Warm and sunny crafting days.

Its been quite a busy weekend so far. My younger daughter arrived on Thursday and we went into Manchester to the Private View of the 62@50 exhibition by the 62 Group in the Holden Gallery.
The exhibition was wonderful and I would recommend anyone in the area to go and see it. I shall be going again before it closes on the 17th of August. I'm pleased to say Rosie enjoyed it as much as I did. Favourite pieces? Sue Stone's delightful pictures of 1930's figures with modern day graffiti in the background. Really interesting. Then there was Alice Kettle's interpretation of "Guernica" - this is one of her huge pieces and is one we were drawn back to time and again. A disturbing theme. There was also the really amusing story of the 100 metre dash by Marilyn Rathbone.
Now why the letters? I treated myself to these when I was in Fred Aldous, one of my favourite shops. The letters are each barely half an inch tall. I intend these for use in my printing experiments.

The jacket is one I've just completed. It has taken me ages to finish this. All my own fault. I lent my little portable bright lamp to a friend to complete a project. Then, of course I needed it for all the hand sewing on this jacket, especially finishing off the lining. I've had to get on with this project in the last couple of days while the light has been good in the daytime. It is a black twill jacket which will see a lot of wear travelling to and from Choir and Recorder group concerts. I have to wear black for the performances with a brightly coloured top, so a smart black lined jacket will do very nicely. This is lined with a cotton-like fabric rather than the more usual rayon. It really feels nice to wear. Hopefully it will be fairly warm for autumn concerts.

The last three items have been ones I have been working on for a while, especially the hand embroidered felt bits. These are all intended for my last four Journal Quilts.

Each of my Journal Quilts this year have had handpainted fabric which I have written all over using the names   of the colours I have used for that quilt. These are all destined for my blue quilts (September to December). So you can see elements for blue-green, blue, light blue and blue-purple. It is rather unusual for me to be so far ahead of myself. I keep wondering what might go wrong with my plans for these.

Going to a talk, Journal Quilts and knitting.

Yesterday, I was lucky enough to be able to go along to a talk given by Audrey Walker of the 62 Group. It was held in the Ruthin Craft Centre in North Wales. It was a lovely journey to get there through some delightful countryside as you can see from these photos.

The talk was fascinating. June Hill, the curator and textile historian, was interviewing Audrey Walker. The talk ranged over the 50 years of the 62 Group's existence, and many examples of work by the various members was shown as a slide show. I am now looking forward to being to go and visit some of the exhibitions being held this year by the 62 Group.

From the wonderful work of a very talented group of textile artists to my own, much more modest pieces...........

Well, my first three journal quilts are completed and posted to the Yahoo site. The theme this year is "Shades of....", the first four being shades of red. I decided when I first read the instructions that I would use the year to make myself a series working through the colour wheel. So the first one, above is made up of shades of reddish purple.

The second is red and contains shades of mid red.

The third one is shades of paler red.

As you can see I added beads and buttons. I have added the complimentary colours of green and analogous colours of orange and purple. The calligraphy just gives a repeated pattern of all the colour names I could think of.

My shawl is almost completed. I just need to finish the picot bind off.