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.

Could easily have an obsession with seedheads ???

Dicentra

Just finding ways to ground a heart.

Inspired today by this beautiful dicentra in the garden. It grows so fast. It poked through the soil only two weeks ago and is over a foot tall now with scores of expanding hearts.
But there are still left overs from winter. I picked this amazing seed head on a walk:

And then a lonely heart waits:

Sturgeon Moon

So, not much sewing this summer since a prolapsed disc in my back has really stopped me sitting down! I can't settle to anything for long at all, so I have made gallons of jam and chutney as I can stand to chop, cook and bottle.
However I have decided how to use my vintage fabrics in blues and whites which I have collected over the past few months. A very summery quilt which will serve to remind me of Cornwall and The Scilly Isles this year. The colours are reminiscent of the white sands, the agapanthus blossoms and the wonderful wide sea and sky - my Cornish Quilt. I have decided on a simple 16 patch block of medium blues and whites throughout which will be sashed by white linen. Eventually. I can only sit to do a block at a time occasionally.

Easier though has been standing to paint and stick in notebooks and journals. Today we have a full moon known as the Sturgeon Moon since it was renowned for the tribes on the banks of the Great Lakes of North America to catch this particular fish at this time of year and by this bright moon.
I bought some Koh-I-Noor dye paints at the International Quilt Show at the N.E.C last weekend and they produce a nice confident colour ideal for journals. This little notebook has been set aside for seedheads which fascinate me.









I am saving seed ready for next year - both vegetables and plants and am finding some quotes to accompany little sketches.

...and here is a journal page from the Quilt Show day consisting of some of the cards of exhibitors I wish to remember which has of course been stitched together. Journals are great to do even with limited time, just adding bits when convenient or when, in my case, the left buttock allows!