Just To Prove...

that I'm still working with lutradur, and how versatile it is, I've been making ACEOs this morning. I like the small format of ACEOs, and often make a series of works on a particular theme. The theme here is Blue Stripe, which was painted on watercolour paper, and a layer of hand dyed lutradur added over it. I'm really pleased with the results. Now to continue the series!

3D Felt...

is fun too. These wee things were also made at the workshop on Sunday, using a single needle. It took surprisingly little time to make them, maybe just over an hour for all three. I was...surprised.

The first piece is a flower, a daisy, I think. The second started out as a nest, and just asks for a couple of chocolate eggs to be added. The third is ACEO sized, and is called Snow Blind; you can just see the colours in the white, I think, reminiscent of shadows. I'm thinking about making some more flowers, it's such a cheery thing! Fun for brooches, or to be added to quilts, I think. Ditto with the aceos.

A Walk In A Magic Forest...

There is a major textile exhibition on in Norwich at the moment, at the Sainsbury Centre. Entitled Cloth and Culture, it brings together work from Estonia, Finland, Japan, Latvia, Lithuania and the UK. If you can get there, run, don't walk, and plan to spend most of the day in the gallery; there are some very interesting works there. In addition, there is a programme of talks and workshops. I was fortunate enough to spend Saturday working with plastics with Ieva Krumina from Latvia, whose work is for me one of the highlights of the exhibit, and Sunday with handmade needle and wet felt with Auste Juregelionyte from Lithuania, whose energy and enthusiasm for textiles, and felt in particular, bubbles out from every pore.

Magic Forest was the result of an afternoon spent wet felting, which really removed many of my preconceptions about felting by hand. I had a wonderful time, and throughly enjoyed working in a lively, interesting group of people. And I have the feeling that my one wee felting needle will be as well used as my Embellisher in future!

Just To Prove...

that I still do the occasional piece of textile work, this is a close up of a new piece, called 'Cracking Up'. It is made from lutradur which has been dyed and overdyed about six or seven times, and then stitched. The idea came from photographs I took at Hunstanton, where there are beautiful chalk cliffs that resemble coconut ice, red and white. There is a whole series in this, I think; meanwhile, I'm considering entering this into shows, so am not including a larger picture at this point.

I'm off to Paris tomorrow, to meet up with Dijanne, with the intention of working on the lutradur book, which we hope will be out soon! Meanwhile, if you want our free worksheet, please email me at lutradur (at)tiscali.co.uk. If you leave a message here, please make sure that I have your email address; most of the messages I get here, I can't reply to, and can't trace you, either. So do make sure I can reach you!

Meanwhile, I'll be back on Wednesday!

A Bit Of Fun!

It started with the Quilt Pets, cute little pieces that had their own stories attached. Then I started wondering about what happened to those cats and dogs who weren't quite so cute... and came up with this...the Wanted Poster. It's made from lutradur, distressed with paint and heat, and, best of all, can be made for humans, too... I'm just wondering who I know who deserves the Wanted treatment! I dare say a few 'celebrities' could use this treatment...

WIP

That would be my shed! The Little Green Shed is just waiting to have its walls added; what you see is the insulation that will, I hope, keep me warm in the winter... the board for the walls arrives tomorrow, and will hopefully be put up over the next couple of weekends. And I'm off to look for an electrician...wish me luck!

Changing One's Mind...

is supposedly a woman's prerogative. I've decided to stop working in mixed media...or at least, in collage. Check out ArtmixterEmporium for the reasons behind that, and details of a special sale.

I've been working with textiles over the last couple of days as you know, and I've just made some ACEOs and a small wall hanging using lutradur. We do hope to have the lutradur book completely finished by Eastertime...so watch this space and the Emporium for more information!

I've been out in The Shed today, tidying up so that Robin could start putting up the boards on the ceiling... it's exciting, I should be able to start using it in the next few weeks, just in time for the better weather and longer days. Might even pop a sewing machine in there... the space is big enough... hmmm....

Sometimes It Takes...

a bit longer to work out what's going on in a piece. I've been experimenting with working pretty much at random, and had pieced this with random pieces of cloth, then quilted it...and felt unhappy about it. It wanted, I thought, more texture. So I added some painted bondaweb. This proved to be A Bad Choice. It was dark, there was too much of it, I didn't know what to do next...so it sank into the morass that is my sewing room...

I got it out a couple of days ago, and changed it a little. First sheer brute force and nailpower took a lot of the bondaweb back off again. Then, I added some foiling, and thought, well, that's a definite improvement, took a photo (the top one) and stopped. This morning, I looked at the piece again. Yuk, I thought. It needed something...in this case, a bit more colour. And now, I genuinely do like this piece, now entitled Blue Maze. Making it seems to have been a bit like a maze, certainly... but sometimes that's what it takes! Try clicking on the images to see exactly what's going on...there were several layers of process added to the quilt before it got to stage one...and now, it is complex in the best possible sense!

Washi

is wonderful stuff. My friend Jill went to a workshop on using washi paper recently, and shared her tiny stash of the (very expensive, hard to find) glorious stuff. And here's what we did with it, or at least part of what we did; fragments of washi added to a washi base, and covered with nylon net. I suspect it'll be clearer if you click on the image to enlarge it. I plan to add some stitch to this.
For myself, I thought I'd use it to make hand bound books, together with some textile and stitch. Not sure what Jill will use it for, but she's doing an MA in Textile Culture, so doubtless will find somewhere to fit it in there... It's a joy, having a textile buddy who lives a very short drive away.

Purely Painting...

has given way to quietly quilting. I spent the last two days clearing out the hovel that was my cloth studio, and am now working my way through a pile of pieces that have been patiently waiting for my attention to shift to them. I've worked on four of them today...or was it five?... and am quite pleased with the results, but in the absence of photos, you'll just have to make do with looking at another painting...this one is the first in a series called 'Cascade'. Notice the springlike palette...I'm smitten!

Spring...

is always associated with green and yellow, in my mind, anyway... so I thought I'd vary things a little. This is another painting in the series I'm making that celebrates Spring, 'Spring Elsewhere', a companion to 'Spring Somewhere'. I don't usually repeat myself, but I thought I'd make an exception!

I think it's time I made some textile Spring pieces... and got on with Andrew and Sarah's wedding quilt also... it's already February!

As If...

there were any doubt that it is not yet Spring, it snowed quite convincingly overnight. Grr. But that didn't stop me working on some spring-like paintings. Yes, you guessed it, more yellow! I'm improving, slowly, but it doesn't do any harm to reinforce the mood by working in bright colours.

This is the newest of the ongoing series of work celebrating Spring (or, rather, the idea of Spring, it's too cold to be pretending!), a landscape in acrylic on canvas, entitled, Spring, Somewhere. A girl can dream...and it's true that the nights are drawing out...it gets darker, later, always a good sign.