Glimpses of light in the gloom of January

I am hanging on to any glimpse of light to get through this gloomy January and was struck by the joyful shadows created by my little artists models.

Mental light was created by volunteering to join an Extinction Rebellion samba band, and to decorate a drum.

Spirits raised by the colours on this test layout for the bookshelf quilt

Thoughts on fragmentation have turned to leaves and the decay of leaves. Plum showed some little quilts she had made,  trapping fabric under tulle, and this coincided with seeing one of the last journal quilts for 2019, where a participant had trapped poinsettia bracts and leaves under tulle. Going to my large supply of dried leaves, I tried that technique.

My intent was to crumple the squares to make the leaves fragment, but they look so lovely,  don’t know  if I can bring myself to do that!

I forgot to photograph the lovely, stitched gingerbread man, sent to me by Benta, before I packed him with the Xmas decorations, so please see her post where she shows her fantastic creativity with machine embroidery.

Positive actions for January:

• providing sewing assistance at The Repair Cafe in Oxford, where we repaired 12 items of clothing and the other repairers fixed 37 of the other 62 items that were brought for repair. Look out for the day of The Big Fix in the UK on 15th February, and volunteer or take along something to be fixed.
• Tickets booked to hear the wonderful “Lost Words’” again, touring the UK this spring
• Buying an electric cargo bike to share with my husband - we live at the top of a l-o-n-g hill, buses re infrequent at the weekend and traffic is therefore very heavy. Two trips up the hill with laden  panniers have already proved the benefit of this decision.If you haven’t tried an electric bike - they are amazing!

 

Autumn leaves in my sketchbook

This term, I am doing a course on colour with Abigail Downer at the Mary Ward Centre. I really enjoy Abigail's teaching and she is encouraging us to explore this extended autumn in our colour palettes. I’ve combined my love of colour, collage, precision  cutting and leaves in these pages.

and one for fun

Spring is here

The sheer pleasure in being bathed by sunshine, seeing colour everywhere

Peach blossom - in London!

Roadside flowers

Sharp shadows

Seen at Ham House, where I went to see he beautiful stitching on display in the costumes from A Stitch in Time. There until 29th April.

Kew Gardens inspiration

Do go and see Life in Death by Rebecca Louise Law, a mesmersing installation at Kew Gardens, on until March 2018.

In, and out of the greenhouses, the light was wonderful

Charity shop find

Charity shops now seem to be very focussed on clothes and crockery, so there is less chance of finding a stash of someone’s threads, fabric, yarn or craft tools.  I was therefore delighted today to find this cutting ruler.  It seems as if this is an older version of this tool, as searching on the web, it is now called a Shape Cuts, rather than a Short Cuts ruler, and the newer version has another marked line at a different angle.

The young girl in the shop was intrigued by my explanation as to how it is used, especially as I tried to demonstrate without a rotary cuter at hand.

Not that I’ll be doing much cutting, as quilting the Kaleidoscope is taking priority.  It is very difficult to photograph the back of this, due to mottled grey and black fabric on the back.

My work this week took me to the Welsh valleys where spring is in full bloom.

More Sussex experiences

My Sussex adventures continued last week, but I've been too pre-occupied with preparing lists for everyone's travel adventures this summer ( and with the tennis) to blog about them.  So a quick zoom about them.  First a visit to Architectural Plants near Horsham, which I had not visited for over 18 years.  It is even more amazing now, and is really worth visiting before they move to their new site near Pulborough, in 2016.  The vistas in the nursery are superb, and it is possible to wander for hours around the grounds.

Shapes and textures

Quirkiness ( spelling?)

Then to the Ditchling Museum of Arts and Craft, small, but beautiful and well worth a visit.  Some of the artists in that community had troubled and bizarre personal lives, but the museum focusses on the work they produced.  Lunch in the welcoming and interesting Mister Magnolia's fortified me for a walk on Ditchling Beacon, to see the large horizon and watch the swallows.  I got my sketchbook out to record being there - Kurt Jackson influences  coming through

Swallows

The next day, off to Sheffield Park Garden  to see huge trees and lakes.  The sequoia that exploded after being struck by lightning, is now just a stump, it must have been astonishing to see it immediately after it was struck.  Several trees in the gardens are succumbing to disease and are gradually being removed.  

I found the tag of one that had recently been chopped down ( my mind went back to the tree project and how to link that to identity tags of fallen soldiers)

Lots of feathers there as well

 And the last Morley session of the term on Tuesday, life drawing, daunting again, but I did manage to enjoy this session more.  It made me realise that I was missing my scalpel, so I calmed my nerves during Andy Murray's last match with the cutting board and some black card. ( The pencil lines were made while watching a match to see if anything interesting came out of the marks) - it didn't, hence the overlay with the paper cuts.

Younger son's end of term concert last night , always emotional as the 6th form leavers talk about their experiences in the music department.  Packing now as I am off to Australia tonight - trying to keep myself calm as the lists mount up.

Spring greens

So many shapes and shades.