Secret Santa and fabulous frost

Beautiful A4 folio cover arrived from my BQL Secret Santa.

Followed by a walk in wonderful frosty park, both adding to a lovely Christmas Day.

And may all your Christmases be gingerbread coloured……

Felt, white thread, too much snow, lots of film watching, leads to…

Happy Christmas to all our readers.

Mini projects and mackerel skies

Still cold, and too much on to tackle big projects.  So, some experiments with stitches and eyelets: elongated blanket stitches on vintage linen

 

Then, bullion, raised chain band and more elongated blanket around eyelets on vintage linen

I had pondered backing these with a bright colour or filling the eyelets with a stuffed piece of something bright, but perhaps simple is best.

Fast sewing of hand / shoe/ pocket warmers: 6 x3 inches of fabric, sewn to a pyramid, stuffed with 100g of long grain rice, in the microwave for 40 secs – instant bliss.

Just dashed out to get photos of a stunning mackerel sky.

Dashing through the snow…….

4cm of snow and elder son’s school is closed. 

Pond looks lovely though

At least it is an excuse to get out the Christmas cushions and start loud renditions of the song title thereon, much to children’s embarrassment.

Advent adventures

I enjoy Christmas, mostly for the family traditions and habits that it involves.  Ours started yesterday with putting up the stitched advent calendar, packing off the presents to Australia and spending more time that would seem possible finding the Christmas quilt.  The excuse was that it hadn’t been out for two years as were in Australia for Christmas last year.

  

The wonderful Gina Ferrari is attempting an advent blog, with a post every day through to Christmas – she is really superwoman.

PS if you know anyone who is a beginner quilter, I can recommend “Ultimate Quilting Bible” edited by Marie Clayton – and not only because my Christmas quilt is in it.

Results of Class with Philippa Naylor

Excellent machine quilting class yesterday, taught by Philippa Naylor, organised by Creative Quilting and held at The Angel Pub.  This was the first time the landlord had hosted such an event, and I think he was somewhat surprised at the amount of equipment 18 women, plus one  teacher, could pack in to a rather small function room.

Philippa is a very encouraging teacher, and gave us well thought-out exercises to practice machine quilting.  My results are below and I’m off to practise some more today as Philippa is an example of Malcolm Gladwell’s 10000 hours hypothesis.

 

Extraordinary embellishing

Morley last night and a few hours spent on the embellisher, led to these.

The first four are wool felt background with felted pieces of of old blanket.  The back is as interesting as the front.

   

Wool blanket, with cashmere cream yarn and black merino wool tops , again front and back.

Different wool blanket, with merino wool tops form the Handweavers Studio, front and back.  I really like the shadow effect in the other side from where the embellisher needles went in.

Cotton quilt wadding, with cream cashmere yarn embellished at the right, and folded and embellished to itself on the left.

Pattern or Form….. which am I?

Interesting discussion at Morley on Wednesday about whether one responds to pattern or to form.  After struggling to work out how to turn two flat pieces of fabric in to a doughnut shape ( or torus to use the correct term) and having to be shown hoe to invert one over the other to obtain the correct shape, I am definitely in the pattern rather than the form category.  Reassuring to be told by the tutor that the majority of people fall in to one category or the other, and that very few respond to both.

In London yesterday to see the amazing papercuts by Rob Ryan at the Air Gallery. 

Great to see that so many had sold as they are astonishing.  It was also intriguing to see the framed papercuts  alongside the screenprints of the same cuts.  The papercuts have so much more dimension, even though they are all cut from a single flat surface.  Way beyond my price range, but some designs are available here at more accessible prices.

Detour on the way home to the Halcyon Gallery to see sculptures by Lorenzo Quinn, and then to The Opera Gallery to see the paper and Perspex pieces by Pavlos. Like gigantic quilled paper sculptures, the colours were striking

Interestingly photos from London on Saturday seem to support the pattern categorisation.

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Morley monotone, leaves and libel matters

White on white experimental stitching, and I’ve finally conquered bullion stitch. Stitched on calico, with white cotton Perle no 8 thread.

Incredible leaves picked up on the way to Morley. I’m attempting to preserve these colours using the method suggested by Isabella, of ironing the leaves between waxed paper and brown paper.

Lastly, off with younger son tonight hear Simon Singh speaking. The libel law reform campaign is still live, as another physician has had a libel case brought against her for questioning the claims made for a cosmetic cream. Not only that, the Sense about Science campaign has been requested by the manufacturer not to publicise her case. If individuals want to spend their money on these products, fair enough, but it is reasonable to ask to see the evidence on which claims of efficacy are based.

Stuffed and stitched

Great Morley class this week, making overly-stuffed calico samplers and then using these to experiment with hand embroidery stitches: bullion , blanket, French knot, running and chain.  Samplers are about 8 x 6 inches and the overfull stuffing gives a very tactile object to stitch in to. Intriguing to see the different ways people manipulate these stitches so they become a sewn signature.