new website and blog address

I've now got a newly designed website with blog, so I won't be posting on this one in the future. I'll be able to manage it myself which will be great.
I am looking forward to a week's artist in residence at Nature in Art, Twigworth, Gloucester, from next Tuesday 24th to 29th April. Next month I am taking part in Stroud International Textile Trail as part of Select 2012. This is held over two weekends, 12th,13th May and 19th, 20th May. I will be with a group at One Fat Quarter in Nailsworth, near Stroud.
Links to these events can be found on my new website www.lizbrookeward.com and my new blog address will be www.lizbrookeward.com/stitch-in-time-blog html
I will post on this very soon and publish pictures of the first three journal quilts.
Thanks for looking!

Sensitive tint 2012 First 2012 Journal Quilt

I signed up to another set of Journal quilts with the Contemporary Quilt Group. This year the themes are based on colour - and the first four are to have at least 75% red in them. The size is A4 portrait. I came across a sketch I'd done of one of John's photomicographs - luxillianite -  rock found in Luxillian, Cornwall. I translated the design into reds with a dark turquoise green accent - reverse applique, machine stitched with bobbin couched thick threads.
The original thin section is colourless but if you illuminate it with polarized light different types of crystal in the rock will show up in different colours according to a property they posses called birefringence. Apparently if you put another crystal in the light path, the colour adds or retracts from the existing colours to produce a new set of colours. The purplish red colour produced is called "the sensitive tint". I love the name and it was a happy accident on my part.

textile hanging showing pockets and quotations

The quotations are printed onto calico strips and then buttoned on top of the pockets.

From left to right:
I have to become unimportant in the scheme of things, that's when the best stuff happens, when you get out of your own way. Helen Storey
Got no cheque books got no banks, still I'd like to express my thanks - I got the sun in the morning and the moon at night.
No one is old enough to know better.
The life so short the craft so long to learn. Chaucer
The truth is rarely pure and never simple. Oscar Wilde
Whatever you think you can do, begin it. Action has magic, grace and power in it. Goethe
When you come to the end of your rope, tie a knot and hang on.
I get by with  little help from my friends.
It's not what happens to you in life, its how you deal with it - that is important. Dalai Lama
If you want to grow, push your limits. Mia Rozmyn
Today is the tomorrrow you worried about yesterday and all is well.
It's hard to know if you're bound for a fall, but better to have tripped than never danced at all.
Out of the gloom a voice said unto me, 'smile and be happy, things coud be worse.' So I smiled and was happy and behold things did get worse.
There comes a point in your life when you realise who really matters, who never did and who always will.
Nothing in life is to be feared it is only to be understood.
and finally:
Your friend is your needs answered, and in the sweetness of friendship, let there be laughter and the sharing of pleasures.


Thank you my dear friends!

With a little help fom my friends- last Journal Quilt January 2012

I asked my friends to give me a button and a quotation that they liked. I made little two inch pockets and stitched the buttons on the front. A variety of techniques was used for the pockets - some appliqued, some machine stitched and painted. I printed the quotes onto calico, stitched a buttonhole on the strip and wound them around some small bamboo pegs and then popped them in the pockets. Some of the buttons are quite signifcant. One belonged to a friend's father who was in the Navy, another was from my friend's mothers button box. The quotations can be taken out of the pockets and buttoned on the front.

December Journal Quilt Lily white boys

This is my December Journal Quilt. There is a hawthorn tree across the valley on the dog walking route which had a lovely bunch of mistletoe on it. I managed to get a piece to put in the house for Christmas. I love mistletoe and was struck by the vibrant green of the leaves and branches and the contrast of the translucent shiny white berries. They reminded me of some old pearl buttons which was lucky as somehow I had to get at least one button in this piece to fulfill the brief. I used commercial and hand dyed fabrics for the fused background and the mistletoe shapes were freely cut and then stitched in straight lines with embellishments of one pearl button and some old pearl beads- must be the first time I've ever used beads! Lily white boys are sometimes explained as holly and mistletoe in the song " Green grow the rushes oh!"

Button it! November Journal Quilt

Button it! November Journal Quilt.

Apples October Journal Quilt

This is my little journal quilt for October - apples. The challenge is to use buttons for the next 4 pieces. I've been picking the apples from my Sunset apple tree and thought the apple pips and core looked a bit like a button. The background is a rustic open weave linen and I embellished apple shapes with little pieces of wool, adding them like watercolour. The leaf shapes were appliqued and layered with muslin which was also blattered with the embellisher to distress it a bit and then machine stitched to the background. I added handstitching and then white laundry buttons. They looked a bit stark so I painted them with some dilute Inktense colour.
I really enjoyed getting the embellisher out and needle felting the background, the effect can be quite subtle.