Festival of Quilts

There are quite a few photos on blogs from people who attended this event last week in Birmingham. This is my favourite part, the virtual studio. You can get so many tips and ideas from watching other people work, and there always seem to be more people ready to share at quilt shows. The artists working are part of committed to cloth; on the links section of their web site you can find out about thermo screens, which are relatively cheap and good for screen printing if you have limited space. Since last years show I have used the idea of complex cloth by layering dyed fabric with stencilling, painting, stitching etc.. I plan to try monoprinting with thickened procion dye at some point.

Jo Budds quilts were amongst my favourite work, lovely clear fresh colours; worked on rusted fabric.

I bought some small pieces of marbled fabric from Chaosprint for my son who is interested in learning the process.

Thank you to everyone for your recent sympathy after my 'puter problems!

Peru

Things seem to be back to normal now. The computer is, hopefully, well protected from viruses and I have a back up system. Along the way I am much wiser about files, formats, dvd drives etc.. I used the brilliant Pfaff Talk site to get information to re format my Creative Card in the Pfaff 7570; I did lose designs but can now make a new start. The local sewing machine shop coudn't help and suggested I buy an expensive new card.
This piece with Peruvian birds is stitched on hand made felt with some silk tops felted in. The patterns were inspired by a work colleague who has just walked the Inca Trail. The stitching is in part done with the 7570 embroidery unit and in part free machining.The birds are painted with bronze powder and Ormoline Fabric Medium.

Pride goes before a fall

You will note the lack of photos. I am in fact only able to post by 'borrowing' my husband's
computer. Terrible things have happened to mine, not to speak of expensive things. Anyway it had to go back to the shop and now my husband won't let me hook up to the internet until the files are all backed up and the dvd writer doesn't work. Could it get worse? Well it did, I also managed to wreck the creative card in my sewing machine, which will be more expense. I suppose the worst thing is that I don't really know how I managed to create such chaos.

Its a real shame as I wanted to show you the felt piece all stitched, beaded and complete.
I have also found out about Parfait dyeing and wanted to show the results. I could tell where I found out about the dyeing process but of course I managed to lose all my links.
Hopefully, life will be back to normal soon.

Laundry

Here are some pictures of the laundry room at a National Trust House, Kingston Lacy, which I visited this week. It gives some idea of the amount of work involved for the servants in keeping those' above stairs ' clean and respectable. The house was the home of the Bankes family for 300 years, it was built when their lands were restored. They lost their estates following the fall of Corfe Castle to the Roundheads. The house is in Dorset where I spent a few days this week with a friend and her daughter.
We stayed on the coast and the views were lovely, with high seas and blustering winds, but still sunny.

Can you see the old mangle, the flat irons and the good old Singer hand machine? I grew up using one of those and the tension seemed to take hours to get right.