More brass & Lutradur

As promised these are the rubbings that I did yesterday afternoon. There were more but they are on blue paper and are not so clear. The lady's head with the wonderful headdress belongs to the hands alongside and the hands on the far right you have already seen yesterday.

I have had an enjoyable time in the studio today playing with lutradur and lace for the Fibre & Stitch Challenge. I have worked with a combination of acrylic paint and inks and have to admit that I did use a hairdryer to speed up the drying process as I wanted to get all the layers painted today.

This is the first layer of inks in red madder deep and magenta. It also has a tiny touch of blue here and there. On the left hand edge is a little acrylic bronze paint which I put on by mistake at this stage. I dried the ink and then painted on acrylic interference paint in shimmering red.

The next stage was to paint a layer of acrylic bronze paint (above).And finally a mixture of inks : magenta, red madder deep, brown brazil (just 2 drops) and gold red.

This detail gives a better idea of the colour which in reality is wonderfully rich and lustrous and which changes as the light catches it. I used bondaweb to attach the lace to the lutradur and the remains of that is showing slightly lighter. My plan now is to apply some hand stitching in metallic thread to secure the pieces of lace. When it's finished I will be using this piece for the front cover of a journal.

This lutradur is a medium weight, not the heaviest and I have also painted initial washes onto some other pieces in lighter weights which a friend very kindly sent me. The lightest weight is beautiful and can be laid over other fibres. I will be working some more with the lighter weights and will post my results later.

I am struggling quite badly today with this anaemia thing and am wondering if I should go back to the doctor as I have had something approaching pain in my chest today again (I didn't mention this to the doctor last week). Apparently angina can be a result of anaemia but I suppose I shouldn't self diagnose. This week and next are going to be pretty busy for me so I may not get round to blogging quite as regularly for a while. Don't go away though. I'll soon have lots of pics to show.

How much fun

can a person have in church? I have just spent a really great weekend on my knees in the chancel of Barrowby Church doing brass rubbings (well, not quite all weekend). Some kind soul gave me a hassock to kneel on and off I went. I had never done any brass rubbing before but it is really therapeutic, especially when accompanied by Josh Grogan on a CD, followed by an assortment of relaxing classics. Lovely.

I think these 3 figures on the right are angels.

This first rubbing that I did was unfortunately a bit pale as I didn't realise how hard I needed to "rub".

This lady's name is Margaret Deen.

These particular brasses lie under a carpet in the chancel of the church and are rarely seen as they are quite worn and have suffered considerable damage over the years. The more I've looked at these brasses the more detail I have seen. It seemed extremely strange to be looking so closely into the face of people who had lived and died centuries ago. I found the hands of the effigies particularly beautiful, the fingers all so slender. The hands in the top picture belong to the lady above and her cloak is held on by a thick cord. I made a larger rubbing today and I will blog that when I have scanned or photographed it. The gentleman above is probably looking so forlorn because this is not his lady.....I "rubbed" her today and will post her tomorrow. She wears a simple ermine trimmed gown so must have been a person of some standing.

The Art & Craft Fair was quite well attended and DH did well with his photos.

The children had been busy with their own crafts and had also, previously, painted a beautiful altar cloth.

These butterflies are wonderful. They are so colourful and so exhuberant, they really lifted my mood.

Something for the patchworkers.

No time for my own artwork today except for some stitching on the weaving. More of that later.