Happy Easter!

Happy Easter Everybody!

Here is a delightful vintage image from The Graphics Fairy showing Victorian children dancing round a hen with eggs.

Tag Tuesday-Letter L

L is for London



 For Tag Tuesday this week we are on the Letter L.

My tag this week is quite a simple one, but I wanted to use this fabric I had in my stash.

 I have chosen L is for London , as London is very significant in my life. We live about 30 miles away, so near enough to pop up for the day, but away from the hustle and bustle. The fabric has St Paul's Cathedral on it, and which me of when I first came to London to do my nurse training (a long time ago now!) and my husband , Richard,( in those days he was my boyfriend)  started work as a trainee accountant, with his office right by St Paul's. I  looked round the cathedral before meeting him one day, and when I went upstairs I found myself on a small balcony suspended over the city!  He still works in the City, but has moved a short distance to a new office.

I coloured in the fabric with Inktense pencils, which I then painted with water to bring out the colour.

Finished sashiko

I have finished the sashiko sampler that I have been working on, working repeats of some designs in different colour ways. It just needs binding now!

More about Kantha quilting

 Since my previous post about the alphabet theme I am playing along with for
Tag Tuesday , which was K is for Kantha, I have been looking for more information about Kantha quilting, as one of my Tag friends was asking about it. This is for you Mo!

This is what I found:-

The Quilter's and Patchworker's Stitch Bible by Nikki Tinkler

This book gives a clear and concise explanation off the origins of Kantha quilting, suggested designs suitable for Kantha  and some  photos of examples.

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Swedish designer, Gudrun Sjoden uses influences from all over the world in her colourful clothing and textiles for the home.  I came across some wonderful examples of Kantha in a range of hers inspired by a trip to India. If you haven't come across Gudrun, her web site is well worth a look, as she travels widely for her fashion shoots, and writes about the things that have inspired her. 

 This photo is a close-up 

 I took of the front of one of Gudrun Sjoden's catalogues.

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http://www.sashaworld.com/kantha/kantha.htm

This web site has some good photographic examples of stitches used in Kantha

I learned that Kantha started as a form of recycled textiles, a way of re-using old saris, which were then layered and the coloured threads taken from the old saris used for stitching.

I thought this was interesting, as I have been reading up about Sashiko, the Japanese form of embroidery I have been working on recently, and found the origins very similar,as Sashiko started with layers of kimonos held together with decorative running stitch .

Tag Tuesday-Letter K

This week on Tag Tuesday we are on Letter K of our alphabet theme.

K is for kantha

Kantha is an embroidery stitch from the Bengal region in India. It is based on simple running stitch and stitched into layers of fabric for a quilted effect. 

I used an Indian wooden stamp for my design and copied the pattern.

Doorways in Henley

I came across these lovely doorways in Henley, and thought they would look nice in a post together. I like the mixture of architectural styles and periods that can be found in Henley.

Warm and Cool Collage

Here are the warm and cool collages I have made for the course I have been doing with Jane Davies called Unlocking the Secrets of Colour.

Warm Collage

Cool Collage

I used a selection of magazine papers and other paper scraps for both collages.  The composition of the first one is not very strong, and I am not happy with it, but I tried to do a landscape out of my head! The composition of the second is much stronger, and I am pleased with it. This one came from a drawing I did in the summer of mountains in Spain. However, I feel I have managed to use only warm colours in the first and cool in the second. Although I like doing collage, I have never done this kind of thing before, I usually just make whatever I want to. I hadn't done a landscape or used warm/cool colours. There are so many possibilities with this exercise and I plan to play around and produce some more work.