This is my Cornwall

Well, it would be if I could only make the move!  However, my heart definitely lies in Cornwall as you probably already know and this morning the postman brought me a wonderful book written by a true Cornishman who knows the area of Penwith like the back of his hand.

The book features Harry's intimate knowledge of the area where he was born, knowledge that he has delighted in sharing with locals and visitors alike on his minibus tours.  My DH and I took one such tour in 2006 on a very misty, mizzly day in June and were introduced to the hidden secrets of the land around St Ives. 

Harry's book is illustrated with photographs and fine drawings and paintings by his wife, Ann.

Sadly Harry has had to undergo surgery which now prevents him from leading his tour groups but his place has been taken by Russell Peake.  A man of many talents, Harry has also written many songs celebrating this beautiful county and you can click on the link below to enjoy just one of his tunes. 

I can't resist showing you just a few of the images from our day out with Harry.  I can't believe it was 5 years ago!

DH practising devining in Towednack Church.

Harry telling us all about the history of the Iron Age settlement at Bodrifty in a very murky setting.

Also at Bodrifty a beautiful twisted thorn tree (could it be blackthorn?).  As we left this atmospheric site my DH managed to slip over into a very soggy patch of ground and spent the rest of the day with a wet btm!

This barn is actually the remnant of a Norman Long House.

.The barn in the previous photograph was down a long track which took us to this arrangement of stones known as Men an Tol.

Finally, this is Lanyon Quoit, the remains of a long barrow. 

If you want to know more about all these locations contact Harry and order his very informative book.  (I don't have any affiliation with Harry other than having enjoyed hearing his stories and his music).

I have a lot of catching up to do here on the blog and have missed sharing several things with you so I'll try and have a catch up soon.  We have just got back from making the final clearance of Mum's house so while I am worn out again at least we won't be travelling back and forth to Essex or have the stress of dismantling Mum's life.  Please keep your fingers crossed for us that the house will sell quickly so that we can secure Mum's care.

PS  Thank you to everyone who has voted for 'Unfolding the Quilts'.  If you haven't voted yet there's still time, just click the link in my side bar.  Many thanks :-D

Please help!

The Quilt Museum in York, UK, is hoping to benefit from Lottery funding and has been short-listed to the semi-final of the National Lottery Awards.  You can help by voting and getting The Quilt Museum through to the final of the Lottery Awards with exposure on national TV.  The Quilt Museum have explained it so much better than I can so I'll let you read what they have to say:

"Our project “Unfolding the Quilts”, based at the Quilt Museum and Gallery, has reached the semi-finals of the National Lottery Awards, the annual search to find Britain’s favourite Lottery-funded projects.

The Heritage Lottery grant supports our work with volunteers and in education and outreach. The grant has enabled The Quilters’ Guild to open the Quilt Museum and Gallery, creating wider public access to our collection of over 800 historic and contemporary quilts. 

Over 30,000 people have visited the Quilt Museum and Gallery since opening in 2008 and this would not have been possible without the support of volunteers stewarding the exhibitions, helping with education events and working behind the scenes. Volunteers have been able to learn about the Collection and learn new skills. Others have practiced their own sewing skills making items in support of exhibitions. 

The Museum and Gallery’s education programme has enabled over 7000 adults and children to learn and develop practical sewing skills and to learn about the history, art and craft of patchwork and quilting. We have worked with a wide variety of people including school groups, children and young people, young mothers, people in hospital, elderly people in care homes and others from across the community.

WE NEED YOUR HELP!

We are competing against nine other projects to be voted the

‘Best Heritage Project’ and if we reach the final, our project,

- and the Quilt Museum and Gallery – will be featured on BBC 1. 

This would be tremendous publicity for quilting and for the Quilt Museum and Gallery. "

So please, click on the button in my side-bar or here and make your vote and get all your friends to vote too.  We're all being encouraged to get back to traditional skills including 'Make do and Mend' and if you have any interest in anything remotely connected to stitching, textile arts or quilting the Quilt Museum needs your vote!  Voting is open until midday 20 June but don't wait, vote now!  Thank you :-)

Creativity at Last - Journal Quilts

I cannot believe it but I have actually managed to complete all 4 of my Journal Quilts for the Contemporary Quilt Group and before the May deadline too!  How did I do that?  Amazing! 

This year the criterion for the quilts is that they must measure 10" square and incorporate a set motif.  For February to May (we started late this year so the year will run to next February) the requirement is to include a circle or part thereof.  For the remainder of the year we have to make 4 to include text and 4 to include buttons. of course, there is nothing to say that you can't include all 3 requirements in all the quilts!

I decided that this time I would try and work to a theme with the hope that the quilts can be hung together as a whole when they are all made.  I wanted to use Gaudi and his mosaics as my inspiration and have tried to keep that in mind while I was working.  This first quilt was started in February but was the last to be finished because I couldn't decide how to quilt it.  I used and exercise from Jae Maries book "Contrasting Elements"  as my starting point and made templates to cut out the shapes and holes.  Before I started I bonded sheers and voiles to a hand dyed orange fabric and a commercial check fabric and cut segments and circles from them.  With a bit of fiddling I cut holes from layered fabrics to reveal the fabrics beneath and bonded the segments and circles on top.  All the edges were stitched with a decorative button hole stitch.  It took me until this month to decide how to quilt this little quilt and I have slowly used a seeding stitch over the surface.  Slowly because this sort of work makes my hands very sore.

The edge has been finished with a facing, which I have never tried before, but which was quite easy to do.  My thanks go to Laura and  Linda Kemshall for their video tutorial.

Quilt 2 was made by layering fabrics and free machining roughly flowery shapes to isolate areas that I could then cut down through to reveal the layers below.  The dark blue fabric is a satiny fabric.  I then layered a voile with text on it over the top and free machined from the back with metallic thread in the bobbin as my machine did not like the metallic as the top thread.   This quilt was faced with the yellow fabric in the quilt.

This quilt came form an article in Quilting Arts magazine (I think).  The circle shapes were layered onto satin and held in place with glue stick glue.  With some difficulty I free machine quilted the piece with the metallic thread after overlaying a dark blue chiffon.  Again the edge was faced but with a cotton this time as I thought satin would be too slippery.

This final quilt is growing on me (pardon the pun!)  I bonded a fusible to the reverse of the fabrics I was planning to use and drew out flower shapes.  I then cut out the petals to leave the negative shapes between them which I overlaid on a contrasting flower before free machining all the flowers down.  The edge was finished with a facing and I think I quite like this way of finishing a quilt.  

I think I have drifted away from the Gaudi theme a little but I have tried to unite the quilts by using the same fabrics throughout. 

For the next four months we have to incorporate text into the quilts.  If I intend to hang my quilts together I cannot have them all looking so busy so I will be looking to keep the next four a bit simpler and hopefully life will not be so difficult and I will be able to make one a month as intended.  I am definitely going to have to have a dyeing session before I continue.

While I'm in the mood I'll show you what I've been up to today.  You can tell, can't you, that catching up on housework is well down the list of priorities? lol  Emma who blogs as 'A Little Bit of Everything' has been encouraging me to get to grips with the Thermofax screens I've had for over a year so without further ado I headed for the shed this morning before I could get distracted elsewhere.  After a tentative start I had a great time printing on paper and fabric and managed to get wonderfully messy!

The prints above are on pre-painted watercolour paper.

These prints above are on music paper, hand made paper and calico.

I like this best of all.  It is printed over previously worked watercolour paper, quite possibly a drop sheet from stamping and spraying.  I like the partial feathers which have come from picking up ink on the back of the plate from previous prints.

I really like this piece on thick cotton which had been dye painted some time ago.  I'm going to have a play with this in Photoshop to see what I can come up with.

I think these are printed onto hand made paper (dark)  and calico (light).

All of these pieces are purely experiments and I am looking forward to playing with dyes as these were all done with textile inks and I was feeling under pressure worrying about the screens drying out. 

Thank you for spurring me on Emma :-)  I just need a sink in my studio now to save me running backwards and forwards to the house to wash my screens out!

Finally ( I know, you get nothing for weeks and then I can't shut up!), I leave you with a pic of my DH in his wasp killing get up.

You can tell he didn't intend to get stung, can't you?  The silly things were nesting in our blue tit box so they had to go.

On the Plus Side

Despite the sadness of today there was one highlight that made the day easier to bear.  My lovely stepdaughter came up for the day and we had a few hours to enjoy her company.

Don't let the photo fool you, she wasn't in Australia!  I am very proud to call this beautiful girl my daughter and I'm probably embarrassing the heck out of her with this post but, what the heck! Sometimes things just have to be said! :-)  Thank you L for making today easier.

While I have not been getting much done I have been finding a few minutes every day to hand quilt my Journal Quilt for the Contemporary Quilt Group.  No photos yet but I almost have the four required quilts finished in time for the deadline of 31 May.  I just have to face all four.  I've not faced a quilt before so this will be a new adventure.  Fortunately Laura and Linda Kemshall have a  video tutorial on their Design Matters site so I hope to be able to make full use of that. 

Time I went and stitched a bit more.  See you soon and thank you again for all your warm words.

Sleep Tight

On a lovely sunny day we have said our goodbyes to Grace today and I think we did her proud.  About 25 of her friends got together for the service and a few refreshments afterwards and many memories were shared.  It is sad to say goodbye to someone special but we all have lots of happy times to think about and I think Grace would have been pleased with her send off today.  Hopefully she's raising a glass of 'Grouse' and looking back on her long life.  Cheers Grace!

Thank You

I have been very touched by all your words of comfort and friendship since Grace passed away.  Thank you so much everyone for your messages and emails.  This last week has been a difficult one but we have now pretty much organised Grace's funeral which she wants kept 'as short as possible'.  Friends will gather on Thursday to say their Goodbyes and remember happy times.  

We seem to be surrounded by loss just lately.  My sister-in-law lost her father just before Grace died and I heard yesterday that the lady my Mum used to cruise with died suddenly last week.  I told Mum about Grace but I am tempted not to mention her cruising friend unless she does.  Although it does seem that her dementia cushions the emotional impact of such news.

I am having problems blogging at the moment which I suppose is understandable.  I feel overwhelmed by everything and am trying to maintain a sense of proportion.  I'm not saying this for sympathy but because I know many are struggling equally with loss and grief.  This last week I have struggled to think properly and have even been confused as to whether it is my Mum or Grace that had died.  I suppose that is because I am also grieving for the parts of Mum that we have lost.  I am conscious that I have suffered with reactive depression in the past and I don't want to go there again.  

Today I decided I should try and do something positive so that I could feel a sense of achievement and not feel so overwhelmed by all the stuff in my life.  I know housework isn't important at such times but you should see my house!  Well, no you shouldn't, it's a tip! This morning DH and I had an albeit short session tackling the burgeoning growth in the garden and when rain forced us indoors (Hooray for rain!  We need more!) I had a great time ruthlessly throwing out all the fabrics and old garments that I will never use in my textile work (Oh no I won't!).  We have about 7 bags to go to the Charity (Thrift) shop and I now have space in boxes and drawers to put away some of the fabric that's laying around and cluttering up the place.  Hooray for me!

I never did finish telling you about our Cornish holiday or all the wonderful textures we found and I still have to bring you photos of my gorgeous great-nephew at Easter so I will try and get back to being a good blogger soon.  Meanwhile I leave you with a pic of our lovely nephew practising his walking.

Thank you all again for your friendship and I should say welcome to people who have started following recently.   Hopefully normal service will be restored before long.

Our beautiful friend

June 1911 - 09 May 2011

Our very special friend Grace, who has been very unwell for the last 2 weeks, closed her eyes for the last time this morning and is now at peace.  Her constant wish over the last few years was to not reach her 100th birthday, she felt she had lived long enough.  Today her wish was granted and she slipped away before we had time to say 'Goodbye'.  Our hearts are heavy but happy that Grace has her wish.  I have learned so much from this beautiful lady who has shared so many of my adventures from her armchair and always shared a laugh and her lovely smile.  Sleep well Grace xx

Daniel O'Donnell and this particular piece is Grace's favourite.

The Happy Couple

Britain has gone Royal Wedding mad this week and tomorrow Prince William and Kate Middleton will be getting married in front of a worldwide audience.  The home where my Mum is living is having a Royal Wedding party and watching the proceedings on the telly followed by a garden party lunch so I will be going along to share the party with my Mum and the lovely ladies.  I've been rooting around for something red, white and blue to wear without much success so I shall just have to content myself with waving a small flag or wearing DH's velvet Union Jack hat.

I don't like to confront politics and such like on my blog but I do think the Royal Family work very hard for this country and with all the pressures of living in the public eye I would wish the soon-to-be-newly-wed couple a long and happy life together.  Britain excels at pomp and circumstance and everyone is getting very excited so I'm sure tomorrow will be a colourful spectacle which I will enjoy on the telly (I have kept away from all the prequels airing on the tv all week).  If you're getting into the spirit and enjoying a street party or family get together, have fun!

Sketchbook fun

Only, I didn't call it a sketchbook because that word scares me so it's a workbook. :-)  I took some supplies with me to St Ives (well, quite a lot actually) with the intention of playing and we hadn't been in the flat long before I set my stall out,

I started off a bit tentatively as I haven't played about much with mixed media for ages but eventually I got going and really enjoyed myself.

This first rather ragged effort was sparked by the bath mat and as you can see I made a mistake at first and had to adjust to give a double line break between the large bubbles.  I can see this transferring to fabric fairly readily.

This is collage with scraped paint and stamped circles.

I had fun with this little indian block stamp and added some watercolour and  the lyrics of a very old song that came to me (Burl Ives sang it I think.  Oops! No, it appears it was Frankie Howerd)

On a theme of fishes I came across some dried beech leaves that I'd forgotten about and, as they reminded me of fish shapes that's what they became, along with some foil sweet wrappers.

I had seen a painting in the Sloop Inn in St Ives by Doris Lindemann, a local teacher I had had a workshop with several years ago and thought I'd have a go at something similar.  This started out with an orange base colour and then I worked very quickly over the top to get the energy of wave movements and tried to scratch through to reveal the colour underneath.  I wasn't altogether successful as my acrylic paints dried very quickly. After this I had a hankering all the holiday to work in oils.

I've forgotten exactly what I did here but it involved rubbing a metallic wax crayon over a molding mat, painting over, adding graphite and glueing on some of the beads that Carolyn gave me.  I stitched the page to the next page adding beads as I went and added some collage on the right.

This was a Sharpie doodle in front of the telly.

I was quite pleased with my little sketch of St Ives out of the window and I love my doodle on the right.  Much better than the first one I did that I'm too ashamed to show you.

This is an exercise I've done before and concerns edges and hard and soft marks.  It works quite well turned so that the layers run horizontally like a landscape too.

Not wonderfully successful but these two above were fun.

This page was really fun to do.  I wrote instructions on small pieces of paper and then put them in bowls and picked out one piece at a time and did whatever it said on the paper.  I did structure it slightly by grouping the papers so that I chose base instructions first (collage, paint, stamp, resist, print), then colour and finally embellishment.   Of course, I assumed paint or collage would come out first but, oh no, resist! was the first instruction.  That made an interesting start.  Then stamp, so the feet went on in 'blue' which was the colour I picked randomly.  'Paint' resulted in picking a choice 'complementary' from the papers and then collage followed.  Other instructions picked out were 'draw' and the implement picked out was a Sharpie.  Finally 'Spray' came out of the embellishments bowl.  I really enjoyed this way of working and I will definitely do it again.

This is my next favourite page.  I worked from an exercise in Jae Maries book, Contrasting Elements, and it is collages made up of paper napkins, monoprints on various surfaces from Sally Maccabe's workshop last year, hand made Indian papers, paper lamination, wrapping paper, fabric, scrim and some meshy stuff that I've forgotten the name of.

This is my favourite page.  I have long fancied doing a fun portrait in fabric and I had a whale of a time putting this page together.  The background is some fancy tissue paper I bought at Paperchase in London.  The face is some paper lamination that I did some time ago.  The doilly hair and yarn eyebrows came from Carolyn's gift as did the 'necklace' and the mouth and body are batiks.  I think I really must have a go at this in fabric, maybe as a Journal Quilt.

Back to Eden

There seems to be a conspiracy to keep me away from blogging just lately.  First Blogger won't post my photos, then our internet connection repeatedly keeps dropping out (should be sorted tomorrow......or else!) and on Saturday sadly our dear friend Grace, who is 99, was suddenly taken very seriously ill so we have spent a lot of time at the hospital.  Happily today she has surprised everybody by turning a great corner and is bouncing back yet again.  The medics are astounded that she is pulling through.  Fingers crossed that she continues to make progress.  She is laughing and joking with the nurses today when only yesterday we were summoned at 8 in the morning as they thought she was not going to survive a crisis.  She is one remarkable lady!

Anyway, back to Eden.  Needless to say I always have my eyes open for pattern and texture when we are out and about and Eden was no exception.

This beautiful skeleton leaf caught my eye.

I think this is a leaf of a banana tree. (remind me to come back to the banana)

 "Follow the yellow brick road".

These wavy lines were a non-slip surface.

This was the shadow thrown onto the quarry sides by the roof panels.

On the subject of bananas we saw this catchy little sign

I'm easily amused ;-)  They had a display area where children and any adults who fancied it, could press buttons and get music to play and I had a lovely time dancing around to a little number entitled "Bananas in Pajamas" .........you had to be there!  Actually I Googled it for you and found a clip on Youtube but I thought I'd spare you. ;-)

I had a really lovely day meeting up with my dear friend Carolyn who many of you know already.  We swapped some gifts and as usual Carolyn was sooooo generous and I have come home with some beautiful goodies to play with.

These goodies include Carolyn's eco-dyed fabrics, lots of beautiful threads, some of her yummy hand made beads, commercial beads and a beautiful heart shaped beads in my favourite colour, turquoise.  I have already used some of the threads in some artwork that I did on holiday.  

A bonus gift was these lovely fingerless mittens that Carolyn had made for both of us.  Fingerless to leave DH's fingers free to use his camera and mine to leave fingers free for picking up treasures on the beach.  Carolyn knows us too well!

We had great fun opening up Carolyn's bundle for the Erosion Bundle Project and there were some gorgeous treasures to be found.

Can you believe that these Sycamore seeds actually germinated inside the bundle?

Carolyn tells you more about the contents of the bundle on her blog but she achieved some wonderful colour bleeds through the various layers. 

I shall look forward to seeing what is eventually made from all the different pieces of the bundle.

We rounded off our day by visiting a couple of art galleries in St Ives.  Porthminster Gallery just below our flat had an exciting and varied exhibition of paintings and ceramics by several artists including Matthew Lanyon, Tony Scrivener, Margaret Lovell, Sarah Perry and Jenny Hirst.  My DH particularly liked a painting by Jenny Hirst called 'Estuary'.  I very cheekily took a photograph of the windows which I hope they will forgive me for showing here (I figure you could stand in front of it and look at it from the street so a photo should be ok).

I was fascinated by the Mathew Lanyon paintings which had so much texture in them and so much to look at.  Many of his paintings were inspired by flights in a glider (he was a glider pilot) and reflect aerial views and impressions.

Jenny Hirst's painting 'Estuary' is in the centre of the photo above.

My DH made us lunch of cheese on crumpets (pyklets to some) and generally spoiled us so we had a great day.  Sadly it was over all too soon and we have to wait another year for our next get together.

Well, I'd better save the rest for another day or I'll have nothing to bore you with.  Next time I'll share my holiday workbook.  It's not a wonderful work of art but at least I did something and I had fun!

Many thanks to all of you, especially the no-reply commenters who I sometimes forget to mention, for all your lovely and supportive comments.  I do appreciate every one or them and the fact that people take the time in a very busy life to say a few words.  This is a great community!