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.

Maggie Grey technique

Not very exciting to look at, this is the lutradur with the papers, gesso and salt applied.

The photo shows up more of the gesso than is actually visible in reality but I am quite pleased with this result. I think next time I will use stronger colours but this does look lovely as the backing to the bookmarks.

A flavour of the Festival

Barbara Weeks stand. She had some lovely coastal theme quilties. The quilts at the top of the photo are part of a Button Up Quilt Project which extended all round the hall reserved as the "European Quilters Cafe". The total length is almost 220 metres and each quilt is attached to its neighbour by buttons and loops. The project was designed to bring quilters together from all over the world.

This is a detail from a Lutradur based Innovative Large Quilt by Brenda Boardman. The surface is covered with scattered pieces of fabric and machine embroidery.

These bodices and jackets above were in a section titled "Quilt Creations" as was the exhibit below which is entitled "Concertino" and which is by Jutta Erner of Oberhausen Germany. The individual books on each stand each have 3 layers of self made fabrics.

Cobwebs again

Yesterday I set up another experiment with the cobweb fibre this time with lutradur. I taped down samples of 4 different weights of lutradur (as I couldn't get drawing pins into my board - wimp!) and then stretched a small amount of cobweb across the board and pulled it underneath so that it was held taut.

Once the cobweb was spread out I sprayed it all with water and allowed that to soak in for a few minutes. I then dripped silk paints over the surface and tilted the board to allow the colour to blend all over. I did give one or two areas a spray of water where the colour was lying too dense.

You may be able to see that I laid one or two other fibres on the surface to soak up some of the colour and to see if this had any effect on the underlying surface - on this occasion it didn't. I resolutely left the board alone until today when I pulled the cobweb away to see what had happened both to the lutradur and the paper underneath.

There are some interesting effects on the paper which I will use in a future project. The colours have dried light and delicate.

As you can see, the light weight lutradur took up less of the colour. The cobweb has had a mild effect on the lutradur, probably as it is already a fibrous material. I will have to try this with other materials like tissue and calico.

My fabric paper is coming along. I have applied two coats of watered down pva glue to protect the surface and have also rubbed in some copper Treasure Gold.

The blue material is the lining for the book cover I am hoping to make this into. Unfortunately, I don't think I am going to be able to hand sew through all the layers so I am going to see if I can get any iron on binding or ribbon to finish the edge. If not I may have to re-think the tabs that will hold the book in place. All this sewing and making things is new to me.....I haven't a clue what I'm doing half the time but that's half the fun!

You may remember I mentioned a natural materials swap I am doing. I couldn't decide which of the cards I had made to put into the swap so I made another card yesterday from needle felted wool. I didn't use any backing material to support it so it's a little bit loose but I quite like it. I shall have to learn some more stitches for finishing edges, the blanket stitch looks a bit ragged, again.

These are the cards that my DH said he preferred so they are going in the post tomorrow.

Fibre & Stitch

I've finally completed the lutradur and lace challenge for Fibre & Stitch and will be posting it on the group site this morning. I have enjoyed the experimenting so far and will be doing much more with it, I hope. I know I haven't been as adventurous as some of the ladies and have kept my piece quite simple. I certainly haven't attacked it with any heat sources so far. I did a small piece earlier on and hit it with a heat gun and didn't like the result I got with that particular piece as it buckled up. However, I have seen another artist's work who dealt with a similar result by pulling silk thro the resulting holes and that looked wonderful.This compilation is a repeat of the stages the piece went through. I hope this photo of the finished piece shows up the metallic stitching as blogger won't enlarge it. I am going to use this on the front cover of my journal for my forthcoming holiday to Austria.

I am really looking forward to this afternoon. My friend Ann and I are going to an exhibition at the Willoughby Memorial Gallery at Corby Glen. The exhibition is by another friend Gill Boyle who works with fibre and paint. Hopefully I will be able to take some pics which I will post tonight.

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.