clever kid !

Today school started again after six weeks.

The youngest grandson

made something special

while he was on holiday

.....

a machine for fun drawings

He had been busy

sawing.

with a glue gun

and a soldering iron

Of course he had to show off at school and at our house

Ha !

THAT is FUN !!!

only blanket stitch !

Last week the Stitch Club project

was stitching with variations of one single stitch :

the blanket stitch.

Julie B. Booth (American) was the teacher

who set out her workshop as a game !

We had to randomly pick a number for the format

and three more numbers for adjectives

that were used to play with the stitch !!!

A piece of cotton, big enough for a 10 x 10 cm square,

white or black

and limited colours of thread,

preferably black or white with some gray or beige ...

I made sketches of the possibilities and then I chose one

(out of three) prepared plan.

For this one the format was : cross

and the adjectives : short - horizontal - organic.

(Oops ... I was daring and took a lovely uneven dyed dark red

with white and pink threads for contrast)

This wasn't the first one of my "lottery" but I liked it best

but later I also made the other two.

Well I can say I was truly amazed by the versatility of that "simple blanket stitch"

For this week Anne Kelly

(who did also one of the Textile Artist Stitch Challenges)

made the new assignment

for which I need to sort through my stuff

to find all the right things for it, so :

to be continued 

...........

a HOT day .....

Ahhhhhh ... that is
how I remember the walks on the moor when I was a child :

a HOT day in our summer holidays !

(Just like the HEAT WAVE we have now ???

Noooo, it surely wasn't thát hot then ...)

The memory still holds :

the colour of the purple heather,

the air vibrating in the distance,

and tired feet on the sandy path ...

That memory was also a good start for another landscape

a third piece for the Cas Holmes "momigami" workshop.

A bit more detail

*

In the garden
the planted seeds for the empty spot
have transformed into a wild patch of colour
(colours I normally would nót choose,
but this is OK for now !)


Yesterday and the day before that
we hoped op some rain after all those days of heat we had.
We had a weird kind of yellowish light
and strange clouds ...
but hardly any rain as relief for the garden

Hoping for some rain tonight ...
or at least tomorrow !

(it's too damn HOT !!!)

paint, words, paper and stitch

It is amazing the inspiration we get

from the STITCH CLUB !

In this third bunch of workshops

we used paint on paper or cloth

(Gregory T Wilkins)

there were words on a "medal"

(Haf Weighton)

and scrunched up paper

(Cas Holmes)

For Gregory's task (American)

I took an old unfinished acrylic painted portrait,

divided it into three with tape

and got going with three different colour schemes.

This is so far the only one I finished stitching into

And let me tell you, that was NO FUN :

ouch, punching holes into thick painted paper !!!

(so no 1 and 3 might never be finished at all ...

yet I'm thinking about painting some cloth) 

_

The "medals" were inspired by Haf ( a Welsh artist)

who started with these medals last year,

processing her emotions being ill in hospital.

Many of the STITCH group used words in connection

of the strange times during the pandemic

these last few months,

but I chose a lighter path.

Three "medals" finished

_

Yesterday was the release of the workshop of

Cas Holmes.

I've followed her blog for many years and I like her work !

She showed us to make a little landscape
out of fabric strips and pieces of kneaded paper
in Japan (where she studied) known as momigami .
It is amazing how the feel structure and even sound of the paper
changes by kneading it !!!

Of course Japanese paper (with longer fibres in it)
works best, but (brown) paper bags , some wrapping paper
and even pages of magazines work as well !
(and you get nice warm hands hahaha !)

One piece finished !

Scraps of fabric and paper are mixed together,
tacked onto a cotton backing,
and stitched with different stitches and threads
to suggest the specifics of a landscape

The cloud ("Hollandse wolkenlucht") was a piece
of a full-page photo of a winter tree with snow
from a Dutch Nature-magazine
("Natuurmonumenten")

I think there will be more of rthese ...

:-)

wordless Wednesday

20 !!!!!

20

What a respectable old lady !

At the age of twenty ?

Old ?

YES

when you're a Burmese cat

you are !

(but our dear Bella is still going strong !)

*

These past few weeks I was busy with the concertina booklets

of Mandy Pattullo's workshop.

But my first fabric book was for daughter

so I only showed the second one in the tin box.

Today, while celebrating the summer holidays with a BBQ

I could give her the finished book,

her own Fire-keeper story.

 When still working on the covers and inside stitching with

MAGIC thread ...

Some close-ups :

Fire  !

Inside the hut 

at the end a new start !

*

The garden is as full as it ever was :

no sigh of the empty spaces after all the work at the terrace

and hardly any fence left to see

And inside, in the bathroom upstairs at the north facing window,

one of the orchids is very happy

and started flowering again

We're happy too

in our green oasis !

a booklet

The Stitch Club workshop by 

Mandy Pattullo

this week, was making a concertina booklet or "leporello".
Mandy works with a LOT of vintage fabrics
like old quilts.

In the workshop we saw her cut haphazardly through
an embroidered cushion cover,
just to have some fun pieces to use !
IIIIIIEEEEEEH !!!

I started with a paper booklet first, just for fun
(grandson also wanted to make one when I showed it to him
and he had a lot of fun with little pieces of wrapping paper
and washi tape !)

The one I'm showing here is in fact booklet number three
(when you count in the paper one)
Number two isn't finished yet
AND
is a bit of a secret.

So now number three !

A long strip of (tea dyed) cotton
and a tin box someone gave me as a present.

First the strip is neatly ironed into an accordion shape.
The strip is 8,5 cm wide and the pages are 5,5 cm to fit in the box.

For this one I used only reds
ranging from the lightest pink to dark red.
The peacock was the first thing I attached ...
on the lást page !
In fact I worked my way backwards to the front
and in lighter colours.

Here I was tacking down the last bits of the first and the front page
The stitching on the back is in sight
but that (and the frayed edges) don't bother me,
I quite like it actually.

"From pink dawn till evening red"

        double pages 1 and 2                                3 and 4                     

                   5 and 6                                            6 and 7