Exhibition

It's a relief to get to the finish of a piece of work and it is at last out of the house and in a gallery where I can no longer feel the need to tinker with it.
 "Blue Guitar" has gone into Bilston Art and Craft Gallery in the exhibition "On Yer Mettle". The hanging was yesterday and it opens on Saturday 26th August.

The theme is based around metal, although the phrase means be "ready to take action". All around this area there are currently exhibitions celebrating the birth of Heavy Metal Music which happened in this area with bands like Led Zeppelin, Judas Priest and Black Sabbath - all Black Country boys, many of whom had worked in metal factories and foundries locally.
Some of the exhibitions celebrate the music, whilst others are about the industry of this area mostly up until the 1980s.

My guitar has some metal in it... you can see the washers and metal fabric above and there are Indian Shisha mirrors for the volume, treble and bass controllers. Mostly it is made from recycled jeans - denim was the prominent fabric of the fashion associated with the music of course.
The quilt upon which it is appliquéd is made from recycled fabrics again - lace, silk and cottons, some of which is dyed with rust.

Oh yes - to get an idea of the size of it here is 9 year old Isabel "playing" it before the appliqué began!

Here she is with her brother, overseen by Granny, at the hanging where they were emulsioning a peg board for an interactive family sewing installation for the gallery!
The exhibition runs 27th August - 24th September 2011 - heres a link
Other news is that Linda and Laura Kemshall's online creative sketchbook course has now opened and I am looking forward to some peace when they go back to school, in between work, to get down to that.
Here are some wonderful seed heads (it's an addiction) from the Love In A Mist flowers I grew in the garden. Love those shapes...ripe for drawing!

Oh yes - ALSO I am pleased that my magic feather has flown across the ocean to Jude Hill to her project. Click this link to see.

Blues Guitar

It's been tricky finding blogging time - the summer weeks rush by and there is the call of the garden, sports days, end of school year concerts, music evenings and hardly a moment to sew. I have had to crack on in the chinks of time allowed with this piece ready for a textile exhibition at Bilston Art and Craft Gallery which begins in August. The name of the show is "On Yer Mettle" and this can be interpreted however we like. There used to be a lot of metal foundries, lock industries, nail and chain makers in this area and I was initially going to work something related to this but I found it impossible to get started, especially since I am mostly inspired by organic and natural forms rather than man-made ones.
There are, however, a number of exhibitions happening this summer related to heavy metal....no not those oddly named, more recent members of the Periodic Table, rather the likes of Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath etc - bands originating in this neck of the woods. It is said that heavy metal music was born in the West Midlands. So I went with that and have been working on this guitar piece - aptly made from old denim jeans.
I am placing the guitar on a background of hand dyed scrim, linen, muslin, silk and lace - some of which have been dyed using rust (to extend the metal theme). I now need to finish the blues guitar and hand stitch into the background...ho hum it looks like a lot of late nights!

Out in the garden the cornflowers are now four feet tall and I am astonished at how many colour varieties came from one packet of seed!

The garlic is harvested and hanging from the roof of the greenhouse. I don't want to cut off it's squiggly roots - they are lovely!

This morning - early - at peaceful 6am these lovely shadows from a wrought iron bench. They would be lovely to stitch....no, no, no, I must finish the guitar before embarking on anything else!