1st Day of British Summer Time 2008

We've not even had Spring yet, but officially today was the first day of British Summer Time. It was a lovely day with plenty of sunshine (not that you'd know it from my photos!) so I headed off with the little hairy one, up the hill in front of the house.

Up the hill to the old farm...














... stop for a breather and to look back the way we came...














Over the fence and across the field.

... What's over here then???

... Across the moor...

... down through the woods and home!

A Finished Item!

At last! My finished Tower of Flowers for Betty's Challenge which I posted about here. Two weeks later than intended - 1 o'clock this morning to be precise. Isn't it a pain when you've to get up for the paid job! Sadly not my own design - it's by Helen Cowans, who I took a class with last September. I received a newsletter from her today with details of new classes for the spring, and she now does a gothic version which sounds great, but I've not seen any images of it yet.




















The two towers together before the Challenge one on the right goes off to the Stitchfest Exhibition on 12-13th April. I'll just have to keep my fingers crossed now that someone wants to bid for it!

Embellisher Sample

We're having new furniture delivered tomorrow for the room I've been using as my work room, so I've been prompted to tidy up a bit! Came across this sample I made last year with the Embellisher.

It's a base of wool felt, with various threads and fibres embellished on. The hint of orange round the base of the tree is scrim embellished from the back and the leaves are also scrim.

I didn't like it then, and still don't much now, but playing about with frames and cutting out some of the background, there might be something worth a bit more work. Some hand stitching and a few beads are bound to save the day!

Oh my! Is it that long since my last post?? Looks like I've failed in my target of one post a week already!

In the absence of any significant stitching progress to show (but hopefully soon), I thought you might be interested to see a little bit of my world...

These are the two most important boys in my life out for a walk on Bennachie - the most prominent hill in Aberdeenshire. This was taken last weekend when we thought spring might have finally arrived! (Note the shadow to prove the sun was definitely shining!)


A week later, on the same walk in the first flurries of snow we came across this tree... it looks like it's been there forever, but it's the first time we've ever noticed it - we must have been walking past it for years!

In our defence, it is a tricky part of the path covered with slippery tree roots and you do have to watch where you step, but I can't believe we missed this.

You can't see very well from the photos, but there's an inscription carved into the branch and the serpent/worm on the trunk...

"The loss of a great heart is the gain of a small invasion"

Apart from the obvious depicted in the carvings, how many other interpretations of this could there be?

I've been trying to find out who did it and when it was put there, and although I've found details of other sculptures on the hill, I've not found anything about this yet.

Side-Tracked Again!

Last weekend, Freida Oxenham came to our branch of the Embroiderer's Guild and gave a talk on ATC's - their history, how she became involved, and slides of some of her beautiful designs, together with files full of her own ATCs and those she's received in exchanges. Lovely, lovely little pieces of art.

A couple of ladies came as visitors to the Branch and told us about a relatively new ATC group being held monthly at the Seattle Quilt Company, so not being one to bear missing out on something I decided to go along on Saturday.

They're a friendly group of ladies, and although I didn't have anything to trade this time, they passed on some of their spare "Spring" themed ATC's which I've scanned below.

Jo

Carol Maggie Ann

The meeting is only for an hour, but in that time they have a demonstration, trade the ATCs they've made for that month's theme then set a theme for the next month - April is simply "April". I'm thinking along the lines of "April Showers Bring May Flowers", but have also promised to make some "Spring" ATCs in return for the ones I was given. Now, I know I don't need anything else to fill my time at the moment, bearing in mind that I still need to do something about my colour design for the Sumptuous Surfaces class, but I couldn't help it - honest!

Work in Progress

Thanks to everyone who took the time to drop by my first post and leave a comment - I can see that this is going to become addictive!

I said before that my coloured piece for the Sumptuous Surfaces class would have to be put on hold for a bit, so thought I'd best show one of the reasons why... Betty's Challenge has been organised by a local quilting shop in memory of one of one of their friends who sadly died from cancer. The idea is that you buy a small piece of fabric, 25cm square for £1 (around $2?). The fabric can then be used as a whole piece to make something small, or as a background for machine or hand embroidery, or cut up and used for patchwork and/or applique. The resulting items will be auctioned at the Stitchfest Exhibition which takes place in Aberdeen in April, and the proceeds donated to Macmillan Cancer Support.

I bought my piece of fabric way back in December and made a start during the Christmas holidays, then laid it aside whilst the Sumptuous Surfaces class was taking place, so now the panic to finish has started!

I decided to make a "Tower of Flowers" from a design by textile artist Helen Cowans. I took one of her Towers classes at her Studio last September whilst on holiday in the Scottish Borders and thoroughly enjoyed the two days. She's a supremely talented lady, and her winter Towers were featured in the Quilting Arts Gifts magazine. This is the one I made at the class:

This time round I've used the Challenge fabric as the lining. This is the Challenge fabric bonded to pelmet vilene and ready to be used for the lining...

... and this is the background fabric, stitched and almost ready to go.

I still need to add some beading and assemble the Tower. So, this is my project for the weekend (together with finding out how to make photos behave on Blogger!) and now I've put it on here it HAS to be done!

Scary New World

Well, here it is - the first post in the scary new world of "Blogging". My resolution for 2008 was to actually achieve something... does setting up a Blog qualify? Or does it only qualify if I manage to keep up with the posts? Remains to be seen... I think if I aim for a weekly post I should be doing OK and anything more than that will be a bonus - I'm just not as prolific as many of the talented people out there, so be patient with me while I learn!

Anyway, the reason for this is that for the first time I signed up for an online class - Sumptuous Surfaces with Sharon Boggon. It's been a fantastic learning experience, working through the design process to produce a piece of work that's quite different from anything I would normally tackle. And there's a whole other world of lovely people out there - you all know who you are!

My monotone design was very, very simple, based on a tiny shell picked up on a beach not far from where I live (and incorporated in the middle of the finished design). I'm quite pleased with how it turned out!

But now for the colour design... our six weeks are over all too quickly and I've not started on the colour design - I've read over the lessons more than once and all sorts of ideas are buzzing around, but life is about to go a bit mad, I've other things to get finished and I want to clear the decks a bit before I start on anything else. But I really wanted to keep on being part of the class even after the forum had ended, so here I am!

Sharing my thoughts with the world doesn't come naturally and it's taken a while to take the plunge and decide to set this up - who knows where it'll lead!