Saturday - A week in Pictures.

Went to visit Dad on the Isle of Wight, we had a very nice lunch here at Niton, near St Catherine's Point for all you shipping forecast listeners.

He's pretty sprightly for 90.  We went for a short walk in Ventnor Botanical Garden...

... and then another down Yarmouth pier.

***

Back in Luton on Thursday...

...my friends and I head for the bus shelter to wait for Lady Godiva on her trip from Coventry to London...

... an hour and a half later, 

something's happening and a GPO van has broken down at the traffic lights...

Well that's all over - lasted a bit longer than the Tour de France passing by.

My friends and I say good bye.

August's calendar page is looking very minimal at the moment. 

 Not been my day.  Just wondered why I couldn't smell dinner cooking, when I realised that the meat has been in the main oven for an hour, when I had turned on the top one, that's why have time to write this. 

Well done Team GB - enjoying the Olympic's much more than I expected.

Have a good week

Jill

Phew! What a week

Last week I commented on a coming heat wave, thinking I was probably putting the scuppers on it, but it certainly arrived.  Although I longed for some sun, it has been very warm here so plenty of excuses to sit in the shade and do something undemanding, physically undemanding that is.

Last Friday I registered for the next Module in my City and Guilds Creative Quiltmaking course - and my heart sank a little when I saw it was nearly wholly devoted to patchwork, which is not really my 'thing'.  However not one to be put off by a challenge I used a couple of templates to create these little pieces of mosaic patchwork using the traditional English paper piecing (See how I can throw in all this jargon now).

Although quite fiddly I enjoyed sewing these and rather liked the tiny hexagons, there was an even smaller template, but I think this is small enough for me.

As I have to produce a small patchwork mosaic I had to choose a colour scheme.  I must say that the Keshalls' course gives their students a wonderful free choice of subject matter, so I chose a photomontage that I had made from one of my orchid photographs as my starting point and gathered together some fabric swatches.  I even had another dyeing session as I was a bit short of greens.

I used Koh-i-noor intense watercolours and Inktense pencils for the colour

It was then time to choose what shape and size of patches to use.

I went for the triangles, and as you can see I have made a start on them.  I sat in the garden stitching some of them one afternoon.  It doesn't take long to accumulate a little stash.

When I got bored I started stitching them together - my stitches are about as even as I can get them at about 1mm apart.

I am aiming to make a sample about A4 size - I don't think I would want to tackle anything larger with this size patch.  I can also feel the unaccustomed exercise in my fingers and wrists. You have to grip them quite hard to get the needle though the layers. I am hoping to watch some of the Olympic opening ceremony this evening which will be an ideal time to create some more triangles, unless it is so good I can't take my eyes of the screen.*

I thought I would also take this opportunity to share a couple of  A4 sketchbook pages done in the garden this week.

The shield bug was very obliging and landed on my page.

I'm off to the Isle of Wight for a few days next week to visit my dad,  leaving Marvin the cat to look after Mr T (or is it the other way round?). I have also booked my ticket for the Festival of Quilts on Thursday 16th of August.  Will any of you be there?  I'm especially looking forward to seeing some of the Kemshalls' work - I have never been before.

Well that's me done for the week, and I guess I have managed to achieve quite a bit - but it has been much too hot for gardening or housework!

I hope you have a great weekend and I will see you soon - and it is August next week, new calendar page needed.

Jill

*Footnote: I stayed up to watch Danny Boyle's Olympic opening ceremony and I didn't take my eyes off the screen, it was that good, so no more triangles, yet.

What have you been doing?

I can't believe it is over a week since I last posted here. I'm not sure what I've been doing but I have managed a bit of stitching to share with you. I have now finished Module 4 of the Creative Quilt making course I am doing with Design Matters - half way through!

Here are a few things I have had to do.  One skill I have to practice is piecing curved shapes.  These samples are not too bad and if I quilted them, hopefully the wrinkles would be less noticeable.  However it is not a very inspiring thing to practice - it uses up lots of fabric and I just end up with a heap of wrinkly squares.

Another quilting skill I have had to learn is creation Prairie points all you quilters will know what they are - but they were new to me.

The next activity was using tabs as part of a design and below I chose to make mine in the shape of ridge tiles.  I used painted pelmet vilene and one of my dyed fabrics, the blue, with one I bought at a textile show.

The final activity I had to do was use couching and appliqué in a piece.  I took ages to decide what to do and wanted to use the methods to try something more significant. So I used this photograph as inspiration

 I used some of my dyed fabric and used free machine embroidery to lay down the basic shapes.

I then used couching of different threads and fabrics and a variety of stitches to represent the grain in the wood.  The whole piece is about 6x8 inches.

I have also been practicing my free machine stitching. These are on a calico/batting sandwich, the cut-outs are stitched pelmet vilene, cut out and then painted.

I hope to be enrolling for the next module in the next few days so I'm sure to be doing some more stitching, if I can cope in the coming heat wave of course! 

I've had a lot of lovely communications with fellow bloggers recently and I just wanted to add what a super lot you all are.  Keep on posting,

Jill

Progress Report

You may recall my attempt to translate this drawing into a textile piece - progress so far

First I taped a piece of tea dyed cotton onto a piece of board and traced/drew the planter on with a fine tipped permanent marker pen and added some shading with Inktense pencils.

 

Then I spattered it with fabric paint to simulate the lichens growing on the planter.

I layered it up with some wadding and added free machine stitching.

Here are a couple of close ups.

By closely stitching the path the planter area is still puffy and stands out.

I am going to add some hand stitching to add to the crustiness of the lichen growth and experiment with making leaves to frame it with.

I've got a 20x20cm stretched canvas so I am going to attempt to mount it on that.

Meanwhile, back to the drawing board.

Keep dry,

Jill

June to July

A very quick post to add this month's calendar pages. A bit busy for the rest of the week.

Thanks for all your lovely comments on my previous post.

Jill

My Garden

It has been a beautiful day today, if a bit over breezy, but my sort of temperature. Warm enough to sit outside for lunch, but not too hot for a bit of pottering.  I took my camera out to capture some of the colour combinations which have happened spontaneously in my garden.  I did have a planting plan once upon a time, but now a-days things usually just appear. The sun was very bright and there were deep shadows. With a bit of judicious editing and by selecting my view point I have tried to make my patch look interesting.  All of the plants are very ordinary and easy to grow, but none the less interesting and often very pretty.  I will tell you the names if I know them, but please forgive errors or spelling mistakes. (I'm never sure what the rules are for the use of capital letters when naming plants, so mine are a bit random)

 Clicking on the pictures will give you a larger view.

Under the cotoneaster in deep shade is a campanula with very lax stems, but which likes to grow upright and lean against the fence. It has star shaped flowers. It doesn't want to come out of this spot, I have tried unsuccessfully to transplant bits round the garden.  I scattered the seeds of the bright pink lychnis all round the garden. I love the way the brilliant cerise flowers seem to glow in the shade.  

This little pink perennial geranium has done well with all the rain as this is a very dry spot.

Here I have more lychnis, sisyrinchium and purple toadflax, which is a weed/wild flower, but the bees love it. Behind it is a large fennel with beautiful feathery foliage.

Some scarlet and white Verbena and Alyssum 

Here is a pink centaurea and aquilegia seed heads catching the sun on the edge of a border - in the shadow you can make out the glowing pink of Herb Robert which is another rather prolific weed/wildflower.

In this spot a self-seeded Welsh poppy has popped up with the snap-dragons and valerian

Here is another campanula with some Creeping Jenny, the colours really sing

And finally here is a little puzzle for you - can you spot the three little frogs in pond weed below?

Thanks for joining me in my garden, I'll share a little sewing with you now.

This is a bit of 'mad' quilting I did following an idea from Quilting Arts magazine for free form piecing and extreme embellishing - great fun but rather a bright mixture.

I enjoyed stitching it but was flummoxed as to what I could do with it - it certainly didn't merit hanging on a wall - or so I thought until I watched this weeks Design Matters TV.  Laura Kemshall was showing how to use all your samples and odd pieces of quilting to make hanging bags.  They are folded from a square, envelope style with the edges touching.

I have edged it with braid made from twisted sari ribbon and it works really well.

Now what am I going to do with it?

Hope you are enjoying some sunshine too - have a good week.

Jill