Autumn is here!

We had a 'free' subject session today at the art club so I decided to work on some little treasures that I picked up on a walk recently. I used a watercolour wash as a base and then watercolour crayons on top.

A new ‘book’

Stroud Artist Books had a theme this month of 'Quietly'. While writing down the title, a poem came to me which became my inspiration. As I thought further about the theme it became associated in my mind with 'gentle', 'soft' and 'white' so I decided to create my 'book' out of fabric. Paper would have been too harsh and stiff. The choice of fabric was important and I finally chose some muslin which, although more difficult to stitch, suited my criteria. I had looked at using an old shirt or something like a cot sheet but liked the idea of a baby's dress because of other connotations. The poem was printed by hand in three sections - the front bodice, around the hem and the back bodice - before hand stitching the pattern pieces together.

Quietly

soft as doves
a white feather sinking

sunshine, early morning
a dog asleep.

the silent servant,
passing her master's room,

knowing the stair that creaks,
steps beyond stretch

out into the yard.
allowing the chickens to un-roost,

the bees to hum into life,
flowers to straighten,

words unsaid to fall from her lips
catching them with a finger

to place quietly,
on her lover's cheek.

Painting group

This week we were painting cups & saucers.

Covered boxes

Two boxes made on a workshop at Cheltenham Craft Festival with Ursula Jeakins yesterday.

An arty week

I've spent the last week doing arty stuff with one of my lovely granddaughters. We started with a trip to Westonbirt for inspiration. Then did eco dyeing with fallen leaves and found rusty objects on fabric for the covers. The wrap was from a piece of recycled leather. The pages used more leaves for botanical contact printing, printing and faux sun prints. Next time she wants to start by making her own paper!

Practising painting

A lovely bowl of plums from the Waitrose weekend paper looked good enough to paint. But I'm not great at dark colours - somehow scary - more practise needed!

Little figures

I started this glove piece on a workshop with Kathleen Murphy and have now finished all the heads. The figures are based on an old photo of my mother & her younger brother & sisters.

Natural dyeing

We had a bunch of carrots this week with an amazing amount of leafy tops which I used to dye some more fabrics and threads. They turned out an incredible yellow with a tinge of green.

Painting

Trying to paint wild flowers today in acrylic but… I forgot my palette and nothing to hand so had to use the colours straight from the tube!

Map

Progress on the stitched map. Another section finished today but I now realise that to continue out from here I need some different colours of fabrics. More research necessary to find what is supposed to dye blue, grey & green & see if I can give them a go. That's the trouble with natural dyeing - it is so unpredictable!

Teatime recycling

I used recycled cooking water from teatime to get these lovely golden yellows. The salad recipe called for cauliflower florets to be blanched in hot turmeric water. The colour looked so intense it seemed a shame to just tip it down the sink so, after draining off the cauliflower, I put some wool & cotton yarns in & left it for about 36 hours.

Solar dyeing

Solar dyeing threads on a sunny window cill. From the left nettle roots, nettle leaves and red onion skins. Both the nettle jars had a little alum added and are supposed to give green but seem to be the usual murky pond colour. The onion skins are giving a surprisingly nice pink at the moment.

Stitched map

I'm working on a stitched map of the walk we take each morning round the fields. I found a piece of pink fabric that I'm using as a backing fabric and the threads are mostly old ones that have been handed down to me.

Weaving

Trying out some new cotton yarns on the tiny loom to see how they might go together. Will also try a more balanced weave to see how that goes.

Stitching

I'm back to stitching tonight - working on a textile map of one of our daily walks. This is the field that sometimes has linseed growing it with the beautiful blue flowers but this winter had a mix of plants to help the birds through winter.

Outdoor sketching

A sunny afternoon so we went up to Barbury Castle, an Iron Age hill fort on the Ridgeway, and I spent the afternoon doing exploratory sketches. The scratches and blending of colours came from pieces of hard chalk found on site. Not my usual way of drawing!

Weaving

Trying out 2 heddle weaving patterns from an old Dryad booklet from 1971. Quite fun to do but the cheap yarn I used for the samples was a beast to warp up.

Bookmaking

I'm repurposing an old, falling apart, book. My intention is to make a sketchbook to take out for drawing outdoors. Now it's part way assembled I think it might be too heavy to carry far! The pages are all from recycled papers to give a variety of surfaces to work on. The cover of the book was removed and strengthened and I've just stitched the signatures together over linen tapes to try and provide a bit more strength to the whole structure. I've used French link stitch over the tapes to again provide more rigidity. But I can see that I did not allow enough width between the holes to allow for the tapes to lie flat. You learn by your mistakes!

Little loom

I'm back working on the little loom again and incorporating some of my latest dyed yarns. A thin stripe of pinky mauve from the blackcurrants in the work and in the background are the yarns dyed in lavender leaves waiting to be wound into little skeins ready for use.,

Dyeing

Dyeing more fabric and threads for stitching and weaving. The colour comes from a tin of out of date blackcurrants. The darkest colours are silk, the bright ones cotton and the more brown purples are various wool yarns. I tied make a calico bag to contain the fruit but obviously some escaped!

Little woven landscapes

I've just finished the first strip of little woven landscapes created on the tiny loom. Apart from the bottom one, the rest all use the hand dyed threads that I've done over the past 2-3 months. Time for some more dyeing sessions to see if I can get a wider range of colours and to concentrate on using only threads that I now know are ok for weaving with and not too bouncy.

Weaving

Weaving on the tiny loom with hand dyed threads. The warp is only 2" wide and the whole loom is 3 x 5.5"!

Natural dyeing

These are the results of recent natural dyeing experiments. The pinks are from avocados, greens from daffodil flowers & the rest from conifer bark, pine cones, golden rod flowers & red onion skins. Various threads - cotton, wool & silk. I'm planning to weave some very small landscape colour sketches with them.

Local map

I've been working on this map showing the route of our local walk. Not sure about the rough edges to the fabrics. I might try one with turned edge appliqué.

Natural dyeing

A by-product from the natural dyeing I've been doing has been to make some inks. They give nice subtle colours