I hope you like my ‘Dorset Christmas Tree’ decoration. Its adapted from an idea by Pauline Spence, published in Stitch Magazine, Aug-Sept ’14 edition. Pauline makes Dorset Posies. Wishing you all a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!
Month: December 2014
Christmas Workshops
Greatly enjoyed two of the series of Christmas Crafts Workshops at Aspex Gallery in Portsmouth. The first was Lino Prints and Stamps with Julia De Klerk. This was brilliant fun, and quite outside of my comfort zone. Below is the stamp I made in just 2 hours. We had time for practice, making and stamping! I used the stamp to decorate recycled brown paper bags to put Christmas gifts in. Rushed to the shop to invest in some printing inks, and more lino and then spent a few evenings making a much smaller stamp to print gift tags. Mustn’t let it be a one hit wonder. Need to try printing on to fabric in the new year. Second of the two workshops was Bookbinding with Catherine McGinniss. We spent just under an hour decorating our notebooks. I decided to use collage. Then we learnt how to make the binding with the Japanese stab technique, basically sewing the binding using linen thread. Very satisfying and a useful technique for binding together loose doodles into a sketchbook. Can’t wait to try it out with fabric too. For an interesting twist on the technique, visit this page by Abigail Bainbridge at West Dean.
Handbound notebook
Lino print stamp
Home III, Beyond Seaview
I have some beautiful photos of Priory Bay and Seagrove Bay that I chose as inspiration for this piece, but I’m not entirely sure it’s turned out as I imagined it might. Triadic colours green, orange and purple informed the colour palette, with a dash of achromatic including silver. These locations suggest tranquility, natural beauty and seclusion to me. Yet as I worked my emotions took hold and the rapid machine embroidery allowed me to disperse my energy into the picture. Just like in the picture where the tide will come in and enable the seaweed tangles to flow in a unified direction, I guess my muddled thoughts will find their own direction. It’s been a week or so since I finished this and I think my thoughts are finding their way either into the rubbish or into productivity! Hoorah!
Some good news too; Home I, Red has been selected to show at Chichester’s Oxmarket Galleries in the pre-Christmas show, Journeys.
Bright & Beautiful 