Kelmscott Manor

I had a lovely day out on Thursday with the Lutterworth Embroiderers Guild to Kelmscott Manor. It helped that the weather was amazing - very warm and sunny, great to walk around the garden.

Here are some photos of the garden.

This was the home of William Morris.  His daughter May Morris kindly donated the Manor in her will and so now it's open to the public.  She had a very interesting life and mixed with a wide range of people.  Do read up on her.

The lunch was amazing - lots of cheese. Mmmmmm.  And the tour was very good too. 

So if you're in the area do go and have a look.

I've been working on my Hedgerow theme that I started with Catherine Nichols a couple of years ago.  I'm rather pleased with it so far.  I promise to share it when I've got a little further with it.

It's the Olympics

For those of you who have been living under a rock - the Olympics start tonight. Yay.  

Watch out for the cycling tomorrow.

And as part of the Olympics there have been a number of art events, one of which was the Streb Dance Company.  Have a look on the clip below:

It's amazing.

They performed at a number of locations and it must have been amazing to actually see it. If you did see it let me know.

Promise to post soon about a day trip I went on yesterday.

Enjoy the Olympics!

Friday 13th...

Hello all.

Yes I'm back again.

Had a great time yesterday on Friday 13th visiting a number of artists who were part of the Warwickshire Open Studios.  I really enjoyed seeing art in a domestic setting as I think it makes it easier to imagine it in your own home. So here we go - in no particular order.

Jo Roberts

 I was so pleased I had the opportunity to meet Jo.  I've been a big fan of her work for some time and it was a real pleasure to meet her in person.

She is now the proud owner of an 1800's letter press.  A really beautiful machine and she has trays and trays of letters.  She makes great work combining drawing and letterpress.  She very kindly demonstrated her machine and the photo above shows the result.  I'm so pleased with it.

Sharon Mendham

Sharon was featured in Embroidery magazine and I was really pleased I could see her work up close.  She uses a combination of dress patterns and ephemera.  She combines these to produce pieces of art, including paper bowls.

A lovely house too.

4 Artists at Weston

It was great to catch up with Bren Boardman.  As I would have expected she had beautiful work on display.  And she is due to start teaching her 'Explore you Creative Potential' at Bramble Patch. Get in quick if you want a place - I can assure you it's a great course.

Also exhibitiing was Emma House, who used vintage fabrics to produce some lovely work - I loved the quirky aprons.  Very 1950s.  I bought a bundle of fabric - far too cheap at £5.  I think the orange and lime green will go rather well with the fabric I dyed last week.

Also there was Jane Jones who makes unusual but wearable jewellery and Nicola Roberts beautiful pots.  

Again art in a domestic environment was great to see.

Michala Gyetvai

Michala has produced yet another selection of great work in a variety of media and sizes, all easily identifiable as her won style.  She recently exhibited at the Herbert Gallery and they have asked if they can take her work on tour.  A real achievement for a local artist.  Keep your eye on her blog.

And now to me! 

As promised here is the progress on my incubator quilt top.  Now machine quilted, and ready for binding.  I really want to master those ruddy corners!  I'm never very pleased with my results so I'm going to see what I can do this time. 

I forgot to mention last time I'd been to Spring Hydro on Wednesday. A lovely day.  If you have the opportunity to go- don't pass it up. I also saw the Women's GB Olympic Football Team training there.

Take care and have a good weekend.

Village Life

 Thought you might like to see what happens in the village at the weekend!

Stephanie Redfern class

Hello all.

Hope you' re having a good weekend and the flooding hasn't impacted too much on your life.

I've had a great time.  On Friday at Leamington Embroiderers Guild we had Stephanie Redfern deliver a talk.  Something she doesn't do very often. She bought an enormous pile of work with her that she very generously shared.

Here are a few photos of her work:

 I particularly liked seeing the worksheets that Stephanie uses to develop her work.  Rather than a sketchbook these pages seem to give her more space to develop her ideas.

So then on Saturday we had a class with Stephanie.  Again piles of samples, which were great for inspiration.

Again, Stephanie was very generous and let us have a good rummage through all the samples.

But, of course the purpose of a class is to produce something yourself!

I decided I could spend hours (literally) drawing up a great design.  So instead I opted to use some simple shapes to learn the technique and to enable me to get on with stitching.

The first stage produces something that looks rather forlorn.

 So here we are with the fabric and paper shapes bondawebbed onto the background fabric. Looks a bit sad.

A little bit of stitching makes a huge difference. The stitches are very simple. Either long or short stitches in different threads.  Still lots more to do - but as a sample I'm really pleased.

I'll show progress as I go.

The rest of the class made some great work - and all sooooo different.

I think I can speak for all of us at the class and say we had a great time.  Stephanie was very good at ensuring she saw and encouraged all of us on the class.

Take care and see you soon.

Oh - such fun

Hello all.

I hope you've had as nice a weekend as I've had.

Thought I'd share some photos of what I've been up to.

So this pile of fabric was added to the old saucepan containing Potassium Permanganate and hot water and stirred. 

 They are then rinsed in cold water until the water is clear

 And then you hang them out to dry

And this is what you end up with. Lovely brown fabric. 

 Oh - such a pile of lovely fabrics.  As usual not too sure what I will do with them, watch this space

And here is progress with the incubator top I'm making. It's very bright - but that's the idea. 

I also made progress with my mystery quilt and made up a pieced back and started to hand quilt in black cotton perle with black running stitches.

Hope you all had fun and I'll let you know how I'm getting on