Spots and Spirals or, A Walk through a Tropical Garden

Spots and Spirals seem to be bursting from my brain, into my right arm, through my hand and down onto whatever cloth I'm working on! It's happened before, (some examples further down), and is happening again! I've decided not to fight it, and my JQ for March has been afflicted with a dose of the same, so watch this space!

Not sure if the composition of the whole piece works, so I've been cropping in photoshop to see if I can find a more balanced view.

I think it's going to be a case of putting it to one side for a week or two, then looking at it with a fresh eye, but I'm going to call it  'A Walk through a Tropical Garden'.

The piece above is another Spots and Spirals that I made a few months ago. It sold in a local gallery just after Christmas.

This last photograph shows my first Spots and Spirals. It was also sold a couple of years ago in the same local gallery.

Digging out an old project, some experiments, and a snowman!

This is something I've shown before, but I seem to come back to it time and time again! It started out as a sketch, then a watercolour, then I photocopied it and used it in a paper lamination. This was in black and white, so I painted over the paper lamination with watercolour paint, and now I've decided to stitch into it. I have also added some old lace dyed with silk paint to add extra texture in a few places. Above are the results so far, but it's not finished yet! Below are the stages from the waterdcolour onwards, with another up to date close-up.

This is also an experiment. I crumpled up some old cotton sheet into a plastic bag, then poured over some slightly diluted silk paint. I massaged the cloth through the bag, left it in a warm place for a week, removed it and heat set it with the iron. Quite an interesting result.

This is the end result of that experiment with the flour paste. It has turned out better than I thought it would, but I think I will add some diluted silk or textile paint now, and hope that the black marks still show through.

Finally, this is the little snowman created by my six year old grandaughter Rebecca. I thought he was very cute, and was sad to see him melt away in the milder weather!

Thanks for reading, and happy creating in whatever way you choose!

Scrappy cards and some fabric fun!

A selection of cards that I've been making. They are all made from small scraps of fabric, bits of ribbon, and beads that I've mounted onto squares of brown paper that I used to protect my table while painting, spraying and printing onto some fabric. It seemed too good to throw away, as there were some interesting shapes and patterns on the surface. Having said that, I have covered a lot of it with the fabric scraps. Once I had machine stitched all the pieces onto the brown paper, I just stuck them onto some blank square cards that I bought in our local toy shop! I will take them along to our local gallery, and offer them for sale.

Above is a piece of old cotton sheet that I have sprayed, painted and printed  with a mixture of silk and acrylic paint. I may try to use it for my March or April 'shades of red' journal quilt.

Finally, this is a bit of an experiment really. I mixed up a flour and water paste, then spread it evenly over the surface of yet some more old cotton sheeting. I  drew some random patterns into it with a fork and a stick. When the paste had dried, I crackled the surface up a bit, before covering the  whole lot with some black fabric paint. I'm  now going to wait for about a week for the paint to 'cure', and then I;ll wash out the dried paste. I'm hoping for a sort of batik effect, but I'm certainly not holding my breath. Still unless you 'have a go', at these things, you won't get any results, good or bad, so anything is better than nothing. I promise I'll show the results, whatever they are!

Keep warm and cosy, see you next time.

Magic Red Carpet, February's JQ.

A Magic Red Carpet! If I could sit on it and ask it to carry me off to some far flung paradise, I think it would have to be somewhere in Whangarei, New Zealand.......which is where my daughter, her partner and my gorgeous little grandson live! It is also a very beautiful place, and it has the advantage of being summer there at the moment! Unfortunately though, it is just my A4 Journal quilt for February!