Gothic Pattern

The theme for March at Unlimited Textiles is Gothic Pattern.
I love arches and ceiling bosses in cathedrals and I remembered a visit we made to Fountains Abbey a few years ago. In particular the vaulted ceiling of the Cellarium.
The Cellarium is only inhabited by bats now. Another Gothic feature maybe but no bats here on this quiltie.


I used purple satin for the background and cut arch shapes from dark green velour.
I wanted to continue the arch theme on the background hence the shadow quilting between the arches.
A close zig zag stitch in gold outlines the arches and golden beads represent ceiling bosses.
OK, I know there aren't any ceiling bosses in the Cellarium but let's just call it artistic license.

Close zig zag stitching finishes the edges. The quiltie measures 5ins square and will be on its way to Sandy in USA very soon.

My bag is finished.

My bag based on stone work at Teotihuacan is now finished.
I have to say I am rather pleased with it.

You can see more pics at Textiles for Two.

Peaceful Daydream Blues

I made this quiltie for a trade with my good Internet friend Val.
We both love vintage ladies and both love flowers so the perfect theme to choose was "Vintage Flower Ladies"

I knew straight away the image I wanted to use. I wanted to give the impression that she was daydreaming near a shady stream on a lovely summer afternoon.

The background is my favourite.
Layers of felt, organza and painted nappy liners all stitched together and zapped with the heat gun. This was then covered with a chiffon scarf and flowers, leaves and swirls were free machined over it all.
This is my favourite technique as the outcome is different every time. I never seem to get the colours I think I will get and the texture changes every time. I just love the surprise of it all.

The flowers have heavily beaded centres.
There is a little tassel like embellishment with a "peace" disc hanging from it.
I found one little acrylic flower in the right colour way to add as a falling blossom.
The lovely lady is printed on to iron on cotton (from Crafty Computer Paper) and fused to the background.
A Sari Ribbon edging finished it off nicely I thought.
I'm happy to report that Val liked it ;0)

Before I go I wanted to tell you that I have been working very hard on my website.
It has a fresh new look, new items in the Art Gallery (with a closer look at my Mesoamerican items) and a brand new For Sale page.
I mention this as it is the only place will be selling on line at the moment.

I hope you will take a look at my website and I hope you like it.

Wall Flowers Panel

As well as working on the big Mesoamerican project with Jan for Textiles for Two, I am working on my own project on Nature from the inspiration around me in the North Devon countryside and coast.

This is my latest piece based on flowers growing against and old wall.
The base fabric is a piece of handmade felt I did last year. I trapped all sorts of bits and pieces with wool tops between soluble film and machined a close grid pattern over it all. I gave it a vigorous wash in hot water to felt the wools and dissolve the film. And that is how it stayed for a long while!

I recently found some gorgeous organzas in a fabric shop in Barnstaple. This one was a very pale lavender with embroidered flowers and leaves.
I used it as an overlay for my felt and machined a rambling stitch between the flowers. That looked OK but was missing texture. I love texture.
So out came my heat gun an the surface got a good blasting ;0)

I expected to get a lovely crusty surface that would feel like a stone wall but I didn't expect the flowers and leaves to pop out quite as well as they did.
I burnt all the organza away from the edge to leave it quite rough. I added beads to the centre of the flowers and some little beads and sequins around the background.

I'm not sure how I will finish it yet, maybe I will apply it to some velvet, I think the contrast in textures would be good but whether it will be a wall hanging or a framed piece, I just don't know.

Just in time for Valentines Day

The swap at Textile Challenges this month is for a padded heart to be made in time for Valentines Day.

Well, unusually for me, I am on time and here is my heart.

The heart panel is made from layers of singed organzas and lots of free machine embroidery. I don't think they show but there are little hearts embroidered with the gold thread.

I have stitched little pink roses to the panel and added some little beads round them. I didn't think this needed a lot of beads or the gold hearts would disappear altogether.

The heart itself is made of patterned velvet and the whole thing is lightly stuffed.

It measures 6ins long.

It will be on it's way to Pam very soon.

Moon Goddess

My very last arch of the year long swap at Textile Challenges is for Carol Rowland.
Carol likes fantasy figures so a Moon Goddess came to my mind.

The background is calico painted and stamped with acrylic paints. The detail on the side is drawn with pen and ink.
The goddess herself is one of my drawings that I scanned into the computer and printed out on to cotton.

I get the printable cotton from Crafty Computer Paper. You print the image, cut it out, peel off the backing and iron in place.

I wanted it to look like she is gathering energy from the moon so I used metallic thread to sew the energy lines and added seed beads for sparkles.
The edge is satin stitched with metallic thread.

Mayan Sun

The theme for November on Unlimited Textiles was "The Latin American Way"
I really fancied doing something bright, colourful and based round carnival.

So what happened?
Well the thing is I have a fascination for Mesoamerican cultures and elements of this just slip into my work from time to time.
In fact I am working on a body of work on this subject with my good friend Jan.
So you see the Mayan vibes just took over ;0)

The background is made up from layers of cottons and organzas. I wanted the simple quilting to represent the stone blocks used in Mayan buildings.
The sun was an important symbol to these people and mine is made from some of my handmade silk paper attached to the background with seed beads.

This quilt is now on the way to Marga in Florida. Marga lives the "Latin American Way" so I hopes she enjoys my interpretation.

A Little Quiltie

There isn't any theme for our swap on Unlimited Textiles this month so I rummaged though my stash to see what would inspire me.

I found a piece of dress velvet. It has a gorgeous feel with little sequins on it. The print is in shades of pinks. From the lightest shell pink to deepest maroon. A very rich fabric indeed.

There in my images was this lovely lady with flowers the same colour as my fabric! I found some lace in the same colour ways and this little quilt was started.

I had some pink metal roses that seemed perfect and added some beading down the side of the image.

"Smell the Roses" journeyed off to Jill who liked her.
I have been doing a lot of abstract things just recently so it was a good exercise to go back to using images again.

Stone Wall Inspiration

This arch is for Hannah.
One of the themes she chose is Nature and she likes blues, green, golds, and purples.

Well this isn't strictly nature but is inspired by the walls in Devon.

We have lots of lovely dry stone walls and cob and stone walls.
Cob is a mixture of earth and clay.
I love the texture of these walls and the way moss clings to them. I have enjoyed seeing the rain sparkling on them this year too.

I think of these walls as part man made and part nature and a what a wonderful combination they make.


I started out making this arch by painting bondaweb and bonding it to organza. I blasted the fabric with the heat gun and allowed it to bubble and go quite hard in places.
I cut up this fabric into pieces I thought could represent stone slabs and stitched it down onto cotton velvet. I also put some strips of gold organza on and stitched them down and zapped with the heat gun again.
I added little beads to represent the raindrops, we have had a lot of them this year.

What you don't get here is the texture. It has a rough feel and I think feels a little like the stone wall it is made to represent. I hope Hannah thinks so too.

A few Journals

Just recently I have been on an on-line course with the most excellent Sue Bleiweiss.
This class was Journal Making for the Fibre Artist.
As usual I found Sue's class informative, clear to follow, fun and absorbing.

These are the first 3 journals I made on the class.
The first measures 9ins high and 8ins wide when closed.

There are three signatures each with a pocket on the front of each to hold tags or found goodies. Inside are decorated pages. Some stamped and some with stickers or printed images.

I have started to use this one for my patchwork class and the pocket at the front holds the templates for my current project.





The second journal is actually a sketchbook.
It measures 9ins high and 12ins wide when closed.
There are pockets inside the front and back covers to hold pens, pencils and paintbrushes.
I used watercolour paper for the pages.
It is bound with binding rings so pages can be replaced easily.






The third is made like a scrapbook album and would make a wonderful gift with photos mounted inside.

I used asian type fabric and used a chop stick and beads as embellishments to the binding.
Inside used handmade papers, vellum and hand painted papers.


There are 5 journals on the course. I am starting my last one today.
I will show you number 4 and 5 later this week ;0)

Art Nouveau

The theme for January's swap at Unlimited Textiles was Art Nouveau.
Well new year, new art.

I love this style. It flows and grows with spirals and curves and is just beautiful.
With my love of flowers it was certain what I would choose as my focus.

I had some lovely pieces of green silk that were too small to do much with but made great backgrounds for my flowers.
The flowers are organza. I cut out the shapes with a small point on my soldering iron.
I like to do this as the edges don't fray but I have to remember to wear a mask as the fumes are unpleasant.

I did a little detail with gold thread which quilted the items too.

The ATC's are zig zagged onto pelmet vilene and the quiltie (5" x 5") is backed with hand painted cotton.

The Flower

The main inspiration for this piece was the gorgeous clematis in my garden.
Its lush purple flowers are fading now and are paper thin. It is not hard to imagine that you can see my lovely Cob wall showing through the petals.

The fabrics are all painted, dyed and stamped by me - such fun ;0) - and pieced together in a crazy manner on batting, with the flower machined over it all.
Little buttons symbolize the falling blossoms.
I mounted the crazy quilt to some gorgeous navy velvet and made a machine wrapped cord from sari silk to hang it by.
The crazy quilt measures 7.5ins x 9ins the whole quilt measures 10.5ins x 11.5ins and its hanging length is
22.5ins

Do you remember the exercise Sue Bleiweiss set and I created the crazy backgrounds?
Well I tried to do a similar thing here. Not quite the same I know, I gathered the right colours together this time but I did just put the pieces on to let them have a life of their own and I left the edges raw with no or very little tidying.

I think the quilt does have a life and the edges seen to echo the feel of Autumn in its "aged" look.
Roger thought it had a Cubist look to it hence it became the "Picasso Garden"








You can find this piece for sale at my Etsy shop.

Second Quiltie for Unlimited Textiles

There was a little mux up with the partner list on Unlimited Textiles.
Yes, I know I did the partner lists so it is all my fault.
Maybe I should be sacked!

But it did give me an excuse - as if I really needed one - to make another quiltie.

This is the result.
The background is hand painted fabric and the motif is a little needle felted leaf.
Not that you can tell it is a leaf as I have a lot of practicing to do with the needle felting. I still think it is great fun though.

This is now on its way to Patsy or Sandy or somebody ;0?

Getting to Know You Quiltie

This is my quiltie for the Getting to Know You Swap on Unlimited Textiles.

The background fabric is hand painted cotton with layers of sari fabrics and glittery braid. The image is printed on to cotton.

The cotton I use is ready to print on. I cut the photos to size, peel off the backing and iron in place.
I don't usually stitch round the image unless it is left as a photograph and then just for decoration.
I do think however, that if the article was to be worn you would have to stitch the edge.
I get it from Crafty Computer Paper

This quiltie is going to Sandy. I hope she likes it.

Kilt Pins

I joined the "Kilt Pin Swap" on ANUK.
What a great idea of Kari's.

I thoroughly enjoyed making these. As they were for Valentines Day I felt they needed a heart on them hence the fabric hearts.
The hearts were pieces of textile that I had over from another project I just cut them to shape and zig zagged the edges. A bit fiddly but well worth it I think.
I now have a little box of hearts!

The first pin went to Jill and the other I have been using myself but maybe it will go to Laura (my daughter) as she comes home for a few days this weekend.