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.

The Cupboard Of Loveliness Is Calling

All I can say is "Get there a.s.a.p". If you can visit the "Country Living Christmas Fair" before Sunday at The London Business Design Centre in Islington you will be surrounded with a fantasy of Christmas! You will need to run away with it all and put it in your cupboard of loveliness.

Every year near the entrance there is a beautifully dressed cabin - the kind one dreams of escaping to at the bottom of one's garden (yeah, right, along with the fairies). I stared misty eyed at this for 20 minutes yesterday (daft sod). Words in brackets denote husband-like comments.
There's a huge variety of "loveliness" to browse and buy and some very useful bags on wheels for sale for a fiver to put the booty in.
Things I loved were Susie Watson's ceramics and fabrics, a whole section on crafts from the Orkneys, the lingering cinnamon stick aroma, fabric Christmas Finnish-esque elves (Tomte) - hmmmm could be easily addicted to them and lots of decorations made from rusty tin. I know, I know barking mad but happy (when are you getting the Brasso out?). My God husbands can be so practical, literal and analytical.
The food hall is wonderful. There are all sorts of sausages, smoked salmon, cheeses, soups, wines and olive oils to sample. Lunch has been had after 30 minutes in there.
The worst part of the day was trying to lug my trolley bag and it's contents up to the 9th floor of the station car park when getting home. £2.50 worth of wheels had dropped off by then. Ho hum - a small price to pay.

Anyway I had a spare 20 minutes today and was feeling in a sort of New Englandy kinda mood and quickly whipped up Block 7 of a quilt that has been ongoing for a long while. I just need a little rusty tin heart for the door knocker. Who says my trip was purely a self-indulgent waste of time?

By the way you've got to watch this blogging thing because now someone at my son's school has read this and discovered that I do this fiddling with fabric thing and I have got the job of making 9 Kalidah costumes for "The Wiz" (rock version of "The Wizard Of Oz") in the early Spring.

Any ideas welcome!