Monoprinting from a ceramic tile

Fungal foray

Incredible inspiration of form and colour from fungi during a walk this weekend

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Hidden inside the middle of a rotting fence post, waiting to be discovered, 

 

Return to autumn

Winter is in full sway,  with decaying foliage lit by low-lying sun.

Stitching has however been on an autumnal theme, as part of our quilt group’s A3 challenge on the seasons. My theme is autumn and I wanted to get away from leaves, conkers, acorns and berries, lovely though they are.  I brainstormed and the word that kept coming up was rain. What comes out when the rain comes down? Wellies and brollies.

Machine trapunto, machine quilting, machine applique, hand beading.

Mad moments of military music

Rushing for a train, stopped in my tracks by a rendition of “Mac the knife’ by military bandsmen in Waterloo station.

 

 

 

Poppy obsession taking over from sweet peas

Wet weekend quilting

Our family have agreed that the Xmas madness is to be curtailed this year. Everyone has more than enough of what they need, so limited budgets, edible or readable items and imagination are to be the watch words for gifts. I am therefore finished Xmas preparation, except the cooking.  A wet weekend gave time for machine quilting. mindless stippling and lines, just the thing to allow mental relaxation.



A gallery visit this week to the Victoria Miro Gallery in Mayfair, to see the very mad and puzzling work of Maria Nepumenco. If you do visit, don’t be put off by having to ring the bell, and then wait for the inner, white sliding screen to reveal the gallery beyond. Feeling emboldened, my friend and I then rang the bell of Trinity House and were welcomed in to look at some wonderful paintings - above our budget - starting at £22,000 for a very modest drawing by Henry Moore.

Returning to normal life with a lap quilt

My relative’s suffering post-stroke has now ceased and we had her funeral on Friday. Very proud of my son, who even though very distressed,  was able to get up and speak about her positive impact on his life.

Shuffling through some old hand-dyes, ( in the same colour palette as here ) and discovering some leftover hearts from the Alice quilt, led to an urge to get them stitched together.

Appliquéing the hearts on the tray-dyed cloth

Composing the  7 inch blocks on he temporary design wall.

There was not enough of the variegated solid ( a contradiction in terms?) so I had to fudge the edges a bit and lose some corners, therefore not one for the perfectionists I think.

Not bad for a sunny afternoon.  Five years since the cloth was dyed, so hopefully the quilting will be faster than that.

Baubling along

Plum posted a really good tutorial about using decorative stitches on the sewing machine to make quick felt Christmas baubles.  As I had some red felt circles n my stash of stuff, I adapted that tutorial to go into production.

 White stitching on red

Red wool thread on top of foiled circles, and also used on the back, in the bobbin.  Sewed beautifully, but there was surprisingly little length of thread on the bobbin, requiring lots of bobbin rewinding.

Back of baubles, with design developing across 4 different batches.

Front of baubles.

 

Exhibitionist

I have a week’s leave to “ use or loose” so am combining a list of household management tasks with attendance at several exhibitions this week.  So far:

Chris Beetles Gallery, The Illustrators 2015, on until 9th January

What a treat to see so many original illustrations one place, all framed beautifully and consistently so that the eye was not distracted from the image.  There is a superb online catalogue that contains all 354 images, here, and if I had infinite funds, I would have bought Aubrey Beardsley and Quentin Blake - especially “On the Roof” featuring Mrs Armitage.

 White Cube Gallery, Mason’s Yard, “Losing the compass”, on until 9th January

Lots of textiles, but I really wasn’t sure about this one.  Some if it seemed more like “losing the plot” rather than ‘losing the compass”.  Acrylic paint on the top surface of a piece of carpet, then stuck in a frame, not for me.  Some interesting historical quilts, but displayed in a rather odd way, lying on top each other on the floor and hung from hooks on the wall such that the whole design couldn’t be seen.  I did like the embroidered maps and slogans by Alighiero e Boetti

Sims Reed Gallery, Bury Street, until 20 January.  Lovely drawings and painting by David Hockney and beautifully drawn pumpkins by Yayoi Kusama.

Joy of joys, using my Tate membership  - thank you mother in law, to see Alexander Calder  - Performing Sculpture. ( on until April 2016) I could have sat there all day, watching the shadows, and the gentle movements.  Despite the signs asking for no blowing on the sculptures, some people could not resist.  The 3D wire sculptures of heads and acrobats were a real revelation, and made me understand some of the comments from my drawing teacher about using the  weight of line to show ‘disappearing and appearing space’.

Then, thanks to a tip off from a friend who works in the art word, a visit to Omer Trioche Contemporary Art, where a small show of Calder tapestries and gouaches finishes this weekend.  It is a bit intimidating visiting these little galleries, as you have to ring the bell and request entrance but nothing ventured as they say.   Photography was allowed here.  

Vibrant reds and yellows lit up the gloomy day.  These are not tapestries in the conventional sense of weaving, but are rather braids of fibres placed on edge and then attached to a backing.  The scale is not apparent here, but this star was about a metre across the widest part.

The braided cords can be clearly seen here.

On my travels, interesting architectural details that caught my eye

Current turbine hall installation “Empty Lot” 

Cheesegrater, Walkie-Talkie, Gherkin, and Monument, just appearing in gold, now completely dwarfed by these monsters of commerce.

Worshipful companies’ signs, which due to the wonders of the internet, I can now research.  Glaziers here, Scientific Instrument Makers here and Launderers here.

British Museum of Food was new to me

and in the basement, Alcoholic Architecture, only open in the evening.

Shard partially concealed by a tree

Workers on the Millennium Bridge - love those sinuous lines - of the bridge that is, not of the workers

The old and the new - almshouses disappearing underneath recently-built towers

 

Colour and shine in a shaft of light coming through the gloom

Bollards, and what looks like a giant, upturned, steel mug supporting this building

London getting ready for Christmas, from a balcony at Tate Modern.

Home for dinner, and hopefully tomorrow, if my brain and feet hold out a trip to Goldsmith’s to see the work of Christine Risley, a contemporary and colleague of Constance Howard.