Fun at the West of England Quilt and Textiles Show 2017!

I just had the most brilliant three days at the  West of England Quilt and Textiles Show sharing a stand with my dear friend, the talented quilter, Sallieann Harrison of Christmas Goose Stitches.

Sallie was on the walls, and I was on the table  :) with my embroidered and mixed media books!

We both had a fantastic time, and for me it was sheer joy to able to talk about books and nature and stitching and mixed media to lovely, like minded people!  These are some of the books I took along:

The cover of  'Briarside Lane' a current WIP which is based around The Raspberry Rabbits project of the same name....

  'A  Little Book of Stamps'  

The pages are simply painted, and enhanced with a variety of handmade stamps and simple stitch.

'Tiny Garden'  - meander book, came about from a sample class I created, making simple garden flowers from only three stitches. |A little book seemed the perfect format to  keep them in!

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Whatever the size, or the mediums used, the one thing my books  have in common is hand stitch, and my favourite threads from Valdani  of course!

I'm very excited to be offering Saturday workshops this autumn, sharing some of the techniques I have developed! Details of these are on the Classes and Workshops tab, and I'll be talking about them more here soon.

So finally here we are setting up on Day 1, with a backdrop of Sallie's amazing Tumbler Quilt, which attracted a lot of attention! You can see more of Sallie's lovely work and find out about classes she offers on her website.

We were also proud to be representing The Raspberry Rabbits in the UK, with Michelle's original stunning quilt The Adventures of Harrington and Hannah, all the way from North Carolina, on display!  

Poppy Seedhead Writing folder

This is the second sample for my winter mixed media workshop, and it's very different from my usual approach. I had fun with this one!

 I wanted a particular effect,  which I could see in my head!  I drew a poppy head stamp and used Koh-I -Nor paints to stamp on the fabric. When dry I sponged and splattered the background so it would partly merge and cover the images. Then I took back some of the coloured areas with bleach. I free machined around the poppies and finished  the image using  a little hand embroidery. It was fused onto some hand dyed silk and a piece of vintage lace added for some texture/overlay.

Inside I used some of my naturally dyed cotton to line the case. An unbound strip of silk with more vintage lace holds the hand made notelets in place. They are made from recycling wallpaper lining paper, which has been painted and stamped with another poppy head image.

Finally there's a simple tie with painted wooden beads to finish it off!

Mini Art Quilt - Winter Melody

Last week I finished my samples for my mixed media workshop and they are now waiting to go on display. This is the first one, a simply structured mini art quilt  with a winter theme.  Loving seedheads as I do this was a great chance to use some of my favourite images.

I  made some simple stamps, then used a variety of of fabrics to show the effects  of the paint on different weights/types. I made pearlised paints to give a sparkle of frost and ice.

 

After preparing the fabrics and stamping them I set out the images in a collage, and then fused them to wool felt.

They were then re sectioned, simply embellished, using  a variety of  threads/ stitches and some beading, and  hand stitched together with a variegated pearl cotton.

Some are overprinted on already patterned fabrics -

some onto heavier weight linen, and  fine, hand dyed silk.

As the workshop is about approaching mixed media without the need to use lots of products and expense, everything was found in my supply stash and around the house. I do  feel that limiting yourself also extends your creativity. Having decided on my colour palette there were a few challenging moments -  which stretched me - but these were the things I liked best when I'd finished. What do you think - does anyone have any projects where constraints meant success?