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.

Printing, painting and catching up.

With my two geriatric cats in attendance, I got the tables out and set up for a fabric painting, block and lino printing session. I also got some feltmaking done too.

The tables were groaning with equipment.

The sky was pretty full too. Well, the clouds were full of rain and rather threatening.

I work outside when doing anything messy, so I had taken advantage of an unusually dry afternoon last month. It has taken me far too long to post about it here.

You will see pegs attached to the various pieces of fabric. They are there to stop the fabric moving too much and getting surplus dye and paint in areas I hadn't intended it to go.

These are two large pieces of fabric ready to be used for the "Boundaries" / "Beyond Boundaries" theme of the "Textiles Without Limits" group. I haven't fully worked out how I shall assemble this quilt, but I have started..................

The bamboo blind at the other side of this washing line is the one  I use when making felt.

This is one of my favourite blocks at the moment - a grape leaf design which I bought from Colouricious. The fabric beneath is a piece I painted during a previous session. I'd tried painting indoors that time and discovered that it really was too much of a fuss since it was difficult to get as much done as I'd really wanted to do. This is why I prefer working outside - I have as much space to use as I like and it really doesn't matter  too much if I make a mess. I can easily wash the paving slabs before any fabric paint has a chance to dry, and the grass doesn't seem to mind too much. The cats just enjoy watching humans doing anything.

The really pleasing thing was that the rain only started after I had packed everything away. There has been so much rain since that I feel doubly lucky to have managed to get so much done in one session.

A busy month

The first five of my Journal Quilts for this year. I intend to turn these into a book once they are completed. Its an exploration into colours and the colour wheel. Left to right they are: January (purple-red); February (deep red); March ( pale red); April ( orange-red); May (orange-yellow). Sorry about the addition of my knees, I just couldn't get far enough away to get a decent photo.

This is a closer view of the May Journal Quilt.

Now June - as you can see it is dark yellow. I have also completed July (light yellow) and August ( yellow-green). These last two will have to wait to be seen until I have been able to post them on the Contemporary Quilt Yahoo group.

This last photo is the small portable print board I have recently made for myself. It isn't white and pristine any more. I made it to take to a printing day at one of the Textile groups I go to - "Textiles without limits".

May was rather a busy month - with printing and painting fabric, stitching and sewing.

More photos next time.

Block printing on painted fabric.

I've just come into the house after a glorious evening spent block printing out in the garden. This is my printing board. It is sitting on my husband's easels. It was made some time ago and hasn't been used as much as I intended. However, I think that is about to change. 

This afternoon I had painted some fabric and left it on the washing line to dry. By evening, the fabric was dry  so I got all the equipment ready and started printing. I completed three pieces before the light started to fail and I started to get rather cold.

I just love the patterns on the fabric top of my table. It is such a useful surface to try out the blocks before printing them onto the main fabric.

You may recognise the patterns - they are the blocks I bought from Colouricious. I used some of the fabric paints too. 

This is the view I had as I worked.

I shall be doing this again the next time we have a dry, fine evening. Such fun!

Exhibitions, photos and the rain.

On Saturday I went to Pinfold's Tenth Anniversary Exhibition. Sorry, I couldn't take any photos in the exhibition itself. It was really good with a wide variety of techniques - both embroidery and quilt-based. They are a very talented group, based in the South Cheshire area.

One of the members had put together wonderful inspiration bags - pieces of indigo dyed fabrics with thread , beads and ribbon. I just couldn't resist.

 Then today I went out to take some photos in the village. My friend Hilary and I have challenged each other to take photos on a specific day every month. I'm not sure what we will do with the photos, mine are of a certain field and I take my pictures on the 23rd of each month. We started in January. The following photos are ones I took today. They sky was amazing - really black clouds and full of rain.

This first photo was taken from my back door and shows the top of my garden gate and a neighbour's house. I just loved the colour of the new leaves on the tree against the deep grey of the sky.

The trees around the cenotaph are just coming in to full leaf.

The blossom is so pretty.

 I don't know what type of tree this is. The leaves were such a delicate shade of green. The sky was growing darker all the time.

Turning back to the house, the heavens opened. It was well worth getting wet.

Sewing, weaving and having fun.

This was my latest piece for the Sky's the Limit group under way. This view of the back shows the vilene I used as the basis. The fabric scraps are sewn on from the back.

This is the same piece, but shown from the front.

Now, the finished piece. You can see my post about this piece on the Sky's the Limit site.

A piece of weaving using ribbon and various threads. This is destined to become part of one of my journal quilts. The next four are all yellow.

A pocket made for a friend's gift. Sorry about the poor quality lighting. As usual, I finished this at the last moment by which time the light wasn't good in my workroom.

It is double-sided. It didn't seem right to have one "good" side and a boring one. This was a thank you gift and was presented to her yesterday at a meeting. The real present is tucked inside.

Painting and printing some more fabric.

I finished the last two of my yellow fabrics - a deeper yellow/orange and a yellow/green. This is the first one. I added a lot more water this time.

The resulting fabric is lovely. ever so slightly stiff, but I just love the colours.

I kept on with using paper underneath. 

The colours used for the yellow/green.

The result is just what I wanted. I have another project to complete before I can start putting the yellow set of the Journal Quilts together./ I have collected all the bits together, so I am almost ready to go.

This is the paper version. I can hardly wait to put some books together to use this patterned paper.

I overprinted the fabric I used in the last post. I used a second print block for the first one.

The second one was just using the same block. I shall use this fabric in my journal quilts.