"Seven years With The Wrong Woman"

I've had an old song going round my head today and so I decided to google it and see if I could find it.  Well, of course, I could.  Here are the words:

(Bob Miller songwriter.
Seven years with the wrong woman
Is more than a man can stand
Seven years with the wrong woman
Will wreck most any good man.
Seven years with the wrong woman
It's the same in the mountain or dale
She'll stay awake all night tryin' to start a fight
Then have you thrown in the jail.
Seven years with the wrong woman
Is punishment there is bad
Seven years with the wrong woman
Will drive most any man mad.
When you married the wrong woman
There is only one thing you can do
Dig yourself a hole crawl in the hole
Then pull the ground over you.
--- Instrumental ---
Listen boys if you're thinking of marriage
Take warning to what I tell
Don't you marry the wrong woman
It's worse than living in jail.
Seven years with the wrong woman
It'll end you and turn your hair gray
They say love is blind but search till you find
A face you can stand every day...

The song was sung by Eddy Arnold and I remember it from when I was much younger.  I think the title was mentioned in a comedy show and that's why it's stuck in my head.  You can hear it on Youtube.



Why have I got this tune in my head today?  Seven years ago today, on a very cold and grey day I married my very lovely DH and I thank my lucky stars every day that I did.  Happy Anniversary sweetheart ♥♥

Wendy Dolan II and catch ups

It's almost the middle of March and we are all shivering and watching the snow spiralling around outside as a wicked northerly wind whips it into a frenzy.  What is going on?  This winter has gone on long enough and I for one am longing for the promised warmer days of Spring.  This is the third month that we have had to err on the side of caution and cancel our quilt group meeting this evening.  Come on Spring!  Don't be shy!

All these cold temperatures make it very tempting to stay indoors and play at being creative.  I've added some more free machining to the piece I started at Wendy Dolan's workshop last month.

I havn't added a lot to it, just some touches of orange and suggestions of the stony path in front of the doors.  I now need to explore Wendy's techniques some more, maybe in an abstract way but I have a feeling I need to rearrange my workspaces for what I have in mind.

I had a lovely surprise the other day.  I had entered a little giveaway online on Dionne Swift's facebook page and had a message that, as the original winner had not been in contact the prize fell to me.

This was the prize, eight back issues of Embroidery magazine which have some excellent articles in on textile artists.  I had  a lovely time browsing all the magazines had to offer and then thought I should put a thank you note on Dionne's page.  When I tracked back to find the original post I discovered that I know the original winner and had some contact details for her so these magazines will soon be in the post on their way to Susan Devonport.  Don't you just love the stitching on the cover of the topmost magazine in the image above?  The artist is Eleri Mills and I love the vigour of her stitchmarks.

While I'm in a catching up mood I'll show you a few photos from a couple of trips out we took in February.   The first trip was on a coach to Cambridge on a bright but chilly.  We decided to spend our time in Cambridge Botanic Gardens and despite the dormant season there was plenty to see and inspire.

This apple tree is a direct descendent of Isaac Newton's apple tree at Woolsthorpe by Colsterworth which is less than 10 miles from where we live.

 Not sure if you get the scale but I think this stand of trees may come from one root stock.  If not, they certainly gave that impression.

 The underside of a lamp in one of the glass houses.

My DH caught this impression of a leaf on a glasshouse floor.

This lake looks beautiful but the surface is deceptive.  The watery surface hides ice beneath.

These wonderfully textured etched panels decorate the outside wall of the cafeteria and were created by Norman Ackroyd on a theme 'Galapagos' 

This is the old Addenbrookes hospital opposite the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge and I enjoyed the geometric designs on the fascia.  The young men in the picture were enjoying 'Parkour' somersaulting over the car trap and jumping over the adjacent flat rooves.  Not for the faint hearted! 

Our second trip, on a snowy day, was to Bletchley Park, the secret home of code breaking in the second World War and the birthplace of the modern computer.  I had been eager to see Bletchley since the Quilters Guild staged an exhibition of over 100 quilts there in 2012.  I just wish I had seen the original exhibition.  I've discovered a blog post about it here .  

This lovely quilt hangs in the entrance to Bletchley Hall and was made by a member of the only family that lived on site throughout the Hall's use in the war.  It describes the site and has morse code stitched into the path that winds around.  Sadly it is displayed behind perspex so the reflections get in the way.  

As well as its emotive history Bletchley held plenty of inspiration.

I would love to go back to Bletchley again, maybe in the summertime, as there is so much to see and not all the exhibits were open on the day we went.  It's most famous 'son' was Alan Turing  who is viewed as the father of computer science and artificial intelligence.  Despite his enormous contribution to the war effort and to computing he was badly served by society of the day and found guilty of homosexuality and died by his own hand, maybe accidentally, in 1954, weeks before his 42nd birthday.  Gordon Brown made a public apology for his treatment in 2009 but a pardon is still awaited. You can read more about him here 

And finally!  Just by chance I came across Anne Griffiths on facebook and became beside myself with excitement when I saw a workshop she offers down in Cornwall.  Having looked at the students' work from the most recent workshop I couldn't resist booking on the next one which is in October.  Can you imagine?  A whole week to indulge everything beachy and textiley in the glorious Cornish countryside with like minded artists and a lovely teacher!  I shouldn't wish the year away but......I can't wait!  I wanted to spend this year exploring mark making and design and this should be the icing on the cake! Pity my poor DH, home alone, again!

OK I'll shut up now ;-)

Wendy Dolan Workshop

I've just had a very busy and exhausting but most rewarding three days attending a  2 Day workshop with the textile artist Wendy Dolan and an Area Day for Region 10 of the Quilters' Guild.  The aim of the workshop was to explore the creation of texture with fabrics, mediums and stitch.  The theme for the workshop was architecture.  

Wendy is a very friendly and generous teacher and shared so much knowledge with us over the course of the two days and through the talk she gave to the Area Day on Saturday.   We were all kept extremely busy throughout and as I work quite slowly I did find myself falling behind a bit here and there but by the end of this afternoon my piece was well on its way for completion at home.

I can't share the whole process with you as that would be unfair to Wendy but I can show you parts of the journey.

I thought I should keep things simple so I chose this door and stonework that we came across in Knaresborough last year.  We were tasked to trace the main lines and details of our source material and then to use various fabrics of differing textures and mediums including Xpandaprint, to construct a base for stitching and painting. 

The tracing provides a guide to placing the network of fabrics.  

After securing the fabrics with stitch the next task was to make a paper colour collage and then to choose pigments and apply them to colour the surface.   Rather than apply realistic colour we were encouraged to use abstract areas of colour.  I chose to work in a monochrome and you won't be surprised that turquoise was my chosen colour.  You could use fabric paints for this part of the process but we used screen printing inks with an extender.  If I remember rightly that is what Jo Budd uses in her work too.

With the fabric painted and dry we set to with the free machining.  Initially the main lines were stitched from the reverse and once they were established we continued to work from the front.  

This is the stage up to stitching the main lines from the reverse.

At the end of the day today we all gathered to share our inspiration and the progress so far of our work.  I have a lot more work to do in free machining but I am pleased with the way it is taking shape and I have learned a lot, not least about making use of the settings on my machine to make life easier when free machining.  

On Saturday, between the two workshop days, we went back to the venue for the Area Day where Wendy was the guest speaker.  If you follow this link you will be able to see some of the commissions that Wendy has worked on.   These commissions were on a mammoth scale and I am full of admiration for her skill in bringing them to fruition.  Wendy also described her work in some detail and passed round samples of some of the stages her work goes through and which we had been working on in the workshops.

Working from a landscape source the image above shows the prepared fabric base on the left and a painted and stitched image on the right.  Wendy also employs small pieces of agricultural fleece ironed on to create a resist in lighter areas and you can see this in the clouds.

We were shown many other examples of Wendy's work and all the while I was getting inspiration for ways to use her methods to explore texture and colour in my work.  In particular I can see other ways of working the wall hanging that I made for the Festival of Quilts last year.

I havn't up to now worked in anything you could call a series but I am now asking 'what if' about the way I constructed this piece and may explore it with the skills I have learned this weekend for this year's FOQ.  For now though I need to finish off my wokshop piece with further stitching and possibly with added colourwork which could be in paint or inktense pencil etc.

Hats, Workshop, and TIF

Don't laugh!  Pauline Verrinder, who organises Textiles in Focus at Cottenham puts out a call every year for people to wear a 'silly hat' when they come to the event so this year I thought I'd make the effort.  Well, you know me, if I made a hat (or decorated one) it had to be about the sea.  I covered an old sun hat with a blue silky scarf and then embellished it to death.  I think the fish on the front came from Sharne Gregory several years ago.  If you click on the link it will take you to Sharne's blog post about her glorious peacocks.  Sadly photographs were not permitted of the exhibition by Fen Edge Textiles to which Sharne belongs.  The standard of the work by Fen Edge was outstanding so do have a look at their site.  

Textiles in Focus is held at Cottenham Village College and the Hall where the main exhibitions were held had these wonderful glass leaf blocks hanging in the roof space.  

The other group exhibiting at TIF was Anglia Textiles Works.  I was particularly impressed by the work of Kathy Colledge who used close free-machining to achieve surface texture in her work.

Detail shot above.

Yvonne Brown - Thetford Priory

I couldn't resist buying this not-really-cuddly elephant embroidered by Bibiawa to raise funds for women in Afghanistan as part of the One Earth Textiles project  Isn't his expression wonderful!  I now have to find a project of my own to include him in, maybe a bookcover.  These small embroideries will be appearing at other shows around the country over the course of the year.

The morning at TIF was spent in a very busy and inspiring workshop with Lynda Monk who I have known through blogging for several years without ever managing to get on any of her workshops.  Lynda is the most generous of teachers and the workshop was fun too.

The workshop was just two hours long but in that time we added foils to painted lutradur which we then painted again and then some fun with Expandaprint on Lutradur and zapping with a heat gun.  They may not look too inspiring at the moment but eventually will morph into bookwraps.  Lynda currently has a new book out called 'Exploring Creative Surfaces' which is well worth a look.

I suppose it's now time I owned up to the shopping I did on Sunday at the show, which was the other main attraction at TIF.

Before the show had even officially opened I succumbed to this beautiful book.  You can see some of the images from the book here.  The book has the added bonus, for me, of being written with text in both French and English.    I am completely entranced by the beautiful work inside.

I think I must be planning some serious sketchbook work! 
 

Another thing I couldn't resist was the lovely bobbly yarn above from Fibre Tastic.   Lesley Mackie, who is FibreTastic, is a lovely lady and we had a very nice chat at the end of the day.

I thought that fibre lace would make an interesting textured stamp.  It was only 50p!

Going back to my silly hat, I did have an ulterior motive when I made it.  As you know, whenever you go to shows it is always nice to meet up with fellow bloggers but it is not always easy to spot them in the crowds of people, even at a small show.  The combination of my hat and a name badge strung round my neck resulted in a hello from 3 bloggers and one of my followers on here.  So hello to Crafty Mugwump, otherwise known as Pam, Sharne, already mentioned above, Pat of Altering Thoughts and Maureen who follows this blog.  Thank you all for saying hello :-)  I must give a mention too to Art And Stitch who I've mentioned here before who always make me welcome at their shop in Peterborough and who had a stand at TIF.

I've got a new baby!

I cannot tell you how much shrieking went on this morning when this lovely trolley bag arrived courtesy of Sew Divine in Reading.  Totally out of proportion to the actual object but I have been struggling with an inappropriate trolley going to and from classes and clubs for weeks and now I have a trolley case that my machine fits into safely and that I can put straight in the boot (trunk) as is.  No more standing in the rain/snow/ice prising my machine in or out of a too small artcart to collapse said artcart to get it in the boot.  Bliss!  Thank you Bob for your very prompt service.  (BTW rumour has it that Janome and possibly Benina are stopping supplying these bags.)

You may have heard of erosion bundles in your travels around the interweb and last year I placed several said bundles around our garden and left them to the mercies of the elements.  I recently brought two of the bundles in and put them in the freezer (in plastic bags) to kill any unwanted visitors.  Yesterday I undid one of the bundles  and carefully pulled the materials apart.  Some had rotted completely because the bundle had been out for a full year.  I've put together some collages to give you a general idea.

The image above in the left bottom corner is what's left of a photograph and is almost transparent when held up the light.  

 There are some beautiful layers occuring in the various pieces where I had layered bookpages, sheep music, fabric and various coloured materials together.

I can see some of these surfaces being used as layers in Photoshop.

These too will be fun to play with in Photoshop.

Some of the pieces are a bit suspect in terms of mildewy marks and I did think of rinsing them but I think I will actually use them as they are and seal them with Matt Medium as a lot of the surfaces are paper. I wonder if some could end up as a Journal Quilt?  

Last week at Stitchcraft I did a taster day for a Delft Quilt and came away with a panel that hopefully tomorrow will turn into a cushion cover.  The workshop was led by Liz Hands who I have mentioned previously.

These are the efforts of all the participants and as you can see there was a good variety of colours.

For my square I used some of my snow dyes and fussy cut to get some detail in the flower.  Tomorrow I plan to finish the embroidery and then construct the cushion cover.  I've already added the borders so once the mebroidery is finished I only have to add the back panels.  Watch this Space!