A Saturday Saunter – and the first 4 ‘drawings’.

As I may have mentioned before, we don’t often go out on Saturdays – especially not in the summer, when roads leading to the south coast are best avoided. But Mrs Cheddar alerted us to an open day at Chawton House, and as it was a beautiful day, we ventured across to the other side of the M3 to take a look.

For non-Janeites, Chawton belonged to Jane Austen’s rich brother Edward Austen Knight, the one who was adopted by rich relatives. The house has obviously seen a lot of changes since then, but it is beautiful, with  lovely gardens. There were Shire horses, and Regency dancers, and the best carrot cake I’ve ever tasted [after the one Babybel made, obviously]. There will be a sculpture exhibition by Jon Edgar in the garden later in the year, so I think we’ll be going back.

On a rather less exalted artistic level – I have put the first 4 homework ‘drawings’ – or rather, 3 paste papers and a bit of embroidery – in my homework book. The lower two are Alisa Golden’s technique from ‘Painted Paper’, using some fig leaves and a chunk of cupressus Leylandii. The red one is more of a traditional paste paper, and the embroidery is a recycled C&G left-over, which may be cheating but it seemed to fit the theme. It is free machined silk organza sewn over a painted page. It was only when I scanned it that I realised there is part of a flower in the background, so I may go back and pencil that in a bit more. Would that count as a fifth drawing, do you think?

The piece I showed you yesterday isn’t there because I couldn’t bring myself to cut it down to fit this book - I rather regret cutting down the two green pieces in the image. So I will have to force myself to make another book for bigger pieces. So much for using a smaller book to make myself work smaller …

This is a sneak preview of another ‘drawing’. I made a workshop sample for the 2D piece using eyelets, and although I didn’t use them in the final piece, i really liked the effect of lots of eyelets piled up on top of each other. So here are some summery eyelets – but there will be several more before it’s finished. And possibly a few beads. But definitely no sequins.

The base fabric is snow dyed silk, which as you can see looks very summery, like the dappled shade of our apple trees if i look out of the window right now.

After I’d posted last night I went and pootled about with a few on-line graphics sites and ended up with – er – about 50 images. So only another 50 to go – not. I don’t think I’d get away with it – and I do need to challenge myself a bit!

I am going to have to be very selective – but some of them are going into the homework book[s]. Probably this one, made here -

 

 

 

 

 

and this one, made here.

But as far as the other 48 are concerned – mmm – maybe not.