Red and Yellow and Pink and Green, Orange and Purple and Blue!!!!

Well what a surpise I had this week. I sat down with a cup of coffee and my latest edition on Making magazine opened to the page called making views about what people have been upto and  thought a picture looked just like a project I had featured in my blog, I read the text that went alongside it I realised it was my project and  actually comments from my blog and the blog address.  It really made my day

Well I have survived the first few weeks of my textiles course and it has been great fun. We are a real mixed bunch, some are students putting together their portfolios and others like me who just want find a new creative release.

For years I have been working with some great ranges of fabrics but having to design some to print is a whole different ball game. We have been asked to keep a visual diary throughout the year with our designs and inspirations, this is something that I have been doing for many years, so I decided my mood books would be a great starting point but oh dear all I can say is my thought patterns are all over the place and they cover everything!!!!. But what stands out is a great love of the autumn and winter months and of landscapes and buildings so maybe this could be the theme of this collection. Who knows watch this space

Anyway we had to start somewhere on our first prints and so I decided to stick with an easy floral pattern. It was the mixing of the colours that turned out to be the really interesting bit and was a case of try it and see and oh my what a collection of colours we produced and also trying different types of fabric were really interesting to see the different results. All our aprons and hands looked like a finger printing class at Nursery.  Anyway here is the first sample print!!!!!

This week we are looking at a completely different technique and looking for a landscape style print and  I am thinking of using this picture that I took last year in monument valley while doing a tour in the states.

So lets wait and see what we can produce

As for the sewing  well I am currently working on a project I have named the Guilt Quilt. All will be revealed in my next blog

The wonders of the scrap's box

It has been a manic couple of weeks and it was also back to school for me this week as I started my textiles course at art school. I am really looking forward to learning new techniques and mixing colours and building my portfolio of fabrics ready for our exhibition next year, it gives me a great chance to think about what I can turn the fabrics into and I am sure that lots of my efforts will appear on these pages

As for my current projects, I have lots of quilts and embroidery on the go at the moment and they are all currently in progress which hopefully will feature in the blogs over the next few months. I suddenly realised my scraps box is growing bigger and bigger and I was wondering what to do with some of the Christmas fabric scraps as they have limited use the rest of the year so decided to turn them into little fabric parcels to hang on the tree. They are little squares sewn up, a ribbon added  and filled with soft toy stuffing and a few drops of Christmas aromatherapy oils. Its a great way to use of bits of fabric left over from projects

With the other scraps I have made little gift bags which can be filled with a chocolate or a little gift, tied with a ribbon and they can be hung on the tree.

Another project  for them is to make 25 little bags add a number 1 - 25 on the bags either by embroidery, applique or fabric paint, add a chocolate and tie with the ribbon. In the meantime find a branch that has lots of twigs on it, this can either be left natural, or painted white or sprayed gold or silver. Then pop the branch into a large vase and then hang your little bags on the branches.

Oops , I now need to go off and finish the Christmas table runners that I started on earlier this year as I have ended up with a few requests from people for Christmas orders. Better get stitching!!