Glad that I live am I

This, some of you may remember, is a little fabric book I made years ago, using my own hand-dyed fabrics, and ink-jet printing on fabric. It contains the words of a childhood hymn, written by Lizette W. Reese (1856 -1935) I always thought it came from St Francis of Assisi but that's not correct. The words of this hymn came spontaneously to mind the other morning, for no particular reason. It made me think of all the words we use for 'gladness' - gratitude, thankfulness, appreciation ....perhaps you can come up with some more. This led me on to think about other Bloggers who periodically include in their posts a short list of 'things to be grateful for'.  I think it's a salutary practise to acknowledge the things in life that we appreciate, on a regular basis. So that is what this post is about. Of course, the 'givens' are family and friends, reasonably good health and a comfortable standard of living, but other events and material things come along for which I may not regularly express my gratitude. So here goes.

First up is this lovely little collection:

Ceramic buttons! Made by clever Cathy Daniels at Potter Jotter blog. They arrived the day I got back from Burwell, and they are Sooooooo gorgeous. Look at the detail on the two below -

The foot, I think, was a little joke recalling the operation I had last year - Cathy you should have put a bandage on it! They are fab, and I am really grateful for them and for your kindness, Cathy!

Ooops, slightly out of order...but you know how it goes. Other things I am grateful for can be found in the garden .........

The hollyhocks are popping up all over the place, beautiful colours. And on the veggie side, though it has been  poorer than usual crop-wise, we have had some brilliant courgettes - and I know others have noticed the same in their gardens too. This is just one small patch, there are more in the greenhouse and more in the main veggie-patch.

And a major thing I am appreciating at the moment, is our new little caravan being at its new home in Wales. Look at the site, isn't it wonderful? Jim said the scenery is breathtaking.

            Here we are, at a temporary spot, we'll be moving to another plot in a week or two.

                                           Loving the greenery and the spaciousness of it all.

    And how's that for a view each morning? Whichever way you turn there are mountains and trees.

And this is the reception centre on the side of the farmhouse. I'm really looking forward to going across and spending a few days there. Who'd have thought - me in a caravan!

And I especially appreciate No. 1 Son, who towed the van most of the way to Wales and taught his dad how to do it safely. I know Jim was quite anxious about the thought of doing this on his own, but now he feels a lot more confident. Thanks Mike for taking the time to help the Old Man out and put your Ma's mind at rest!

So there you are. Perhaps I should add my thanks and gratitude to all my Burwell Bash friends who made the week so enjoyable. So many things to appreciate. And thank you for reading my blog!

Slow Cloth and Image Transfer

                                  My Juicer has arrived! But more of that in another post.

I hope you're all settling back down into 'Autumn Mode' - children back at school, new terms begun, holidays out of the way, yet blissfully we are not yet into counting 'shopping days til...'!

There was quite a bit of interest expressed about my fabric books in the previous post. Mostly, people wanted to know how I got the text and photographs onto the fabric. Well, I'm not a tutorial blog, and there are HEAPS of people out there better equipped to tell you how it's done, loads of books, and numerous youtube clips, so do avail yourselves of those for the real 'gen', as they say.

However I'll tell you how I did mine. First of all the Paper Bag Transfer. You've all seen those paper bags with patterns on, sometimes quite pale. Well they are printed using the final 'run-offs' of print runs, so as not to waste anything. And there is still some juice for us to make use of. Simply place the paper, print side down, on your fabric..use something fairly smooth, mine was old sheeting. Press with a hot iron, keep checking carefull to test 'done-ness'. You'll get quite a faded result, but I like it.

                                                          Just the effect I wanted.

For the other transfers I treated my fabric first with a solution called Bubble Jet Set. Use only cotton or silk, it won't work on synthetic fabrics. It comes in a 946 ml container, not cheap, but it does last, and you can re-use it, so it says. Made by an American firm, it is available to buy in the UK, probably from Art VAn Go, Cotton Patch or Rainbow Silks. Full instructions on the bottle. However, soak fabric in solution for 5 minutes, DON'T WRING, keep it flat and drip dry or blow dry.

Cut freezer papr to A4 size. Iron to fabric and cut fabric EXACTLY to size, removing any stray threads. Feed into your printer in the normal way. For this photo:

I simply laid the original onto the photocopying plate of my printer and pressed go. You can do this with any image, or a textile you want to photocopy and print onto fabric. You can also scan your images and save to your computer, to access later on. You can of course use any computer generated image or text.

For this little book I created paper versions of the pages by using rubber stamps and images /text from magazines onto A4 paper, and using this as my image to transfer. For blocks of text you either photocopy blocks of text, or type it out on your computer and simply print.If you know you are going to want to cut the text apart, then make sure you leave enough space between your lines of text. Here I've just used a block of text:

Here, however, I typed lines of text and spaced them out so I could cut them seperately.

Wash your printed fabric , each sheet seperately so nothing transfers between sheets. I have treated several pieces of fabric and stored them for ages, and it still works. If you are making something purely decorative you probably don't even need to use the solution. Have a try, experiment!

I was over at Jude Hill's lovely blog, Spirit Cloth, and remembered an ongoing project of mine. Jude is a great advocate of the Slow Cloth movement - google it, there's quite a lot of info about it. It grew out of the Slow Food Movement. Anyway, I began a few years ago collecting fabrics (any excuse) and stitching away by hand at a variety of little motifs and appliques. Who knows when it will be completed? It's a slow cloth! So here are some of the pieces waiting to be joined to their neighbours.

Its Working Title, is The Gypsy Quilt. Mostly very bright colours, cottons, silks, velvets...just a collection of lovely things and a wide variety of images and patterns. No plan in mind, it's just meandering its way along. Possibly it never will get finished, who knows!

On Saturday we are off to Ireland for a week, spot of fishing, spot of music, eating and drinking, sewing, reading, journaling, swimming, possibly a spot of walking too, you never know, but let's not be too hasty, eh? Going with good friends Mike and Lesley so double the enjoyment! Not sure I'll be able to blog from there, as am not quite up to speed with the technology..though I am getting there!

Happy Autumns to you all, and let's hope for a bit of an Indian Summer on the side!

Fabric Books

Hopefully a colour-packed post for you. Following on from the previous, here are some pics of some fabric books I made a few years ago. The first is entitled  INDIA, and was made in response to a call out by Cloth Paper Scissors magazine, for entries in a fabric book competition. I made this, posted it off to the States (it didn't win, of course!) and was chuffed to see a photo of it in a subsequent issue. Now truth to tell, you need a good pair of specs to spot it, just a small portion near a corner of the page. But it is there!

I used a variety of techniques, my own hand-dyed and other fabrics, hand and machine stitiching, stamping, foiling...you name it, it's in there, Kitchen Sink Style!

Hand-dyed silk tops...I THINK, maybe they're wool tops. Anyway, luscious colours, didn't need any more than a few stitches and the odd sequin.

The page I most enjoyed doing. My hand-dyed fabric, stamped with Indian place-names, seed-stitched, a few shreds of sari fabric pinned to the top corner....easy-peasy!

               A few detail shots, including, above, machine-wrapped cords and fabric beads.

      And in complete contrast, The White Album. Well what else was I going to call it, c'mon!

                                               Good old image transfer and stamping.

                                              Wrapped twigs - very Art Quilt!

                                                          Words of Whiteness

                                     Rather proud of my first attempt at Coptic binding.

These next pics are of the book I made to honour my maternal grandmother, Sophie Emily Pryce.

                                Silken cords and cover fabric - care of The Silk Route

I made the little pocket to contain some explanatory papers. I image transferred the rose image from a paper bag to the fabric.

I tea-dyed a very old tray-cloth which was disintegrating. I have a photo of me as a teenager looking remarkably like her in this shot.

                       I never met Great Uncle Frederick, he died long before I was born.

                                    I love this photograph, the original stands on my shelf.

I was barely six when she died, but I do remember her, making vegetable soup, served in bone china soup dishes, and later, walking along the prom at Tranmere, Birkenhead, with my dad pushing her in her wheelchair. For a working-class woman of her time, she was very fiesty, and had strong political opinions. She was an original Pennine Trespasser and chairwoman of her local co-operative society.

My father adored her.

                                             Words by Paul Simon. Says it all, really.