Away With The Fairies Again

Although he is still not out of the woods, my boy is beginning to heal- from the wounds and the shock!
Thank you for your kind words.

Last week I finished machine quilting my latest art quilt,so I thought I'd let you peep at a little more of it. I'd love to show the whole piece, but I feel I ought to hold a bit back until it has been exhibited in November. You can see that it has much more texture now-as do my shoulders which get really knotted when I'm free-motion quilting!

When I feel more settled about my boy I'll start on the third quilt.

Lady of Letters

Yesterday, I promised to show you more of my Nan's letter. Somewhere in the loft there are more of them, but this letter, one of only 3 I could lay my hands on, was perfect for the pieces I am working on because it connects my love of Skye and  the imagery of cottages with my Nan's love of countryside and cottages.

She says " I loved the country but of course we never went only when as kids a gang of us would go to Ford Cemetry and that was all country to us kids and we would get dead tired before we got anywhere near home and of course we would fall out with the country."

Later, she adds, "I would have loved to be in that cottage...I love looking at pictures of cottages. You must take after me I seem to love all the places you visit and tell me about....Keep on seeing everything, love"

My Nan was a very strong-minded, feisty Liverpudlian with a love of strawberry tarts and a good cup of tea. She loved her family fiercely, adored children and could often be heard chuckling at babies on nappy adverts!

My Nan wrote to me every week after I left home to go to Poly, until she died in the early 1990s. She sent me cartoons from the Liverpool Echo- "Scouse Mouse" and "Garfield"- which she cut out without fail (I think sometimes before my Uncle had finished reading it!). She was a stickler for spelling and wrote in her own inimitable style, often ending with "Must finish now, love, my ribs are on the stove", which left me with an odd image!:)

I wish my own children could have met her. I am really enjoying creating these new art quilts as a little tribute to her.

Work in progress....

Wibbly Wobbly Houses

On Monday I helped to take down the TenPlus Textiles exhibition (www.tenplustextiles.com) at Salford Art Gallery. The exhibition had gone very well with lots of visitors, positive feedback and sales. I was really pleased to find that I had sold 2 pieces.

This piece, called "Fairy Glen" is one that sold. The fabric is painted and printed with newspaper, the cottages and rocks are appliqued and all the detail is added by machine and hand stitching. I don't know who the buyer is, but I hope the picture brings them lots of joy!

I now have to busy myself making new pieces for our group exhibition at the Knitting and Stitching shows in the Autumn. I am developing the idea of cottages where fairies might live and continuing to use text. I have introduced lots of curved lines and moved away from black and white, by using lots of colour.

This is a sneak preview of the first piece, which I have just finished. There are 2 more in the pipe-line. You can just see some written text on the houses, which comes from a letter that my Nan sent me over 20years ago. In the letter she talks about her love of the countryside and her wish to stay in a cottage, which she didn't really get the opportunity to do. I really wanted to incorporate the letter, so I used Photoshop to remove the lines from the paper it was written on, then printed it, painted it and reprinted it onto fabric. Tomorrow I'll show you a little more of the letter.