Quilts, Journals and Workshop fun

This has been a really busy week trying to catch up with outstanding challenges, shopping for christmas, various appointments and going to the Knitting & Stitching show in Harrogate and on top of that my asthma decided to kick in and has left me feeling tired. I've done absolutely nothing today except take the car for its MOT, luckily it passed with flying colours. The postman delivered Cindy's 'medieval' card today. She has tried printing on fabric for the first time, I think its come out really well.

Talking of printing on fabric Serendipity met yesterday (we've called ourselves 'the dippies') to have a playday printing on fabric. Number 2 son Simon (known as Sy) came along to set up the equipment we'd taken along (3 laptops, 2 printers, a large monitor and a router). We scanned and edited photos then printed them onto various fabrics all day long. It was another really enjoyable, successful day, working together with lots of laughs and we managed to get enough samples to take home to turn into pieces of artwork later.

My friend Judy and I took Sarah Lawrence's 'art doll' workshop at Harrogate, which was another fun day. This is my doll which I've named 'Ariel'. I had intended to put a bit more decoration on her but somehow she resisted all attempts. Sarah had mounted her art dolls onto small boxlike frames (artist stretcher type rather than hollow boxes) and they looked really go so I think Ariel might find herself on one. It was a really enjoyable workshop, Sarah is a great teacher and I ended up buying her latest books one on art dolls and the other on silk paper.

I didn't buy as many books as I expected to, apart from the two mentioned above I bought Angie Hughes new mixed media book. Most of my cash went on silk screen dyes and Jane Dunnewold's "Complex Cloth" workshop dvds. I seem to be buying more dvd's than books these days. I was really pleased with my purchases and intend to have fun with them once I find some free time.

I received my art quilt (Kate North's ALQS swap) from Wil Opio Oguta who lives in the Netherlands. I'm over the moon with this quilt its so well quilted and the daisies are devine.

I can now reveal that my swap partner was Lynda Monk of PurpleMissus fame. I was a bit in awe of her and worried about my quilt not being good enough as she's such a talented lady. But she very kindly said she loved it, that it was just up her street phew!!!

My quilt was based on the 'chaos theory' where something small is dropped (such as a stone or leaf) and its ripples run round the world. The background is black cotton and yellow cotton cut in circles. Rectangular shapes of painted bondaweb were bonded to this background and finally overlaid with organza and quilted in a random square pattern. When that was done I burned back the organza with a heat gun with the black areas being given most attention. This gave the piece a distressed appearance. Finally a blue agate and blue rhinestones were applied to represent a dropped stone and ripples of water radiating from the centre outwards.

The top picture is a close-up and the bottom one is the whole quilt. I haven't got the angle right as I laid it over the back of the settee and its curved at the top. Unfortunately I was running a little late with it and wanted to get it in the post so didn't have time to photograph it again.