Wood, straws, glass, pop-art, doilies, stitching

To be able to combine all of these in one day of art was a challenge, but I did it.  First with a visit to the Royal Academy exhibition " Sensing Spaces - Architecture Reimagined".  Well worth a vsit, even at half term with children interacting with several of the exhibits.  Several people have blogged about this exhibition, here and here.

Health and safety was to the fore of course and that first statement could be applied to one or two individuals I know.

Son doing just that,

before inserting his straws

This was real fun and reminded us both of our visit to the Ernesto Neto exhibition at the Hayward Gallery a few years ago.  In the book shop, a book for my wish list, Archidoodle.

Then off to the glorious exhibition of Chihuly glass at the Halcyon Gallery, on until March.  I love this glass and took so many photos that I would bore everyone by including them.  Instead, here are a few and a link to all of them.  The colours are breathtaking and this time, the gallery includes a ceiling installation which is incredible.

A quick whizz to the Redfern Gallery to see an exhibition of Brian Rice' early works - and a free catalogue, thank you very much.  So many of these paintings could be quilts.

A zoom in to the Vigo Gallery to see the paintings by Biggs and Collings, and was struck again by how easily these paintings could transfer to textiles, particularly "Human Use" shown below ( this image doesn't do any justice to the complexity of the paint).

and to finish a wander down Bond Street to get inspiration from Burberry of what to do with the large bag of doilies languishing in a cupboard waiting for an idea to strike.  Not sure i could carry this skirt off though.

And in case this is all too art - dominated, a bit of proper patchwork ( recycled shirt) and practise stitching on the train, trying out this appliqué technique, but hand stitching rather than machine stitching ( 7 inch square) .  I have an idea in my mind for the Contemporary quilt Group challenge this year, based on the word " dislocation'.  If it works, it will need a lot of appliqué.

Roof, rain, spring

A very large ridge tile came crashing off our roof last night.  No-one injured, and no significant damage to property - only a small gap in the roof.  Nothing compared to the situations  other people are dealing with.  At least there were some gaps today, to see that spring is on the way.

That broken rhubarb stem in the far left, got eaten.

Trees, development of disperse dyeing

The deadline is approaching for the Made at Morley competition, where I have been trying to develop my tree theme.  Today was an exploration of khaki / brown colours and different textures.  I'm veering away from actual depictions of trees and more towards  textures that suggest bark , battlefields, broken trees.

Discharged papers after printing

Section of printed cloth

Next section

Final section

It was interesting how different people interpreted the jagged shapes.  I've been looking at the tree trunks for so long, that is all they said to me, but others saw marching legs or barbed wire.  Both very appropriate in the circumstances.  I now need to work this colour palette in to the previous teal / orange colour way and develop ways to get smoother transitions between one section and the next.  The stitched trees are just jarring with the print at the moment, so I've decided to stick with just print and see where it goes.

Buttons, beads and thread

Plum and I are doing a demonstration of making buttons at our quilt group tomorrow.  We both did an excellent online course with Karen Ruane two years ago.  

In between business travel, London travel disruption, lost purse and travel card and coordinating elder son getting off to a trip to France, I've been stitching up some examples.  I'll use these to demonstrate the mounting technique in to the button.

Beaded on hand-dyed velvet, about 29mm in diameter

Beaded and stitched on indigo - shibori cotton

Detail of beading, again about 29mm in diameter

Detail of "buttoned" button

and if you've ever wondered why you sometimes have difficulty threading a needle, could this be why?  Image from here.

Home printing

With no fixed commitments this weekend, but a busy week to come, I wanted to explore some printing at home.  Inspired by this video, linked from this blog, I tried making a string block of a tree.

No pics of the results as they were disastrous.  I think my yarn was too narrow as I couldn't get a good impression of the tree without picking up a lot of paint from the background card.  So I then turned to an intriguing piece of packaging that arrived this week courtesy of some replacement bit for the computer.

This can be pulled apart, but so far I haven't found a way to fix it in the fully open position.

but, the mix of open parts and closed lines made a great print.

I might get a chance to try this on some cloth tomorrow, where I think the mottled effect will soften.

Just to show spring is on the way,glorious colours from hyacinths.