Fame at last

- not for me. Go here and scroll down to the bottom – Skye, a.k.a. Ronaldo the Wonder Dog.

The final is at the Hurlingham Club. Mrs Cheddar has to get a very posh frock. I think Skye will probably be equally stylish in her Man U. collar.

On a much more mundane level – some of my creative efforts. As mentioned I made black prints of some of the tile stamps.

 

 

 

 

And then in an effort to try to come to terms with Paint Shop Pro, I played with the scans. Which involved rather a lot of bad tempered muttering, rising at times to loud swearing.   At the moment I can’t work out how to put the results of my efforts here – I suspect it has to do with how I saved the images – but that can be tomorrow’s little effort.

Instead I'll show you  what the stamps look like after a bit of use …

 

 

 

 

And the inverted scan.

Some interesting patterns there – I always like stuff that comes good by accident. Why I like dyeing, I think. And you can always overdye what doesn't work …

 

Today’s brown image is another photo from the Hillier Gardens. Now this one could almost make me like brown.

It might also be interesting to play with it in PSP …

The crumbling ruin has been repaired -

my tooth, that is. I make no comment on the rest of me… The dentist does do Botox but that is one temptation I find it very easy to resist!

I’ve spent the rest of the day playing around with paper and paint. I decided that the problem with what I’ve been doing with the tiles is that they are simple shapes – and a simple shape and a simple treatment = blah.

So I turned to a book which I bought because Wensleydale likes Celtic designs – and then never did anything with. The basic Celtic knots are also simple, but Campbell-Harding and Grey do some very interesting things with them. So, following their example, I have printed some of the tile stamps in black to scan into the computer, made crayon, candle and oil stick rubbings of some of them, and splashed Koh-i-noor and Quink over the rubbings.

Of course I had just got a lot of wet painty papers spread over the floor when the meter reader arrived. And where’s the meter? in a cupboard just behind where I’d put the papers …

Piccies tomorrow. Probably.

Here is an unboring treatment of relatively simple shapes – a photo of a carpet in a shop we visited on our second trip to India. I just wish we could have afforded it …

I’ve got to admit it’s getting better

and will be better still after I’ve been soothed by the soft Welsh lilt of my dentist tomorrow morning, while he repairs the ruins of my molar.

I just wish he had something other than ‘Rugby World’ in the waiting room …

This is looking better too – a bit more definition. Quality Control gave it her seal of approval last night by sitting on it and was very miffed when I chased her off.

 

 

 

Here’s a close up – I'm using a Madeira ribbony braidy thing in silver and gold, couched down with pearl beads. I keep thinking of Elizabethan gallants in white silk doublets.

 

 

 

 

This is a bit better, but I'm still underwhelmed.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And this arrived, which cheered me up – or would have done if I had any money …

When Texere said they were producing a printed catalogue i assumed they were giving up on the samples of yarns stuck to pieces of paper.

As you can see I was wrong.

I want one of each! At least! It almost makes me want to take up knitting again – more seriously than computer knitting – but I don’t have time. [I do make exceptions for toddler knitting, and I have noted some nice machine washable red yarn for future use.]

I will probably order some yarns for dyeing, and some of their Inspiration packs, and then there’s the metal wire – and the felting wool – excuse me while I go and look through it all again. Good job they’re in Bradford.

Here’s a brown picture to look out while I'm spending money I haven’t got – taken at ‘Art in the Garden’ last year. Is it really brown? – possibly not, but the colours are wonderful.

 

 

 

P.S.  the weather is still c**p.

P.P.S. I just moved most of these pictures to the opposite side of the post with a click of a button. Try doing that in Blogger… Thank goodness I discovered Live Writer

The day started well …

when I lost a filling while cleaning my teeth. I haven’t got toothache but what’s left of the tooth is sharp and I keep biting my tongue. And of course it’s a Bank holiday so I can’t get hold of my dentist till tomorrow.

Plus it has been a grey cold day – so what with the weather and my tooth – I have not been in the most positive of moods.

And somehow all my inspiration seems to have gone on holiday. This looks boring and bland …

 

 

 

 

and this is doing its best to look bland despite the colour.

 

 

 

 

 

I think the cream piece needs more gold outlining. No, I can’t see it in the picture either – that’s one reason I think it needs more! There is gold stem stitch round the fleur-de-lises.

The problem with the second piece is that it has been very difficult to find suitable thread. I ended up using some rd/orange hand dye but I have very little of it and it probably needs a lot. [The white is tacking.]

 

So I allowed myself to get side-tracked into tassels.

Pallavi posted a tutorial on tassel making. [I have a thing about tassels. One day I might show you some of the ones I made for C&G. Nothing succeeds like excess.]

As Pallavi’s wasn’t a method I knew, I thought I’d have a go. It only needs little bits of fabric so I fished some scraps out of the bin [literally] and made these. Top right follows her instructions – and then I experimented a bit.  In my hands these are not elegant tassels – but I like them. [I don’t do ‘elegant’. Ever.] I think you could have fun making little dolls with these tassels.

Although that could be today's brown image – here’s another one. This is Babybel’s ‘Ish’  – although I believe that officially his colour is gold. 

 

 

Not much stuff going on around here …

after yesterday’s frenzy of finishing. Well – I finished one sock. The first Trapunto piece is drying after having the marker pen and soluble thread washed out, but I think it will need more rows of hand embroidery so I can’t count it as finished yet.

The weather looked as if it was going to be nice enough to sit outside with some hand embroidery – the second Trapunto piece – but every time I went outside the sun went in and it got cold. If I came in to work in the conservatory the sun came out and it got too warm …  Then Quality Control decided she wanted to be a lap cat which is unusual. She even let me groom her, so the bin is now full of spare cat. Those of you who have had long-haired cats [what my SIL calls a ‘fluffy pussy’] will know what my lap looked like after I’d finished.

So in the absence of anything more exciting – a brown image.

Another bit of photo manipulation using – you guessed it – befunky. Despite the similarity of the pose to some ads for the English Tourist Board, it is my own photo. It is Anthony Gormley’s ‘Sound II’ in the crypt of Winchester Cathedral. The last time we visited  it was very quiet and I was able to take the photograph  without having to push my way through lots of people in a confined space.

And the crypt was flooded so there was a reflection which you can just about see.

It is certainly my favourite sculpture, and probably my favourite piece of art. Sorry, Crosby or Angel of the North fans – they can’t compare with the perfect match of this piece and its setting.

I confess …

 

I was tempted – and I fell. But the socks are within a few rows of finishing – and I have finished this. Sort of.

It needs to be turned into a cushion cover but I don’t have any suitable backing fabric, so that means a little retail therapy. It is a public holiday weekend in the UK – and the fabric shop is next door to a gardening and DIY place, which will be heaving, and just off a major route from London to the south coast – so I am not venturing up there before Tuesday at the earliest.

So I’ve only got 6 things on the go now. Sort of.

I was tempted to start something new, because in Googling about looking at Trapunto I read somewhere that it is a good idea to use polyester wadding for the stuffing, and cotton wadding for the backing, so when you wash it the cotton shrinks a bit and the quilt looks puffier.

It was the magic word ‘shrink’ that did it. So I started this.

Probably all the stitching you can see is a line of tacking across the middle – but take it from me there are four Trapunto’d fleur-de-lises there. The backing is felt – and the plan is to hand quilt it and then shrink it. Remembering the colour catchers this time. I hope.

The cloth is a bit of got-to-the-end-of-the-dyeing-session-so-pour all-the-leftover-dye-over-a-piece-of-scrap fabric. [That was very hard to type and ‘scrap’ lost a letter in the process. Guess which.]

I think it proves quite well that red, yellow and green make brown.

I have two excuses for doing this. The first is Cobi's very sensible comment on my last post, that we should go with the creative flow when inspiration strikes. I know I have spent a lot of my creative life thinking that I would just finish ‘this’ – whatever ‘this’ was – and then do what I really wanted to do. Somehow I never got round to what I really wanted to do. Strangely, C&G seems to have cured me of that to some extent – perhaps because it encouraged me to give myself permission to do creative stuff.

I think that is why I haven’t made many clothes for Babybel – I realised that I could provide her with nice clothes much more cheaply – and have fun – and keep stuff out of landfill – and make a contribution to charity – by buying her things in charity shops.

The second reason is that [retrospectively] I realised that I might be able to use shrunk Trapunto for this month’s Dyehards Surfacing Challenge – a quilt without batting . [Have to check whether a bit of stuffing counts!]

You may think I do far too many challenges - and at times I think you are right – but this month they seem to have kick started me into actually doing something with all these tile ideas, rather than just playing around with paper and paint.

Speaking of which – I decided not to waste the boring white  paper cuts I made for the fleur-de-lis quiltlets - so with some paper and spray paint, I made these. Not sure where I’m going with them, although I think it may be time to deconstruct some tiles…

And finally - a photograph taken on the beach when we went Crosby last summer to see some Gormleys.  There was some very entertaining graffiti on a recumbent and weathered tree trunk – this was my favourite.

The Gormleys were pretty good too.

I can resist anything except temptation.

I already have –er – six things on the go – so many that I made a collage rather than posting individual photos.

On the top row we have the printed canvas I started on holiday. I shall probably finish that tonight while listening to the TV, and then it will become a cushion cover.

Next to it is the salt pans – definitely not forgotten, just waiting patiently to rise through the pecking order.

On the middle row is an experimental piece I haven’t shown you before – inspired by pebbles. It has reverse appliqué, quilting and stitch. It’s stalled a bit because it needs more stitch but I'm not sure what.

Next to that is some locker hooking I started in an attempt to reduce the stash of knitting yarn – but I haven’t done enough to get into a rhythm with it and it may get abandoned.

Bottom left are 1.9  socks for Wensleydale – computer knitting, and very close to finishing if I just stopped typing and started knitting. And last of all the discharged, Kantha’d, shrunk piece.

Of course that doesn’t include all the bits of fabric and thread lying about the sewing room because I had an idea about what to do with them, but never got started. I do have some self-control.

And we won't talk about the large box on the top shelf of the cupboard with the things I will finish one day, honest.

Please tell me I am not alone in this habit of having too many things on the go at once? It happened much less when I was doing C&G  - oh, the discipline of deadlines!

So – this afternoon I was tempted and I fell. I started a seventh piece.

The BQL challenge for May is Trapunto. The original design by Kandy Newton is the word ‘May’ in Trapunto but of course I’ve been thinking about tiles.

So here is a freezer paper cut out adhered to some silk. Since then I have Trapunto'd it, and quilted it – and now it is saying it wants the fleur-de-lis outlined in gold, and probably some gold beads as well. So it isn’t going to be a quickie.

 

I have only Trapunto'd once before, as a sample for C&G.

It was in my leaf period – and my transfer dyes on poly satin period. You may spot a few small beads on there – very useful for covering places where my scissors slipped in removing the extra wadding.

 

 

Now for something a little more restrained. 

This is a design I made using Jane Dunnewold’s technique. This was my Klimt period, in case you hadn’t guessed.

Mmm – the Stitched Textile Design group challenge is to do something inspired by Klimt …

I will not start another piece, I will not start another piece – I will not start … – just yet.