Journal Quilts and New Year

Nearly a month ago now I said I would be back by the end of the week with an update on my Journal Quilts inspired by Cesar Manrique.  Where did the time go?  Where it always goes, it flew away!  Anyway the quilts are finished so without further ado.......

This is 'Herself'.  See any resemblence?  I took one of our holiday pics and printed it out on A4 paper and then traced the main shapes and used the drawing as a guide to the main fabric pieces.  I used my own hand dyes for the background and face and the shirt is an oil stick rubbing over the sole of my new sandals which then had a loose wash of lumiere fabric paint.  My dear friend Carolyn Saxby who we recently caught up with in St Ives (more of that later) suggested that I bead the background and I'm pleased she did.  The free machine embroidery is very very rough but I think it suits the style of the whole piece so I didn't worry how badly I was doing it!

Well, if you've got 'Herself' you should probably have 'Himself', so here  he is.....

Scary or what?!  I followed the same procedure as before and used my hand dyes for the face  and backgrounds.  DH likes to wear his silk tie waistcoats so I made up some fabric to resemble them.  Boy, was that hard!  I bonded the fabrics onto a base but it wasn't easy combining the shapes.  What do you think to the beard and moustache?  I butchered a crocheted doily to get the effect.  As the JQ had to include buttons I used them to describe DH's spotty bow tie.  For both quilts Kaffe Fassett's fabric came in very useful for the eyes.  

I had great fun making both of these and I'd really like to have a go at something similar on a larger scale.  

As you no doubt guessed we disappeared to St Ives for New Year and despite the best efforts of the weather to blow us away we had a lovely relaxed week with some beachy walks and full enjoyment of the beautiful views from the flat we rented.

This was the view in one direction towards the harbour and the Island.

And this is the view the other way across The Malakoff towards Godrevy Lighthouse and the coast beyond Hayle.

You would not expect to see such a  glorious sky at this time of year would you?

We had a real mixture of weather while we were away, from glorious sunshine to howling gales and lashing rain.

I've got lots of lovely photographs to play with and add textures to.

St Ives is the third most popular place to spend New Year's Eve and the place was jumping!  Sadly it threw it down with rain for the celebraitons but it did ease off in time for the fireworks.  We wimped out and watched the whole proceedings from our flat (apartment).

You should be able to see the crowds on this rather blurry photo.  

The fireworks were stupendous and very noisy!!  I don't think cannons going off would have been any louder! YouTube have several videos of the spectacle but I think we had the best view as we were high up and could see all levels of the display.  Sadly YouTube will not give me the code to embed the video here.  

As I said earlier I met up with Carolyn while we were in St Ives and I'll bring you more about that next time.

Meanwhile, thank you all for your lovely Happy New Year messages, I cherish them all.  We are already a week into the New Year and it will no doubt have all the high spots and low spots that every year brings but I do hope for all of us that there are more high spots than low.  Happy Creativity! ♥