Moon-made friends

At last the blog is up to date thanks to my son. Somehow I had two addresses and now I have transferred the images from the old one.

Moon-made friends was made for the recent exhibition in the Weavers Gallery, Ledbury, entitled The Dymock poets. The poem that inspired this piece was Iris by Night by Robert Frost, one of my favourite poets. It tells about an encounter that Frost and his friend Edward Thomas had, while walking late one summer afternoon in the Malverns. It was wet and the light formed a rainbow which magically encircled them. I started the design for this piece from lichen circles which I re- drew and distorted. When I finished the design and cut and appliqued the pieces I really didn't like the result. I am in the habit of bonding down the random cut out shapes from a piece of work and had done this on a long piece of calico using the negative shapes. This was a far more interesting design and I used it as the basis for the piece above. The text from the poem was printed onto some transparent non woven fabric I had acquired and looked suitably watery. Both the rainbow and the moon were appliqued and the whole piece was also hand stitched in vertical lines.

Having agreed to produce a quilt a month for the Journal Quilt project this was an eleventh hour piece. I made it even worse for myself by using the contents of a " challenge" bag of fabrics and threads - pink is not usually me at all but I managed to complete this with a nice grey background - more me. This is the last of the circles theme. The next four pieces will have text in them.

Another journal quilt for the month of April inspired again by the tree of life image.

Chocolate wrappers were bonded on the background, hand made khadi paper from Ahmedabad was mono printed with acrylic paint and the circles were completed with silk bonded with scrim rubbed with gold markal stick on the surface. The trees were machine stitched and the surface machined with a gold thread grid. The threads were left unstitched across the circles.

Visited this extremely skilful kalamkari artist in Ahmedabad recently. His work was beautifully delicate and lyrical.

This is the second little journal quilt I've done. For some reason the first February journal quilt has posted to a different blog. It can be seen if my website is accessed and you click on the link on the contact page. This is a mystery to me!

I spent a wonderful 8 days in India in February,mainly Gujarat, looking at a lot of textiles and art. This little tree of life piece is appliqued on silk which is first hand quilted, then machine stitched over the top of the applique. It was inspired by a wonderful Tree of Life window in Ahmedabad. I bought a lovely scarf made of two pieces of sari silk. One side is a single ikat type weave and the other is block printed. The whole scarf has then been stitched completely with rows of running stitch in stripes of two colours. I tried this technique on the background of my little tree.

I decided to take part in The Contemporary Quilt Group's journal challenge. This year the pieces are 10 inches square. I found an old paper bag while clearing up the detritus from the kitchen table and used it to make transfer prints on poly satin and organza. The bag had a faded tree design with a flower head on it. Using the enlarged flower head image, I made a template to mask out transfer paint on poly satin and organza. The paper bag was also bonded on to muslin. Machine stitched, mainly. It reminds me of my favourite dusk, end of the day landscapes.

Gaudi inspired tile

Have been having trouble with the blog posting but all seems well now. This is a little piece based on Gaudi mosaics. Reverse applique with embroidery.

Yesterday I visited Prema, a lovely little chapel gallery tucked away in Uley, a village near Stroud. I first met my husband when he was staying here with Andrew Wood when the building was being converted and we slept under blue plastic. Where have the years gone?
Bethan Ash has an exhibition here at the moment and it was a very good place to show off her vibrant work. Interestingly some pieces were displayed downstairs on red painted walls and they looked great, really enhanced it.
From Uley my friend and I went on to Bath to the Victoria Art gallery to see David Tress's work Landmarks. What a treat! We came away inspired.