Easter Collage

Made you an Easter Collage. Happy Easter everyone.

Computer Playtime

Having seen Digital Gran's post this week, I decided to try a bit of competition... just for fun!
So here are my efforts. The original bowls are on my Pictureaday blog.




The aliens are here!

Alien Candelabra

Just to complete the plagiarisation of Margaret's page, here is what the site she quoted had to say about my given name! Pretty much true except for the success bit... that was always hard come by!

What Dorothy Means,

You are balanced, orderly, and organized. You like your ducks in a row.You are powerful and competent, especially in the workplace.People can see you as stubborn and headstrong. You definitely have a dominant personality.
You are well rounded, with a complete perspective on life.You are solid and dependable. You are loyal, and people can count on you. At times, you can be a bit too serious. You tend to put too much pressure on yourself.
You are wild, crazy, and a huge rebel. You're always up to something.You have a ton of energy, and most people can't handle you. You're very intense.You definitely are a handful, and you're likely to get in trouble. But your kind of trouble is a lot of fun.

You are a seeker. You often find yourself restless - and you have a lot of questions about life.You tend to travel often, to fairly random locations. You're most comfortable when you're far away from home.You are quite passionate and easily tempted. Your impulses sometimes get you into trouble.
You are truly an original person. You have amazing ideas, and the power to carry them out. Success comes rather easily for you... especially in business and academia.Some people find you to be selfish and a bit overbearing. You're a strong person.
You are a free spirit, and you resent anyone who tries to fence you in.You are unpredictable, adventurous, and always a little surprising.You may miss out by not settling down, but you're too busy having fun to care.

Meet My Friend Pippa

Please open the door for me

Now will you please throw my ball so I can have some fun!

Hi There,

I shall have to be careful that updating my Blog doesn't become a habit... grin

I have had some fun again today playing with an image I took at the garden centre the other day. I love the look of these pots, but I am not sure that I would want one as the colour would detract from anything growing in it. I guess if it was just a non-flowering shrub it would be good.

I had some fun playing with images today
So I thought I would share

Well it's well past Christmas and the New Year and I thought I better add something to my Blog! I keep forgetting to do it but will try to mend my ways... think I have said this before.

Here is a not very good picture of a quilt I have just finished and given to my sister. There are lots of mistakes to the experienced eye, but hey I did finish it! I had a lot of help from my friend Pat in order to get it finished and I am very grateful for that.

What lucky people you are! No post for months then two in a short time!

Yesterday was an exciting day for the family as my nephew John graduated from University College London with and MSc in Telecommunications from the Science and Engineering Department. We are all very proud of him and I got to go to the event! As some of you know John and Ann I thought you would like to see a couple of pictures. Unfortunately the stage lighting was red but I have done what I could with the pictures.

Dyeing Masterclass

Here, at last are the pctures of my recent dyeing, which was done in a Ruth Issett Masterclass.

We managed to try out several techniques in the two days, all of which I enjoyed, even if some of MY samples were less than successful. (my fault not Ruth's of course).

We set about doing some baggie dyeing, having been asked to prepare twelve bags in advance, each containing six different fabrics. Mine were polycotton, smooth white cotton, callico, cotton scrim, cotton velvet and a silk/cotton mix I put them on the line in that order.

We then took four sets of three bags and dyed then with Procion MX dye mixtures of our own choice. On the first row I used ultramarine and rose brown in increasing quantities. Note that there are none with pure colour.

On the second row I used scarlet and rose brown.

The third row has scarlet and marine Violet.

The last row has Golden Yellow and Turquoise.

We also did two sets of low immersion dyeing . At the end of the first row is the one I did by adding the dye to the first piece of scrunched fabric, followed by soda ash. Then the next layer was done the same way with a different colour. Then I added a third fabric.

As you can see I didn't really add enough dye, but these can be overdyed I suspect.

At the end of the second row is the result when I added the soda ash to the dye before I dyed. This time it was pointed out that I didn't have enough in the first set so more was added. better result!

Painted Dyeing.

Next we did some painted dyeing. We had prepared some of the fabrics in advance by adding soda ash to them and then drying.

I found that the fabrics I added the soda ash to in advance gave a more blended result.

In the picture the bottom row had the soda ash added to the fabric before dyeing.

Each piece is a different fabric. Top row is cotton velvet, habotai silk, Sylco, white poycotton (which is not supposed to dye!), cotton organdie, silk and cotton delphine.


Bottom row is viscose satin, silk cotton, fine white cotton, silk cotton, coarse white cotton, and finally,callico.

This was fun session, although VERY hard work.

OK... so I tell lies! I said I would keep this up to date and I haven't... sorry.

Anyway I have just had an exiting weekend away learning to use my Embellisher at a class with Maggie Grey.

Embellish and Stitch

I tried so many things and had a wonderful time in the process. Great thing was,not a single needle broken.... and only one other person in the room did break one.(this is just as well as I haven't, so far, been able to undo the Allen screw on mine yet!)

1. Marbling.Build up a surface on a piece of felt with fibres of choice silk or wool or both and make sure that there are some accents. I made mine too subtle for the following process so bear this in mind.Lay a piece of chiffon over the top. It needs to be considerably larger all round than the embellished piece. Start embellishing from the centre and bunch the chiffon to make areas of darker colour.It will scruch up deliciouslyInstead of this random way try embellishing chevrons. Embellish in straight line down the centre first. Then turn and embellish another line in the opposite direction about an inch away. The chiffon will naturally make tucks which need to be encouraged. Repeat to cover the piece.

2. Embellish and puff. Make an embellished background. Take another piece of embellished fabric, made form acrylic felt and cut out shapes. heat them with a heat gun from the back to make them curl.Apply these to the background.These cut puts can also be embellished together to make vessels.

3. Use ready made needlefelt for the background and apply monotone natural fibres.

4. Appliqué pieces of FME onto a prepared backgrounds .

5. Make backgrounds with voids on them. Cut out the void and apply either FME patches and blend in the edges with the embellisher. Can also use pieces from other Embellished backgrounds in this way.

6. Try embellishing habotai silk, organza and even the metallic organzas onto a background.try transfoiling velvet and then embellishing on top.

7. All of these techniques look good combined with stitch, either hand or machine.

Here are a couple of collages of some of my samples for you to see.

I have tried several times today (yesterday now!) to show you this pic and I couldn't so let's see what happens this time. I had several stitchy presents from friends this year as well as this book. It contains Haiku verse and is illustrated by Elizabeth Blackadder. The verse needs some thinking about as you need to understand what it all means and it is not always easy. I love it and I am sure there is some inspiration for art work in there too.

I also had a good video by Katherine Harris called Architextural images. She uses Buildings and such as her source and executes them in cloth or handmade paper with machine embroidery.

She demonstrates paper making and also runs a masterclass on the video. My only criticism is that there is little about her and nothing about the masterclass, such as where it was held and who the students are. Whoever they were, they were doing some lovely work.

I thought you might like to see the cushion I made for the Nora Jones Competition at our recent EG Christmas party. I didn't win but it was fun to take part.

There were some excellent entries. I put mine in the less experienced category as it was only the second piece of patchwork that I have done.

I think I did it. Changed to the new version of Blogger I mean. Please could an experienced someone comment and tell me if it looks OK?
It seems to have changed my Loose Ends list as well.... I remember some people saying that it didn't do it for them.
Thanks

Phew! I determined that I would reactivate my Blog today as it is the 1st day of the new year! However, the system defeated me and I see it is now 12.03am on the second day! Oh well, near enough I suppose!
I was trying to change over to the new version of the software and failed miserably, I think because I am tired, so I had better wait until morning now I think. I shall then regail you with all that is new!
Happy New Year everyone!

I have been speaking to various people via Skype today and generally having fun. Great little piece of free software that.
Sara told me off for not changing the dead looking teddy on here ... so tomorrow, I promise to update my pages. Sorry I have been so neglectful of them recently.
I thought I might upload a picture tonight but Blogspot won't let me.. so that's the end of that.

Marysia mentioned Alpaca this morning.

So I thought you would like to see Alpaca Ted playing dead on the scanner!

He's nice isn't he?

Here are not very good pics of my not very good Celtic Fragment!The detail is meant to show the stitching but you have to look hard!The colours are OK though except for that purpley colour on the edges of the canvas... it isn't really there, just an artefact! It's this border that I dislike so much... very ermmmm Brown!This is a mixed media piece of paper, felt, wax crayon, stitching.

I'm back now from my sojourn in Ferndown learning how to make little books. I really enjoyed it... especially after I asked the hotel to change my room as the first night was near a very busy road. I find that they quite often give the least nice of the double rooms to people who book a single!
Here is the view from my window overlooking the River Stour after they moved me... very peaceful. I couldn't get a really good picture as the window didn't open far enough.





I would love to do it all again having learned a little about how some of the effects are done. I made a start on three books.
One is a childs board book. I didn't use an old one but a new blank book. My theme for this one is daisies and I started by cutting a hole in the cover. This was originally intended to have something displayed in it but I might change my mind about that as I like what happened when I forgot to protect the page behind the cover before I painted it!
Here is a pic of it as it is at the minute but it will change. It looks a little darker here and you can't see the interference green overlay. It is going to have the word Daisy in little wooden blocks somewhere on the cover.




The second one is a pamphlet type using painted and stamped papers. This one is called 'Aspects of the Heart' and features some stamped words, a beautiful rubber stamp and some paper castings made from stamps.
The third is more like a folded pamphlet than a book and hasn't got very far yet. This one will display some of my odds and ends of samples. The reason it hasn't got very far yet is that I think I chose the wrong colours for the background and I need to reconsider.... I love the idea though.

Still working with the genealogy pics.

Now then, Who do you all think these are?

Bet Margaret can guess!

This is what I have been playing with this morning. The first scanned, hand coloured picture has a shrapnel hole in it from the Nov 1940 raid on Coventry. I have had a go at repairing it in Photoshop Elements. Thought some of you might like to see it.

I think if I am going to use it though I will have to re-photograph it as it doesn't all fit on the scanner.