast range of artists

ArtEffects by Jean Drysdale Gree - an amazing collection of different techniques using conventional and unconventional materials

The Suspicions of Mr Whicher by Kate Summerscale - an account of a real-life murder mystery in nineteenth century England - I really enjoyed this one and found the accounts of the methods of early police detection fascinating

When Will There Be Good News, the latest book by Kate Atkinson, one of my favourite authors

A pretty good haul I think!

Overall the effect of the first week has left more willing to commit more time and energy to the overall process - though this week art college starts again - including the printing course I am starting this term and I really do have to turn some of my thoughts and energies towards getting the house ready to sell later in the year (stage one decluttering)

And just so you have pictures - a collage of "likes" to put me in a positive mood for this coming week. This fits with my word for the year which is STEPS - enjoying walking, reminding myself to do things a step at a time, keeping going and enjoying and relishing every step of the way!

And finally, a further comment on the weather at the moment:

There and Back Again

2009-01-05T19:06:00.009Z

Many thanks for the complimentary comments on the Wytham Woods photographs: it is very photogenic woodland so it wasn't difficult to get interesting ones.

For the third and last visit to Wytham Woods I am going to take you with me on one of my walks. First is a mile and a quarter stretch of uphill which will at least warm you up in this freezing weather. The track on either side is bordered by a band of trees on either side with farmland beyond, reaching a kissing gate with - on this particular morning - a rather hazy view of the "dreaming spires" of Oxford.

Here a pause to catch our breath and answer Julie's question. Tolkien would have known Wytham Woods, though I have been told that the Old Forest is in fact based on somewhere else, so it's difficult to know how much he was influenced by them. I first read The Lord of the Rings after we moved there and found the woodland described in the book very familiar indeed!

Through the kissing-gate at the top of the lane, bear left and you enter the are known variously as (to me) the top road, (to locals) the Gallop and (on the Wytham Woods official map) the Singing Way. Here we find a startling sight - felled logs. Timber is cut from these trees from time to time and moved to the roadside by horse-power, one horse at a time to minimise damage to the forest floor.

We can pause here for a rest, and look at the amazing shapes of the stacked logs ...

and the strange shapes and colours of the fungi on them:

Now the walk becomes a nice level trudge along a good path (soft underfoot providing you walk on the middle bit) to the sound of bridsong. There's all sorts of wildlife all around us but the things that can move are hiding (and I'm not sure I really want to investigate what's under those logs)

This is where many of the weird-shaped branches and weird-shaped trees come from.

Aren't the colours wonderful?

Near here we meet a track which points down to the car-park which is why there are more humans than in the earlier bit.

Continue for some distance past a memorial stone to Hazel ffennell, who sadly died young and whose father gifted the woods to the university in 1943, and then turn down another track, where you come across a rather fanciful-looking building:

This is known as the chalet: when I lived in the woods, the Warden lived here; now Wytham Woods has a Conservator (probably a more accurate title and probably posher) but I don't think he lives here - I could be wrong!

From here we take a real road downhill (we've walked a long way already, need to get back and therefore must leave Wytham Great Woods for another day) to where there was once a working sawmill, and follow the path along a wondrously idyllic-looking green field full of sheep with Wythan Abbey in the distance:

And from there, back along the Gallop through swarms of runners who have a habit of appearing suddenly - the really fit ones give you a breezy hullo as they pass - to the top of the land.

Looking over a fence, we see the path through Rivendell (see yesterday's photograph) so sunshiny and lush with mosses and spngy turf we can't resist, so on we walk along it, not minding that it's taking us in another direction from where we want to be: I know these woods and know we'll get to a turning that leads onto the bottom track and this area has always been magical for me.

And then onto the track: when I lived here there used to be a house called Marley Lodge at this point, but now it's gone and there's no trace: it was fairly primitive, had no foundations, and was demolished when the last occupants left.

More interesting bits of tree along the bottom track which would be even more idyllic if you couldn't hear the A34 which runs close by:

And home to warmth and food!

Where fairytales are born...

2009-01-04T17:12:00.009Z

More Wytham Woods photographs today (further ones to come - I took a lot!). Idaho Beauty http://idahobeautyquilts.blogspot.com commented that my previous pictures made you see where fairytales came from and I must admit that Wytham Woods make me think of books such as The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings as well as a whole series of myths, legends and folktales.

Trees have always seemed to me like characters in their own right, usually benign but occasionally scary - I remember one day, when I was about eighteen, when I'd walked further than I intended and was still in the woods, on my own, as it began to get dark and began to feel as if the trees were alive and I was an intruder into a different world ...

Different times of day and differences in light make the woods change mood and colour...

and there are magical places, like these, where the water has been culverted so as not to drain the path...

or in the broad rides, soft underfoot, mossy, and often full of dappled light like the path below which on the sunday after Christmas reminded me of Rivendell - it is so easy to imagine elves just out of eyeshot watching your every move...

Meetings with Interesting Trees

2009-01-03T13:29:00.010Z

My brother lives at the edge of Wytham Woods, owned by Oxford University and used for research projects. Unlike most managed woodland it is for the most part left to develop naturally: many areas qualify as "ancient woodland" where the undergrowth hasn't been cleared. Mostly oak hazel and beech, with additions like the ivy which wraps itself round the tree below:

Trees here are allowed to split, droop, fall apart, decay and above all grow unrestricted:

I spent a number of happy hours this holiday re-exploring the woods where I grew up (and discovering that I was fit enough to walk for miles and miles without getting tired, which was also a bonus!)

Looking forward, looking back...

2009-01-01T22:27:00.004Z

Happy New Year! A time to reassessthe past and plan ahead.

Sometimes we forget to tell ourselves about the good things we did. So apologies while I start by congratulating myself for:

finally signing up for art classes
entering quilts in a show and recognising that although I was not especially happy with the work I produced I could learn a lot from the experience
beginning to find a sense of direction in my artwork
managing to get the routines of life under control
discovering how much pleasure I can have from making things for other people - like the quilt which I did, in the end, give to Kelvin and Gill, my brother and sister-in-law - here it is in their red bedroom:

Now for 2009: I don't propose to make resolutions. Instead I have decided on fairly specific goals. Here are the five most important:

I will complete a quilt for the Art Quilts section at Festival of Quilts: it will be finished well before the deadline so that I don't ruin it by rushing to finish;
by June/July I will declutter my home and redecorate as needed, ready for sale;
I will complete at least three drawings a week for the first three months of this year; after that I will review and decide what comes next;
having established that I am fitter then I deserve to be, given the way I've neglected my physical wellbeing, I will go for a medium to long walk at least once a week (minimum five miles);
I will update my blog at least once a week.

So here's to 2009

Where Have I Been?

2008-12-09T20:53:00.010Z

I'm amazed it's been a month since I've posted. So what have I been doing?

First the two art courses I'm doing - both at (apparently) a basic level but quite challenging enough for where I started from! The first of them has been drawing based this term, with lots of close observational drawings using and learning various techniques. The course is run by Leeds College of Art and Design at the Leeds Museums Discovery Centre, an amazing place where you find antique statuary cheek by jowl with clothes, furnishings and assorted objects from bygone eras, not to mention the zoological specimens, many from donated Victorian collections. One of the zoological specimens is the reindeer above, known to me and my fellow-students as "Lips" (yes he really did have these handsome lips!) and probably my most successful drawing to date.

We've also been drawing everyday objects for homework - here's an early drawing of a shoe!

I also managed to get to The Knitting and Stitching Show in Harrogate, where I met up with cyber-friend Julie http://mixedmedia-jem.blogspot.com/ and had a really good day out - wonderful exhibitions, especially liked the Art Cloth and Ruth Issett ones (but then I am a dyer!) and lots of retail therapy. Julie and I are planning a day in Bradford in the new year when our finances have recovered.

There are other things, which I shall post about later, but finally there's the Christmas present (or not as I really am not sure whether a: they will like it; or b: whether they can be persuaded to be honest about it if they don't - I'd welcome ideas on this!) for my brother and sister-in-law.

To go with their new red and pale gold bedroom. So far I've finished the top, and here it is with Django trying to assert ownership!

As well as oriental-inspired fabrics (mainly based on Chinese designs) there are also real Japanese fabrics and a few Javanese batiks.

All very relaxing and a great change from art quilting. The overall design is based on one by Kaffe Fassett with a few twists additions and mistakes added by me!

And finally a really welcome piece of news: the quiltlet in the previous post has been bought in the SAQA Auction by art quilter Jacque Davis - thank you Jacque!

SAQA Auction

2008-11-09T17:53:00.003Z

The SAQA Auction starts tomorrow. In case you don't know, SAQA stands for Studio Art Quilts Associates, and members have contributed twelve-inch square quiltlets which are to be auctioned in three lots. My contribution, Effervescent Evanescent is above - inspired by the bubbles in my bathwater, techniques include cut-back applique using layered scrim and free-machine stitching.

There are quilts by some of the world's leading artists up for grabs, so why not get yourself over to the website http://www.saqa.com/ and have a look!

Congratulations America

2008-11-06T10:24:00.004Z

I suppose part of the euphoria amongst democrat voters in the US must be like what many of us in the UK felt when the Tory party was finally routed and Blair came to power, a night when cheers could be heard echoing down our street and next day everyone was smiling at each other - not that I feel Tony Blair stood the test of time very well but it felt really good to start with.

But aside from being great news for America politically, historically it has been an astounding victory. I remember, when I was a student seeing news footage of the Civil Rights movement, being horrified at the killing of Martin Luther King. And now, in what is, historically speaking, a relatively short period of time, America has elected an African-American president. As one African-American woman said on Monday, "Now when we tell our children they can achieve great things they can believe us."

And it's also a reminder for us in the UK that despite in theory outlawing discrimination we still have some way to go.

Castleford Weir: Fast Friday Fabric Challenge

2008-10-23T12:37:00.006+01:00

I've been a member of the Fast Friday Group for a year now, though many of my pieces I have to admit are awaiting completion. However I have determined to complete this year's challenges.
For this year we have decided to work in a series, with emphasis on colour and composition (it's a great group for learning and artistic development). I have decided to base my series round Castleford Weir in West Yorkshire, including the new award-winning footbridge over the weir photographed in a recent post, and decided on the mill-race as the topic for the first piece:

This month's challenge had also to be composed of basically complementary colours, and had to have a strong vertical, horisontal or diagonal composition.

I'm not sure whether this is creative cheating or not but I wanted a series of muted greyed colours for the stone and water so I did several blue-orange dye-runs, including (at the top of the photograph) runs of the basic colours mixed with black. The dyes are Procion MX Blue 2G (sometimes sold as cobalt or cobalt navy) and Bright (Pillar-Box) Red G plus Gold 3R for the orange.
I simplified the photograph, flattening the perspective, and exaggerating the height. The water-shapes have been simplified considerably too, to give a poster-like effect. In fact the design is what took longest (I have to work hard to get to be this simple!). Fabric pieces have been fused onto a dark blue background which has been allowed to show through in places because I wanted it not to look too smooth.

The piece still needs stitching, which I intend to do today - some of the features such as the mill-wheel will also be added in stitch. Must admit I feel quite good at the moment about the overall result.

Next challenge begins tomorrow and I'm really looking forward to it.