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Louise Gardiner at Bristol Quilters
Last night were were exceptionally lucky to have Louise Gardiner, a professional embroiderer of twenty years standing, to talk to us. First of all she is a very engaging speaker, bursting with...
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A little Danish inspiration
I am slightly concerned that I am not posting as often as I did. This is because of the day job. So, I have not done anything with these photographs, but I think they could be an inspiration for...
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Abigail Mill at Bristol Quilters
We were very lucky last night to have had Abigail Mill to talk to us about her work. She brought with her an enormous amount of work and talked a lot about how she built up her business. In some...
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Revisiting a classic
I have been working on a new project, which I will blog about shortly, and I thought that I would get out my copy of The Shining Cloth by Victoria Z. Rivers. It is a great book, a bit of a classic...
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Selvedge – recommended publication
This is a quick post today. May I very strongly recommend the current issue of Selvedge. It is an absolute visual delight this month. It concentrates on knitting and Scotland, quite a combination,...
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War Collar Three: The Don’t Mess With Me Collar
This piece is another which has been looking for a home. I made the piece on a workshop at Heartspace Studios with Basil Kardasis in 2012. I’ve noted before that I love things that are really heavy...
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The Femme Fatale Collar
The title of this one is pretty self-explanatory. I was in two minds whether to include a collar like this. The whole topic of sexuality at work is a tricky one. There is no doubt that some women...
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The Evil Eye Collar
This piece is based on a very common amulet. Amulets to ward off the Evil Eye are found all over the world, and the eyes are often blue, as seen on the cover of Desmond Morris’s book containing...
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The joy of making
I am not entirely sure what this post is going to be about. I spent quite a lot of the weekend sewing, which was a massive luxury. I am preparing a new talk which will be given its first airing...
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Mr Finch
Finally, finally, finally my copy of Mr Finch’s book has arrived. I made a cup of good coffee and sat down to read it. That isn’t my hand, by the way, the picture is from his Facebook gallery. Mr...
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Modern medals
A couple of years ago my mother gave me a book she had bought because it was so beautifully produced, but which turned out to be totally useless. It’s called ‘French General Treasured Notions:...
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Latest Laura Ashley panel
I have started doing some work with Laura Ashley fabric again. This time there is no rush. It’s not for an exhibition or a conference paper, so I can take as long as I like. It started with one of...
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What I did at the weekend
This isn’t what I did last weekend, but the weekend before, a very blustery weekend in January spent in Porthleven in Cornwall with my very excellent friends, Alison, Ceri and Becky. Alison’s family...
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The Red Thread
When I wrote about the panel shown above, I mentioned the red thread. I thought it might be worth describing it in a bit more detail. It is a red thread which in other cultures binds us all together...
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Inspired by Janet Edmonds and Vincent van Gogh
On Wednesday I went to a great workshop with Janet Edmonds which was based on working with van Gogh as inspiration. I knew it was going to be a good day when I sat down next to lovely Nathalie who...
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van Gogh in purple and yellow
This is the second sample from the Vincent van Gogh workshop, this time working with purple and yellow, which co-incidentally were the colours of my school uniform. I love this combination, although...
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van Gogh Green and Red Inspiration
I chose this slightly less well-know study of sunflowers for my red and green piece: We used straight stitches and then whipped them with contrasting colours. I thought my finished piece looked like...
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van Gogh inspiration purple and yellow part deux
This yellow and purple piece was based on experimenting with buttonhole stitch and detached chain or laisy daisy stitch. I really liked the delicacy of stitching into the buttonhole stitch with...
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van Gogh inspiration – neutrals
The prompt for this exercise was to use cretan stitch in neutral shades. I felt a bit of a cheat as I used some of my lovely variegated thread from Winifred Cottage (sadly no longer available), and...
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What I did at the weekend
This weekend was spent filling up the reservoir, as it were, as I spent a lot of time with my Grate Frend Beatriz at exhibitions and in art shops. On Friday we went to the blockbuster exhibition...
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