Colour Schemes

Amidst the present buying /Christmas menu -planning / card writing /etc etc I am playing with wool and felt and threads and fabric. You have to have balance, after all!

I am taxing my brain at the moment selecting  colour schemes for my bangles. I originally came up with the ambitious idea of making them in seasonal shades. I thought I would give them cute names, thus:

Spring Blossoms, Summer Holiday, Autumn Woodland, Winter Solstice. I had a rough idea which colours would match each season - poor old Winter Solstice remains a tad boring being merely reds and greens, but there you are. Then I thought I needed to expand upon this because I made a bangle in greys to go with my "Fifty Shades" outfit (I do wear a lot of grey, 'tis true.) And I wear a lot of blue so I wanted bangles in blue shades.... so I combined them and came up with Blue Lakes and Rocky Shores (I bet all you Girl Guides are singing along now, aren't you?) Then my gaze fell upon a particularly scrumptious hand-dyed wool-felt  in purples/greens and I thought Heath and Moorland might be another nice colour way.

                     
                                                                     Spring Blossoms

                                                                   Summer Holiday

                                                                    Autumn Woodland

         
                                                                        Winter Solstice

                                                       Blue Lakes and Rocky Shores

                                                                Heath and Moorland
Excuse the poor colour, the light is bad, I'm a poor photographer and my camera also is very selective when it comes to accurate shade depiction. Also, I need to say that of course I will dip into other colours which pop up which seem to belong in a particular scheme; only I had about reached my toleration limit for faffing about sorting these out for you!

Then I was reading the deliciously colourful eye-candy blog Attic 24 and was gripped by Lucy's latest crochet project in her signature saturated colours and knew I had to make a bangle to match. The best match I could come up with in my colours was Summer Holiday, where I can indulge in all my brights, but somehow it begged to be called Carnival when I had made it.

I can't tell you how satisfying this one was to make. The wool felt is gorgeous - from Jean at Oliver Twists, really soft and wonderful to stitch. The perle 5 thread is 'confetti' from Weeks Dye works, and is an overdyed fibre which just SHOUTS carnival to me!

I think now I have dug a hole for myself - perhaps I should abandon the idea of colour schemes and just make bangles as the fancy takes me. But then, I do like the idea of being able to just gather felts/threads in specific colours when I start to work without all the deliberation each time. It is helpful. And to be honest, I just like giving things names. I love playing with words. What do you think? And what, apart from festive concerns, has been taxing your mind at the moment? Have you any spare time or mental capacity for anything else? See you soon -ish!

Knitting and Stitching and Hooking

Hello, the friendly face in the photograph above is Sue of crafts at home blogspot. Yvonne and I fought our way through the crowds at the Harrogate Knitting and Stitching Show on Friday, to find Sue and her stand in the designers and makers section.

 Sue was selling her ingenious little mirrors, magnets, badges and hair slides beautifully decorated with colourful fabric backs. We spent ages trying to make up our minds which ones we would take home with us. We especially wanted to meet up with Sue as she had very kindly sent me two complimentary tickets to the show - how great was that! It's always lovely to meet friends from the Blogosphere, and I'm sure Sue and I will meet again.

We then went to say hello to Mandy Patullo whose work we both adore. Mandy is giving a workshop at Jane-Ann's studio next year so we were mightily excited you can believe me, to see her work 'in the flesh'. I can also reveal we both came away with one of Mandy's little bird textiles, I'll have to show you in a later post. I didn't take any photographs there and then.

I was delighted to come across a new-to-me stand selling  Donegal Tweed. This is such beautiful fabric and if you love wool and felt and blanket, you wouldn't be able to resist it. I wasn't! I had a lovely chat to Margaret, who is herself from Donegal, and she is sending me the most gorgeous book which I will show you next time - they had sold out on the second day of the show!

Here's Margaret, smiling at my inability to choose between the gorgeous rolls of tweed - I could happily have happily taken the entire stand home with me!

Look! What's not to love! If you google Fabric Affair, Donegal Tweed you will find their website. I can't wait to get going with my little stash! It will make great bangles, and is also great to applique with.

Here is Louise, who does much of the stitching of the samples on the stand. I didn't get chance to speak to her as she was busy with customers.

We managed to see the stands we had marked on our programme, Yvonne renewing her acquaintance with Val Holmes, machine embroiderer supreme, me finding that Jean at Oliver Twists does indeed still hand-dye the soft cotton I love to stitch with, both of us swooning with pleasure at the tactile and visual delights at 21st Century Yarns. I did indulge myself with some hand-dyed variegated wool felt. It is SOOOoooooo beautiful!

A few more purchases at other stalls and we felt we had had enough - impossible to get through the crush to the food outlet, and not prepared to eat our lunch sitting on the floor - why are these events so woefully badly organised for the comfort of the paying punters? - we decided to make our escape about 1pm. We were extremely lucky with the weather so it wasn't a bad drive both ways, though we were very tired when we reached our respective homes.

And the gorgeousness didn't end there - Saturday found us trundling along the damp and dirty November Norfolk lanes to Jane-Ann's at Swanton Novers. It was a hive of industry.

Yes, I did find and take with me the rag rug seat cover I'm working on! And I did hook away for a couple of hours too. Then I completed another bangle for Yvonne.

Yvonne finished her sunflower cushion with wonderful attention to detail.

Jackie worked on a commission from the craft fair........

Nadine got stuck in to another of her geometric rugs .......

Monica hooked away for a while then decided she wasn't satisfied so she engaged in what we quilters
call 'frogging' and rug hookers call 'reverse hooking'!

Jane-Ann demonstrated a brilliant braiding technique, made us a lovely lunch, and kept her work-space looking spic and span. I'd love to say my sewing room looks remotely as tidy as this - but that is never going to happen!

                        Just a few shots of the treasure trove of lovely things found in the studio.......

I hope you've enjoyed the luscious textile eye candy in this post. It has been a couple of full-on days dedicated to cloth, wool, thread and colour. We'll need a week to get over all the excitement! See you soon, have a good week.

"well, my bags are packed......"

Yes, it's that time of year again - I'm off to the Burwell Bash later today. My instruments are all ready - including the lost shoulder - rest so I can breath again! Here's one instrument which won't be coming with me - not this year anyway.

Yes, the dulcimer will remain hanging on the wall for the time being, I've had no time to do more than try out a few chords and right-hand strum rhythms so it will just be excess baggage. This is my 7th (or is it my 8th?) Burwell and I have slowly and painfully learned not to take too much stuff - keep it simple!

The weather promises to be mixed, but that never seems to matter at Burwell, and many of us believe it exists in its own little time-and-space zone, so the outside weather doesn't apply. Here in West Norfolk it is very overcast and very very warm this morning, despite the rain we had last night the heavy oppressive feeling hasn't gone so perhaps another storm is in the pipeline.

Yesterday was lovely though, despite prognostications to the reverse; hot as anything here, and Jim, who was at the Holkham Game Fair all day said it was even hotter there - I know what it's like to be marooned in the middle of a large field on a blisteringly hot day! At least they had some shade. I was in the garden all afternoon.

                                                                  Mandatory floral shot.

This beautifully coloured hollyhock is a stray, left over from goodness knows when, we haven't had hollyhocks in the garden for years. In fact there would have been a couple more had Jim not been so quick to weed out these mysteriously huge-leaved plants which arrived from no-where! Hopefully it will set lots of seed.

I'd like to say I was weeding and tidying, and doing all that green-fingered kinda stuff - but I wasn't.

After perusing the paper, and filling in most of the cross-word - sorry, Jim! ........

I settled down in the comfy wicker chair, with a good dollop of sun-protection cream all over me ......

....and set to work with this pile of delicious loveliness. Aren't those cottons beautiful? I have collected them over a few years from various quilt shows and the Knitting and Stitching Show. My absolute favourites are from Jean Oliver who hand-dyes her cotton and trades under Oliver Twists, I'm sure many of you have come across them. And they are such a nice firm as well, you never see them get hot under the collar at shows, unlike some other people I could name. (but shan't!) My problem is these days you don't seem to be able to find their variegated medium soft cotton thread, it is lovely to work with. All they seem to have on the website are the textured bundles of "one -offs" and "two-offs" which I don't want. I've contacted Rainbow Silks and Caroline says they don't stock anything else, and their own website doesn't have them either. So if you are off to a show this summer and see Oliver Twist, ask them to put their medium soft cottons back on sale!!

Anyway, this is what I was stitching. I finished the pin-cushion.

I'm quite chuffed with it, actually, it was such a nice little thing to work on and quick to make up. More of these in my head for later execution!

I also got onto the embroidery of the new cushion, it was a little warm at times, stitching away at this large piece of felted blanket, but well worth it.

For most of my wool applique I use a simple straight stitch, as I don't like the heavy effect that all-over blanket stitch gives. However, for the 'grassy edge' here, I thought I would use it in order to give the scallops a hard edge, and I really like it. I particularly like the variegated perle cotton I've used here.

I used perle no. 5 for the french knots, it has a slightly shinier look compared to the softer medium cotton.

So there you have it, a lovely afternoon of stitching and browsing the papers. I should, of course, have been doing my ironing in preparation for packing but hey, I've got all morning today ......

I'm not taking my lap-top with me, so I won't be blogging from Burwell, but I will be taking lots of photographs and I'll tell you all about it next time. So for now, have a good week ...ooooh school holidays, you lucky people.... and I will catch up with you next week.

Festival of Quilts

                                                                     Story of the Earth

Yesterday Stitch&Bitch friend Lynne and I took the coach to the NEC to visit the Festival of Quilts. Lynne had a heck of an early start...she was running the dogs on Heacham beach about 5.30...and she is NOT a morning person! Jim drove us to the pick up point for 0700hours and we boarded a half empty coach; this was lovely for us all as we could spread out over two seats each, and have a good doze, but we wonder whether the company will be running the coach there next year, it can't have been worth their while financially.

We noticed fewer than usual cars and coaches - the recession is certainly biting. We decided to view the quilts together then split up to shop and meet up for lunch. Well, I don't know, unless we are both getting a bit jaded, or it is just that we've been around a long time looking at quilts, but we felt we had seen SO MANY of them before. Lots of lookey-likeys, and ....well, I'm not going to carp because I do think everyone should have an opportunity to exhibit and amateurs should be shown as well as the more prominent almost-pros and professionals. And correct me if I'm wrong, anyone who went also, but there didn't seem to be so many entries this year.

We thought this deserved more than Highly Commended. Lovely colour and design, and beautifully finished.

Now you know I like a bit of a basket, there were a few Baltimore-type quilts, but I wasn't terribly struck by most of them.

I must apologise here and now, as I have no idea who made each quilt. We decided against buying programmes at £6 just to be ale to put a name to each quilt. How mean are we?? Why can't they label the quilts? They put other information on them. I know the judges mustn't know the names but the labels could go up afterwards, or have a cover....or something. It's so annoying even when you DO have a programme, faffing about with your bag, your camera, your bags of stuff, your glasses...oh for goodness' sake!

                       Lovely wholecloth with stipple quilting.....only one of its kind.

             More hand stipple quilting.........oops, that's one of mine, how did that get there!!!

                                           Love the painterly effect of this one.

                                                              Juicy, juicy colours!

This was another Judges Choice, Vikings Beware, really lovely. Something to do with the sea holly thorns giving the Viking invaders sore feet. Or so I was told. They'd have thick foot-coverings on, surely? Anyway it was a great quilt.

                Masterful. Reminds me of C June Barnes  Dyeing to Quilt series.

                                                                     Impact! Precision!

                               

                      Simply.........

                            .............stunning.

                      I do find I am more and more drawn to the quite graphic designs these days.

                                                           Or outbursts of colour.

       I don't think this would have appealed to me 10 years ago. Ah well, you live and learn!

                                                           Just beautiful.

I stopped and spoke to a young lass called Sarah Stewart, who has just graduated from the University of Dundee, and was exhibiting in the Graduate Showcase....she was in fact the winner of the judges  Graduate Showcase Award. We liked her work best of all so were in full agreement! She has a blog:

intoaparalleluniverse.com  check it out. Wishing you all success in the future, Sarah. Here are some of her textiles.

           Beautiful colours, lovely linen; the embroidery reminded me of stitched collages.   

So, yes, I did take a few more photos but you have probably all dropped off to sleep and I'm getting mesmerised by the key board, so that will have to do! I stopped by to renew acquaintence with lovely Janet Bolton, she must have met a thousand people, all old students of hers, yet she always has time for a smile and a chat. I adore her work.

We found it quite pleasant being able to get to the stalls without fighting our way through several layers of other shoppers, but it doesn't bode well for the takings. We gave a nod and a wave to old friends, Magie at the African Fabric Shop, and Yvonne Brown and Annette Morgan, both members of Anglia Textile Works, old stitching pals, busy in their booths. 

We stopped for lunch at just after 1pm, and then sat and nattered til 3pm, quick look at Art VAn Go, which I had missed! first time round, then we went and got on the coach, we  were away by4pm and back in Kings Lynn by 6.30....very hot and tired out but having had a super day. And to make things even better, Jim had  bought an Indian takeaaway so no cooking!!!Yay!

Oh, and in case you wondered..........

This was what I bought! Yes, I know, how circumspect was I! Some hand-dyed felted wool from 21st Century Yarns, some variegated hand-dyed threads from Oliver Twists - lovely, lovely company, a few Kaffe Fasset fat quarters - just because - and some BEAUTIFUL journals. Can't wait to get into these. But they will have to wait as I am off tomorrow to Burwell in Cambridgeshire, to the annual Burwell Bash, a week of music, good food, late nights, music, laughter, more food, even later nights, more music and most of all more laughter. I'm meeting up with my 'other family'.  I will take LOADS od photos, and will see if I can blog while I'm there...though I seldom have time even to read a page of a book when I am there. I have to phone Jim before breakfast, because once the day starts ....it just goes and I never remember to ring after supper....no time....no time! I KNOW i am going to have just THE BEST time as usual.  Catch up with you soon.