I'm Off Again!

I have had a marvellous weekend in Redditch on an Experimental Textiles course run by Kim Thittichai. Even though his is my second journey along this route there are many more side alleys to explore, dead ends to get stuck in, mountains to climb, rivers to cross and fellow travellers to get to know, fantastic discoveries to make and maybe cake too!!!
After painting an imaginary journey with black paint on a long strip of paper, sections were traced off and transferred to my sketchbook to be painted. One of the tracings was copied onto a large sheet of paper and flipped and mirrored to create a large very interesting design. I have outlined the pencil lines in black to see the effect and then I will be painting it to create a black and white design. I can already see some other designs appearing so will make smaller tracings and repeat this exercise
after dealing with my mother's latest crisis - bees in the chimney!!! Of course these will not be normal bees but a new killer variety from foreign climes and she won't get a wink of sleep until they have been evicted. How she knows they are there is a mystery......... maybe she does have a witches broom after all!

A section of my journey

 

Outlined flipped design

 

The original traced design when painted

 

 

Silk Paper Making

I recently had the chance to do a local workshop on silk paper making. It was easier than I expected it to be and used up all sorts of bits and pieces I have been squirrelling away for years. I now have loads of sample pieces which I can practice stitching into. This piece is simply gummy silk wetted with water between pieces of net and squished then left to dry. I went for an airy piece but haven't decided how to stitch into it yet.

Grace's Quilt

I saw the DC Originals Comics range of fabrics on the Frumble website and new it would be perfect to make a quilt for Grace. I cut up the faces panel and bordered them with black fabric set at angles to hide the names. This made me think of film strips so I carried on with plainer red and blue fabric from the same range and edged the strips with black. I foundation pieced a large red pointy star shape with a blue background for the centre block and used large pieces of other fabrics in the range for the other blocks. It went together quickly was quilted in no time. Grace loved it!

My first blog

Superhero quilt for Grace.