I felt the rain ...

As the rain beats down on the roof window of my little work room I can post the picture that I have created from some of the felts from 21st Century Yarns that I bought at the NEC Knitting and Stitching Fair in August.

The picture is based on the weather we experienced in Wales this "summer", the felts embellished on to linen and then stitched.

Last weekend we had a family trip to visit my great friend Linda Alton who is a jewellery maker / silversmith in Nottinghamshire. She gave me the long grey straight beads that remind me of the lead piping in Cleudo! They inspired me to get cracking and finish this off.

She proudly showed me her newly refurbed studio which makes me green with envy - I hope she does well at her Open Studio event this weekend - she makes fabulous pieces based on the wonder of nature. http://www.loupjewellery.co.uk/.

We had a great time. How a friendship like this remains so strong when we have a shared history is such a joy even when we meet up so rarely.

Here you can see what I mean by the Welsh colours - this sky at Llandanwg was quite dramatic.

... and now for something completely different ... this is a sketch I made tonight for a sort of cartoony cushion in calico, stitching and ditsy prints. Watch this space....

N.E.C. Knitting and Stitching Show

Well once again inspired and bamboozled by more loveliness at the Knitting and Stitching Exhibition. Started the day with Margaret Beale's workshop on heat bonding fabrics. For this we were givena selection of coloured organza squares, a glass square to work on, a fine tipped soldering iron and a metal ruler. We were shown how a slow drag of the soldering iron would cut the fabrics and a quicker one would bond them. The picture at the top shows how one can form a sort of patchwork piece with no stitching or gluing and the seond picture shows what I made in a sort of overlapping mosaic style.

The marks in the second sample were made by touching the soldering iron in different ways on to the fabric to make marks. I'm really looking forward to stitching both now and maybe adding some beads.

I was so thrilled with this that I bought Margaret's book and a soldering iron! It's quick, fun and liberating. These samples were completed in an hour!

Unfortunately my sewing machine packed up in the middle of a quilt today and it's gone to hospital for a week! It's been healthy for 13 years , never been serviced and never oiled so I suppose it deserves a rest!

So to cheer myself up tonight I got out a selection of bits and bobs which I bought off 21st Century Yarns stall at the show and laid them out and shuffled them around. They smell great! Anyway there are some pieces of felt, silk yarns and ribbon that I have an idea for, again inspired by the wet Wales holiday.

Watch this space to see where I go with this...it looks like hand stitching or use of the embellisher for now!

Welsh Inspiration

It has poured down here all day again. I may build an ark and gently sail away stitching as I go to a land of loveliness.

In fact I have finished this Welsh inspired piece which has been made from hand-dyed Colinette Yarns, felted to a piece of flannel using my embellisher and some left over bits of thread which I dyed in August.

It really is like painting in textiles. I added some sequins as a focal point representing the silvery glinting water of the estuary.

It reminds me of the road where we had to stop while I shooed a sheep back into a field from which he'd made an unintentional gettaway!

The Spirit of Autumn

The Spirit of Autumn is in the air. At last the weather can officially be dank and misty without us all chirruping on about it not being right like this in August. September heralds the ripening of pumpkins in my book and that is cause to celebrate! To honour the season's colours I am knitting with this amazing hand-dyed Colinette yarn from Wales. It is warm, slubby and delightfully nubby! What's more it's my first knitting really so I'm enjoying it when the kids have gone to bed and there's no head space to think about sewing and no energy to do much else.

I played about with a drab image of Portmeirion with Picasa today and wonder whether to brighten all my other Welsh holiday photos up in the same way to change my memories of the holiday.

A kind of high tech version of "rose-tinted spectacles." Hmmm.

Anyway it might be an idea for a quilt some time, who knows?

Yes, Wales really is Wet

It's everything that it's cracked up to be is Wales. Great scenery though. Couldn't see much of it behind the clouds but the guide books tell you it's marvellous behind there. Thanks God. Anyway I had hoped to get lots of inspirational landscape shots for working on but the camera rusted. I did get this nice view though!
It's Lake Tal-y-Llyn and it was very moody yesterday.

To brighten things up I visited Colinette Yarns at Llanfair on the way home today which is a cornucopia of hand-dyed wools. I had a little woopsy with my credit card but it added a wonderful splash of colour to my memories of Wales!