Two for the price of one

I’m afraid that blogging is going to be intermittent or even non-existent for the next few days – there's nothing wrong, but I may not be able to post.

So to ensure you get your full complement of blue images, today I’m posting two.

OK – this one is blue-grey. One of my favourite views, even on a grey day. It was taken looking upstream from Craig Goch, the top dam of the Elan Valley reservoirs  in Powys. In Wales, in case you haven’t guessed. 

And this is some computer manipulation of a photo of one of our elderly apple trees. I wish I could remember how I did it …

 

 

 

 

 

That’s it for a while – normal wittering will be resumed as soon as possible.

This and that …

mostly that, as I had another insomniac night. so didn’t feel like doing much that was really creative.

These quilts had dried after dyeing and washing, so had to be inspected. The wadding in this one was cotton so it has shrunk a little and has a wonderful texture.

The white dots are a fabric I printed with bubble wrap – as you can see acrylic paint doesn’t dye. I like the effect and can see uses for it.

 

This is the back – an old piece that I discharged, and which  has now been over-dyed twice.

 

 

 

 

 

This wadding was polyester, so no shrinkage. The binding fabric was labelled ‘cotton’ – but was clearly poly-cotton, as I suspected. The white shapes are a commercial fabric, which must also have been printed with something that won't dye.

If I find the time I might over dye this – perhaps with more magenta, perhaps with blue around the edges.

 

Obviously I had polyester thread in the bobbin when I did the quilting. Not bad for my first attempt with the embroidery module.

 

 

 

The quilts weren’t today’s activities, all I did was take the photos. And as you can see I had help.

What I did do this morning was slosh a bit of paint around.

If these look like tile colours – you might well be right. The salt pan ideas haven’t gone away, but I have  a lot of tile ideas as well – and creeping in are some ideas about archaeology, inspired by this. [More pictures here.]

We have a connection to this site as Mrs Cheese Major was the manager of the Bottoms Up shop which used to be there.

  Today’s blue image is a window at the Weald and Downland Museum. The glass is reflecting the sky but the panes are all at different angles because the lead between the panes has distorted.

When I was doing ‘Creative Sketchbooks’ i made a paper collage inspired by this window, using skies from lots of magazine ads. I think it would make an interesting canvas work piece – a good way to use up lots of bits of blue and grey …

A Wednesday wander and some works in progress …

Our outing this week was to the Furzey Gardens, on the edge of the New Forest. There is a small gallery there, the wonderfully named Will and Em Gallery. The textile group ‘Fray Edges’ have a display there this month, which is well worth a visit, as there is some unusual work. I was particularly taken with the work of Judith Bell – appliqué and re-embroidery of what looked like soft furnishing fabric -and Caroline Bell – retro 50s/60s designs,[ not shown on the website]. Both featured impressive use of satin stitch. [Satin stitch and I don’t get on …]

After the gallery we had a cream tea and walked it off [maybe] in the gardens proper.

Lots of spring flowers 

 

 

 

 

 

and other items of interest, 

 

 

 

 

 

 

including these two. I love alpaca. In my dreams I own some, I have learned to spin, and I knit nothing else but alpaca.

 

 

I have rather less tolerance for fairies – but was rather taken with this.

 

 

 

The gardens have a children's play area with towers and huts and galleries and swings – which was proving very popular, as it is the school holidays – which we forgot until we arrived and found the car park almost full. Ah – the bliss of not knowing when the school holidays are …

I did get round to adding some stitch to the salt pans last night, while not watching a programme on the BBC about Siberian  horse herders. And if you watched it you will know why I was glad to have something else to look at.

The plan is to add lots of free cross stitch in a variety of threads – and then some beads. This is the first layer. [That isn’t dandruff, it’s the foiling reflecting the flash.]

 

And I am glad to say that some of the rusty washers look a bit rustier today – some very interesting colours seem to be developing.

 

 

 

Today’s blue image is a wonderful door in the centre of Winchester near the Cathedral. In my dreams I live behind a door like this [with the alpaca in the back garden …]

Oops!

I forgot the blue image!

You may remember the sunset from the red week. This is the blue version, also taken from our bathroom window, which is the only west facing window in the house.

That glow at the bottom is Southampton.

Continuing my policy of writing a warts and all blog …

here are the unedited highlights of what I have done today. Apart from deleted expletives.

 

 

 

At around 3 a.m. I finished this – the BQL April Challenge. Not my usual style, but I had fun finding the embellishments. 

One of the drawbacks of insomnia is that when I eventually fall asleep, I don’t wake till mid morning and feel that the best of the day has gone – which is what happened this morning.

Usually I also feel like death warmed up and not much gets done  - but fortunately I’ve had quite a lot of energy today.

So I got the two quilts I’ve been intending to dye for weeks into their cat litter trays – er - dye baths.  

This is the black and white one, upside down.

 

 

 

 

And this is the blue and white with mistaken bits of orange. At the moment my red and purple ambitions are looking a bit – er – over-ambitious.

 

I did wear gloves, honest!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Then I tried the last of my discharge paste on some of the unbleachable black fabric.

Here it is with the paste drying.

If you are not familiar with discharge paste – you let it dry on the fabric  and then iron it with lots of steam.

If you are not familiar with removing batik wax, you sandwich it between absorbent paper and iron it with a dry iron.

You may have spotted a potential conflict between these two requirements. As did I. A bit late. In the end I ironed out as much wax as I could between sheets of paper and then steam pressed it uncovered.

The result?

Zilch. No discharge. The grey marks you can see are wax, not discharging.

This is a good quality fabric. Unfortunately.

 

Of course if I had known before going to the class that we were going to discharge it I’ve had tested it. Maybe.

Plan C was to paint the fabric with textile paint and iron it to get out the wax and set the paint.

Fortunately, it worked – the wax resisted the paint.

Unfortunately the wax/paint combination stuck the paper to the fabric.

Fortunately it has come out with a hot wash, and is currently drying.

This is the final piece – I was running out of paint and as the paint was thinner it didn’t stick.

I don’t think I shall bother doing the wax/paint thing again – I shall just test the fabric to be sure it discharges.

 

Next I tried to rust some washers. This is Chemtek Instarust on B&Q washers. Insta, maybe – but rust? I think not. And for some reason the chemical didn’t want to spread over the edge of the washers.

I don’t dislike the result but it wasn’t quite what I wanted. [These are for a postcard swap on Dyehard Surfacing.]

Maybe I’ll try the bleach and vinegar method when I’m feeling brave and have found my respirator …

And finally – the salt pans.  The commentary on the original picture in Arthus-Bertrand’s book mentions how valuable a commodity salt used to be. So I decided to add a subtle hint of glitz to show that.

Foil and I have an on-off relationship. Chiefly off. I once ruined an entire sheet by having the iron too hot. But of course I know you have to have it shiny side up or it doesn’t work.

So I got out the bonding powder – this was going to be subtle. And I found a scrap of fabric to test it first – yes. it worked.

I sprinkled the bonding powder lightly on the salt pans, covered it with foil, covered it with baking parchment and pressed.

Nothing – apart from melted grains of bonding powder. S**t – have I got the iron too hot? [I'm not convinced the thermostat is accurate.] Turn it down and try again – and again – and again. Interesting pattern of bonding powder on the surface of the foil but no foil on the salt pans. Try a different container of bonding powder – no better. Is it the quilted surface causing the problem?

Try again on the scrap – yes, works fine, I haven’t killed the foil with too much heat.

In the end I realised what you have already realised. . This foil is quite matte – and I’d got it the wrong way up. [Hangs head in shame!]

So now my salt pans are foiled, I have the threads I bought at Hobbycraft yesterday and I can put off adding stitch no longer – provided there is something decent to listen to on the TV tonight.

Here and there

We spent the morning shopping in town – where I scored these two from the Oxfam book shop.

I don’t intend to make anything for Babybel from the knitting book, I just collect old needlework books, the older the better.

The knitting one is undated but probably dates from the 50s, judging by the styles. The embroidery one was published in 1985 and has lots of interesting ideas in it – and a rather scary description of using acetone and acetate to make ‘chemical lace’. I don’t think I will be doing that any time soon.

In the afternoon we went out to Hobbycraft to spend my birthday present from Cheese Major. Here is the result – a combination of essentials and new toys. I don’t know how the soluble crayons compare with my Neocolours but they were half price so I got the biggest box they had – at less than £8 they had to be worth a try.

Today's blue image is  of a decanter I inherited from my aunt. We are not decanter people but it is such a wonderful colour. Perhaps if we served our vin de tanker from this we could fool people that it was something a little more expensive?

 

 

 

This is it again with the 6 glasses which go with it.

I know nothing about its age or where it came from - any glass experts out there? This is getting a bit like the Antiques Road show …

 

It all seemed so easy …

Let's start with a beautiful peaceful scene. before things get a little more hectic. This week's colour is blue - and here is a beautiful blue sky. Not the Mediterranean, but the English Channel in April last year. Take at Highcliffe in Dorset, one of our favourite places.

I read a very positive post somewhere – it’s taken such a long time to sort it out I’ve forgotten where – saying that using Microsoft Live made it much easier to write your blog posts than using B*****r.

So I downloaded it.

What the post didn’t tell you is that Microsoft also wants you to have all sorts of stuff I didn't want and/or didn’t understand.

And that it takes a long time to download. especially if you do it twice by mistake.

And that then you can’t find the damn thing. 

It does seem to let you do some interesting things, though. Like put rounded corners on your pictures – did you notice that? [Assuming its still there by the time I post this.]

And the preview shows it on your page, not on Blogger's white page.

And the para breaks are automatically double spaced and they seem to stay where you want them!

So, on balance, after writing half a post, I quite like it.

The rounded corner picture above is of the salt pans with a blanket stitch edging on it – which I like so much that I have decided not to dye it. The problem in the top left hand corner has been corrected since I took the photo. Now I need to think about how I’m going to embroider it. Quilters have it so easy, they would be finished by now.

This is the bleached piece from yesterday – I haven’t got round to trying to discharge the other piece. [Notice the cool reflection?]

I was worried that some of the very fine wax lines wouldn’t resist the bleach, but as you can see they did. I think this may get the C June Barnes treatment – quilting on felt, and shrinking. It is pretty uneven already because I didn’t think to neaten it up before I used it – so a bit of distortion isn’t going to make much difference.

I’ve just spell checked all that lot – Writer’s spell checker is better than Blogger’s as well. Still doesn’t seem to correct ‘i’ though – although I bet it picks up ‘i’ll’. Yup, I was right.

It’s got an ‘undo’ for when you delete pictures by accident like I always do in Blogger, although not a ‘redo’, unfortunately.

Adding pictures seems to be quicker, although that may be because I’m using the laptop which doesn’t have gigs of pictures on it like the other computer. Yet.

Writer puts the picture where the cursor is – not at the top of the page - so if you’ve deleted one by accident, when you replace it you don’t have to persuade it to move down to the bottom of what you’ve written, deranging everything in it‘s wake because Blogger insists on adding all those breaks in your deathless prose that it won’t let you put in normally.

This has turned into a bit of a rant hasn't it?