'turtle' day

Hi everyone,
Our 'turtle' days were conceived from a proverb Carolyn heard on the radio -

'Behold the turtle, he only makes progress when he sticks his neck out'.

This week our 'turtle' day was spent changing the surface of fabric and paper with gesso, acrylic paints, layering torn scrim and fabric, Adirondack Colour Wash, Inktense Blocks and printing with a carved lino block.
All great fun, we thoroughly enjoyed getting messy and being creative.
Here are a few images................

We intend to use these new fabric's for various projects like journal quilts and book covers. We'll let you see how we get on in a future post.

Hope you had a creative day.

Sue



Journal Quilts

Hello everyone,

Hope you've had a great week. Carolyn and I caught up after the Easter break by going on a training day for Cornwall Memory Cafe Network. This is a service which aims to improve health and well-being through creativity for people with Alzheimer's disease. It was a very interest morning and something that we feel we can contribute to, we'll keep you posted.

In the meantime I have finally up-loaded my last two journal quilts for shades of red onto the Quilters Guild site and thought you may like to see them.

March and April are 'Red Sky at Night' 3 & 4

These two pieces have a more restful feel , depicting an evening sky, and happier shepherds.

The first quilt was finished, but it needed something, so I cut it up, re-arranged it and separated the pieces with dark gentle lines showing the onset of a dark sky.

Shepherds Delight

I used hand dyed fabric, free hand-cut pieceing with free machine quilting and seed stitching. The Church below was painted with acrylic paint and a hand made stencil. Again I cut this quilt up and re-arranged it.

Sunset Over Church

This is a hand stitched sketch book I made and worked in for the Red Sky series.

The cover is made of woven fabric paper, with free machine quilting, hand stitched embellishment, silk tops, chiffon distressed with a heat gun and beading.

A few images from the inside.

Thanks for looking, see you again soon

Sue

Itchy fingers

Hi everyone,

Sometimes when we're doing a workshop and everyone is busy working away, we get itchy fingers watching and wanting to join in. Well, I can tell you my fingers are tingling. I haven't been near my sewing machine for 2 weeks, un-heard of, which means nothing has been produced. However, I did finish a couple of projects before Easter, so I've added photo's of two sets of cushion.

The first set of cushions I've made for the lounge using upholstery fabric's that had a lovely large print. The method is quilt-as-you-go crazy patchwork. I've then free machine quilted and embellished with some hand stitching. The feathers didn't stand out all that well so I painted them in with some beautiful turquiose Jacquard Lumiere fabric paint. I used sample pieces of fabric so had to piece the backs, which has made the cushion very heavy, I think I will buy some lighter cushion pads.

The second set of cushions are for my daughter. When she moved into another student house we had to buy more bedding, we bought king size instead of double. So, I cut them down to size and used the cut-off pieces for the cushions. I wanted it to be a quick process as the cushions are going to be used, plus I only had 2 fabrics. I decided not to think, just stitch and free hand cut, without fussing to much about what pattern and colour went where, until I had 2 tops the right size. Can I say at this point, I loved making them, when you finish some processes they just make you smile, and this one made me. Anyway, I had to piece the backs again, but I didn't add wadding this time so not too heavy.

Daughter loves them and they'll be back to London at the weekend.

Hope you enjoyed seeing them and my remedy for itchy fingers........get back to the sewing machine!

speak soon
Sue

Creative day

Hi everyone
What a shame its poored with rain all day, our girls are at home from uni so we were going to St. Ives today, but the weather made it less than inviting. So instead I decided to try a transferglaze Carolyn and I bought at Exeter craft show some time ago, before long Debs joined in and we had a production line going. Slightly impatient we used a hair dryer to speed up the drying time between applications.

Above are some images of work in progress, these are from photo's I took on the Isles of Scilly and have been working on in a sketchbook.

Below are some of Deborah's images.

These are my two images stuck into a page of my sketch book, not sure how impressed I am with the result, the paper has to be washed from the back which also took the colour of the print with it, I've tried soft gel medium transfer in the past and that leaves more colour.

Here are some mixed media cards we've been busy making to sell at our workshops, also some we had printed with images of our work, hope you like them.

bye for now

Sue

BP are blogging!

Hi everyone,
I am excited and also a little apprehensive about this new venture of blogging. Anyone that knows me will understand why........ computers!! (give me a sewing machine anyday).
The little I know I learn from repetition, so eventually I will master this!!

Carolyn and I have created this blog so each of us can share our inspirations, thoughts and the projects we are working on with you.

We have signed up to take part in the Journal Quilts project with the Quilters Guild comtempory group.
Each quilt must be A4 size and we make 1 quilt a month.
The theme is 'Shades' and our first 4 months is Red.
I have been taking sunrise and sunset photo's for a while so decided this would be my inspiration.
Below are a couple of sunrise photo's.

These are my first 2 quilts finished. I used hand dyed fabrics and written Shepherds Warning in free machine quilting with torn edges to add to the warning message. The second quilt has an organza free machined tree.

Thanks for looking, speak soon

Sue