The winner is......

Joan Mc

Congratulations

Joan you are the winner of my little giveaway I will pop you prize in the post today. I got your address from Janet.

I can now reveal that the items only cost me £1.00. The black bracelet was 50p the two other bracelets where 10p each and the cute little cup and saucer where 30p. Bargains or what ladies!!.

Commiserations to those who did not win but thank you all for taking part.

hugs Susan :) 



Dying to have a go....

White egyptian cotton from Empress mill two bundles.

Scrunched and pleated in little plastic containers.

Procion MX dyes, magenta. golden yellow and vivid blue

Dyes added to the fabric.

End results.......

I have been itching to have a go at dying fabric, ever since I saw the tutorial on DMTV.  Laura Kemshall made it look so easy and not all messy, unlike when I had to dye fabric as part of my city and guild course. I am so pleased with my end results although some are a bit miss but on the whole the majority are just great. I am so pleased with myself (not that you can tell right?) I will definitely be repeating the process again in the not to far away future. With regard to my little give away all shall be revealed on Wednesday. Good luck and thank you to those who have left a guess already xx.

Guessing game give away......

This morning I went for a walk and found myself strolling through the local Sunday car boot sale.  I have to say I never used to be a fan car boot sales or flea markets or charity shops but since I started collecting bits of costume jewelry, to use as embellishments, I find myself in these places more often. Here are today's little finds. I love old fashioned tea cups, this little one was all mucky on the floor of a real jumbled mess of a stall. I do not collect them but I just had to take this one home. Washed and clean it is such a lovely delicate item. My other items were three bracelets. Now the challenge is how much did my little treasures cost me. I am not looking for you to price them individually but the total sum. The person who guesses to the nearest penny will win a mystery goody bag.

Playing catch up...

Tonight I decided it was time to crack on with the applique on the centre panel of the new quilt my very talented friend Janet has designed called Summer Harmony.  I am already weeks behind with this quilt but due to other commitments it has taken a back seat.  Sometimes I just need time out to sew and it always feels good.  If you would like to see the progress Janet is making with this beautiful quilt please visit her blog at Lemon Tree Quilts.

Creative mess.......

Recently I discovered a very clever artist/crafter on utube. Now it is very rare I go on utube but I wanted to see if I could get any tips for the artist book I was making. Her utube name is Rachel0113 she is extremely talented. Well I became addicted to watching all her utube clips she makes lovely mini albums, journal pages, scrap booking and card making. I would like to use collage more in my college work so I decided to have a go using some of the ideas I picked up from the utube clips. I got a lovely moleskin sketchbook for my birthday from my wonderful friend Sue C and it is just perfect for this project. I had recently bought a book from the works £1.99 called Victor Frankenstein and the workings of the human body because I loved the illustrations and the quirkiness of the book. I decided I was going to use this as a starting point for my collage page.  As you can see I made quite a mess creating the collage page but I really enjoyed myself. I did not plan the page I just went with whatever happened next and whatever popped into my mind. I am happy with the end result and it was very relaxing afternoon. That is until I realised how much of a mess I'd made! Where is the cleaning fairy when you need her?

Text me....

After finishing my Spring Flowers quilt I decided I needed to get stuck into the text on my Aquarius quilt. I was not quite sure how I was going to achieve this. I knew I did not want to applique the text on as it would over power the quilt, I just wanted a subtle text. I searched the internet for an alphabet stencil but I was unable to find one big enough for my purpose. I then had a go at making my own stencil and smudging some oil sticks over the cut out letters but it was extremely laborious. After only two letters my fingers were hurting. (See the top image for stencil effect) Yesterday evening I cut out letters from funky foam and glued them individually to cardboard. I inked the letters once the glue was dry and used them as stamps. (This is one of my favourite stamping techniques). The first one was too dark but the second attempt was a bit better. I then added some gold acrylic paint here and there to give a distressed look to the lettering. It is still in the experimental stage but I think this is the road I am going to take to add text to my quilt.

Spring flowers.....

Spring flowers quilt.

It was the regional day on Saturday and it was the last time Janet and I would be on the stage as Merseyside and North Lancs area reps for the Quilters Guild. The morning speaker was Anne Fenton followed by Celia Eddy in the afternoon. It was, as always, a lovely day and there were some amazing show and tell.  It is days like these that make me want to dive into my fabric stash and make a quilt as soon as I get home.  I have barely touched my poor Bernie this year what with college commitments but I decided to have the weekend off from homework and I was determined to finish at least one of my ongoing quilts. Today I completed my spring flowers quilt and I have to say I am delighted with it.  There is nothing so satisfying than sewing that last bit of binding and adding a label to a finished quilt.  Next on my to finish list is Age of Aquarius which hopefully will be off to Harrogate in September.

Clueless....

Charcoal drawing of a bird in flight.

This is my attempt at a black and white doodle image after looking at Johanna Basfords work.

Part of my artist book about things that fly or have wings.

Artist book coming together.

Once again where is the time going, I can not believe it is March already. I am rapidly running straight towards my next assessment and that is frightening because after the assessment it is my own final project which is basically the be all and end all to pass the foundation course. The latest project is titled Flora, fauna, fish, fur, feather and fowl. As you can imagine there was a lot of pathways to chose from. I kind of went down the feather route and looked at birds. I have seriously struggled with this project but I do not know why?  Three weeks in and nearly coming to the end I feel like I am still clueless. My saving grace was a visit from a lovely artist Elizabeth Willow who talked about her work and artist books. I was hooked immediately. I love seeing Linda Kemshall create her altered books and have longed to have a go but when it came down to it,I did not have an altered book inside me. However I did feel I could make my own artist book for this project. Here is what I have produce over the weekend but it still has some way to go before it is complete.