Printing, chopping, stitching, and lots of fun!

After assembling the image below, stitching into it by hand and machine, I felt it was just too dense, it couldn't breathe, so I chopped it up into lots and lots of 3" squares! (Above)

Nine squares, covered in a fine voile to knock back some of the colour, but then cut away in places for contrast. Machine stitched onto the background, with further machine quilting, emphasising some of the lines and shapes.

Same again, but I decided to cut up one of the 3" squares into 9 smaller pieces. Some text was also free machined in a couple of places. All experimental stuff, and I'm enjoying playing with ideas.

Still about 11 or 12 squares left over, so I stuck them onto a very long strip of paper, concertina style, and then added some marks/drawing with a black pen wherever the fancy took me. This is now stuck into my 'developing ideas' book.

More experimenting with leaf prints onto fabric and paper. I've always liked dandelions, their colour is such a glorious yellow, and reminds me of the sunshine. I also love the interesting tooth shaped leaves, and then of course the dandelion clock! Lovely seedheads to blow and have fun with. After printing with the leaves, I stuck other pieces of fabric and paper around them, stitched into some of these pieces by hand and machine, and then decided to assemble them into a simple book form. See below. Again, it's been a lot of fun doing this, and it's definitely something I will be doing more of. Hopefully I'll be getting better results as I go along!

Finally, I live in Carshalton, which is becoming quite famous for it's lavender fields. I went along today, and was surprised by the amount of people who were also visiting. In fact it was difficult to get a photo without too many bodies in the way! The first photo shows a field that is a week or two behind  the field in the second photo. I really like the contrast of the yellow flowers sprouting between the rows of lavender. These lavender fields must also be on the itinerary of our Japanese visitors, there were many of them here today, taking photos as a reminder of their visit.

Across the road from the lavender fields is our beautiful local Oaks Park. This weekend, the artists who work in the artists studios there, had their doors open to the public. It must be a very inspiring environment to work in, and I'm quite envious. I met some lovely, and very talented artists who were all very welcoming. I was particularly impressed by the work of sculpture artist Kendra Haste, and have decided that I must make a visit to The Tower of London, to see her wonderful animal sculptures in situ.

Until next time, thank you for your time, and enjoy your creativity, whatever it is!