Back at last

It's been an age since I last blogged or at least it seems like it. A lot of things have been going on over the last few weeks, not all good. I caught the dreaded lurgy and it caused me a few breathing problems but they went with the Italian sun. Our holiday was lovely, we saw lots of beautiful places and I'll post photos in my next blog.

In the meantime back at the ranch the postman had been really busy and on return from Italy three beautiful journals awaited me. This touchy feely velvet and silk one from Margaret Roberts, love these colours.

Iris Bell's fantastic paper and fabric flower journal. I should say the insides of each of these journals is a work of art too.

Aynsley McKay's journal was completely different being made from melted plastic and very well done. Aynsley has created a unique journal and again her inside pages are all decorated too.

These two postcards are from the private swap with the May theme of 'anatomy'. Top one is from Jennifer and the bottom one from Cindy. I also got today one from Christine and mine are ready for the post but I will show those in the next post as I haven't scanned them yet.

And finally I received this beautiful little atc from Anni. Anni has made paper fabric for the background and layered images, lace and stamped. A really well made little atc which I love.

Now for some more bad news and then some good news.

Bad news is my mil is very ill and we aren't certain she is going to recovery. She was fine on Wednesday, singing and laughing but Thursday morning broke to find her far from well. So far they haven't been able find out what the problem is and its felt that perhaps she is nearing her time and we've been told to let the family know she may not get better.

Good news is - we've adopted a Staffy from the Dogs Trust. Buster is 4.5 years old, lively and very friendly. We've been considering getting a dog for a while now we are both retired and my son Simon and his girlfriend Julie both wanted a dog. We hope to get Buster on Wednesday and we can't wait.

I've been out of action this week, think the stress of the last few weeks has caught up with me and I came down with a nasty chest infection. Being asthmatic its hit me quite hard and it still hasn't cleared. Which is a bit of a begger as at 03:50 tomorrow morning we leave for Italy. Keith is quite excited, I'm trying very hard to be excited but failing miserably, far too tired. This "Anthing but cotton" card is from Arlene Franks and is silk and paper, stamped, painted and embroidered.

I have managed to do a little bit of sewing over the past couple of weeks. This small handbag is a Monkey Button's pattern its just about the right size to take all my odds and sods. It will go in my main bag and keep all the first aid bits and general medication one tends to take away with them.

As you can see I sewed one strip upside down and didn't notice until I'd put the zip in. I am not going to take it out now.

Finally got my mailer journals out in the post. They are made from fabric paper, stamped, gilded with cords etc. They looked a little like leather when finished.

Got to go now and finish packing, I hate packing luckily for me Keith doesn't. Anything I've forgotten now I'll have to do without. Well there's one thing I have to sort out and that some hand sewing. For the next day and a half I'll be travelling overland sewing, watching the scenery pass by (we have front seats on the coach) and listening to Conn Iggulden's Genghis series on my ipod. Don't you just feel for me!!!

A walk on the wild side

On Sunday we decided to go out for the day and blow away some cobwebs. We loaded up the car with walking boots, sandwiches and flasks and set off for Upper Teesdale to Cow Green Reservoire which is above Caldron Snout and High Force waterfalls. It was a bright day if a bit cold and breezy but we really needed to get out for the day. It's a bit wild up there, bleak in the Winter but full of wild life and rare plants.

The locals watched our every move with suspicion.

This is what we really went up to see - the rare blue Teesdale gentians.

There were other gentians out too, together with Spring viola's, some alpine plants and the mosses and grasses were really colourful. I was going to upload photos of these but Blogger is being so slow I ran out of patience.

Now here are the photo's I was trying to upload last night. My wonderful TextileChallenge house swap from Mariel. She has gone to a lot of trouble the stonework alone must have taken her ages to sew.

Closed but the dragon still strides along the cressellations and the King and Queen look out of the windows.

The back also has lots of stonework and the workings for my little drawbridge.

And here is its my "at the castle door" house with the drawbridge down and the knight ready to fight or welcome you. I just love it and my grandson enjoyed raising and lower the drawbridge.

Rose doll from Kari in South Wales has come to live with us, not sure she approves of us but welcome cariad (hope I've spelt that correctly).

We had a short visit to Newcastle Metro Centre today, not many in the centre wonder whether its the affects of the credit crunch or whether we just went on a slow day. There was a team from the Wii people trying to coax us onto the wii fit boards, managed to avoid that one. A fashion display was also being staged, that was a little more successful than the wii fit demo.

We couldn't really find anything we wanted to buy, well anything clothes wise for the holidays, so had lunch and returned home. The traffic was nose to tail until we got past the Angel of the North. I'm probably in the minority but I love the Angel and think the more rusty he gets the better his body shows up.

Mum's now home and is settling in, she's already phoned me three times I think she's missed having a phone and is making up for lost time. I must say I too missed phoning her and would often go to the phone thinking "Oh I'll just tell Mum that" and of course she wasn't there. Thank goodness though it wasn't permanent, she may be an old battleaxe but she's my old battleaxe and I did miss her.

Not a lot of work done

Well I tried to upload photos but blogger is just hanging so they will have to wait for another day. I've got absolutely nothing to show sewing wise as I don't know what's happened to the time. Good news though on both Mum and friend front, Mum is going home tomorrow she has made such dramatic improvement they are letting her go back to her flat earlier than anticipated.

My friend Wendy has shown signs that she understands what is going on and can give brief nods and shakes of her head. She still can't talk or move her left side and has to be fed by tube but talking to her over the last couple of days I've had a sense of her normal sense of humour.

I've had a couple of beautiful items through the post but as I can't get google to show their photos I'll leave them until later.

Off to Newcastle Metro Centre tomorrow to look for holiday clothes, now that both Mum and Wendy are stable I can relax a bit and look forward to Italy.

Good news Bad news

The good news is that Mum is doing well and ruling the roost at the care home. She's in her element surrounded by other rehabilitating patients who haven't heard her fund of stories. She's not in the least bothered if we can't get to see her every day, just so long as we keep her well stocked with clean undies. And, of course she knows she's not there for good - when I think of all the weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth that went into getting her there.

The bad news is that my friend Wendy is still gravely ill. She is very little respones from her - even when the physiotherapist comes to exercise her shoulder. We've been told its only a matter of time but at the moment she is stable, no better, no worse. In the meantime I'm sorting out her post, bills and anything else that needs doing for the time being. Bin day Friday so Keith and I will go round and empty her fridge etc and make sure there's nothing left that can create bad odores while she's in hospital. These couple of swaps though have taken my mind of things. The first is the 'Spring/Monoprinting' atc swap on Surface Design group. The background fabric, velvet and cotton where first monoprinted (twice) then machine embroidered and finally embellished with brads and fabric flower petals.

The second are for the jigsaw puzzle piece swap set up by Pat Winters on her Pieces of Friendship blog. These were more difficult to do than first anticipated or rather I should say more fiddly. The bases are fabric paper I made last Summer. They were then decorated using stamps and metallic inks, machine and hand embroidery. Flowers were stamped out of a tomato paste tube and the centres beaded. The first ones I beaded I sewed through the metal flowers but it was so easy to cut the threads I decided to couch the flowers down between the petals and this worked well. I enjoyed making them but wouldn't want to make lots of them I am though looking forward to seeing what everyone else has done. The pieces are darker and more vibrant than the photos shows.

The postman over the past few days has been very kind to me and I've been a bit remiss in saying thank you to all those who have sent me goodies.

First, from my friend Sylvia who sent me this piece of 'Shrink' fabric. Apparently you sew it onto the back of another piece of fabric then heat set it and it shrinks to create a textured surface. It reminds me a bit of a nylon shower curtains but not quite as heavy. I wonder if its the same fabric but finer. Has anyone else used this yet and if so what have you created with it?

The next two cards are the final two in April's private swap with the theme of Geometric. Cindy created a ballon from hexagon, circles, square and more circles in the chain stitch. Chris has used the Tangram a very old game. I remember playing with one as a child and I think they use something similar spatial tests. They are certainly one of the 'Brain Train games for the Nintendo DS.

Susan Monk sent me my first Mailer Journal and its beautiful (free tutorial on Iris's blog if anyone is interested). It's currently a swap on the Surface Design group. Susan has used a technique in Beryl Taylor's book to make the journal cover and finished it off with beaded binding and a really interesting pin on the front. She has made the pin detachable so I can reuse it if I so desire. I've made a start on mine and hope to get them finished before I go on holiday on the 23rd.

Susan also sent these goodies, a lovely card with a handmade embroidered foam stamp, decorated paper tag and everything came in the handmade envelope. Very creative Susan I am delighed with everything.

This beautiful card is from Jan Zeibol, again a Surface Design swap "Anything but Cotton". Jan has used wool and silk fibres, threads and handmade paper. She has also put a really lovely response on the back of her card "Thank you for the times of gifts and creative surprises".

Today Keith decided we needed to decorate the front lobby, which is where a lot of my 'stuff' is stored. Great timing as I had the U3A craft class this afternoon. I hate it when he decided to do things on the spur of the moment as we are now living with my 'stuff' spread all over the rest of the house. Luckily Sy has gone house sitting for the next couple of weeks so we can use his room as an overflow. This is the problem with small houses - you need to be fairly tidy, oh how I wish I were.

As for the Craft class well Keith decided to stay at home and paint as he didn't think any men would show up. They'd finished caning the chair bottom. Naturally two men turned up with a chair they wanted to upholster but neither had the foggiest idea where to start. Keith and I have upholstered furniture before (okay Keith has) so I had to get on the mobile and call him out. By the time he'd arrived all the ladies had advised the men on how to take the old fabric on, how to create a new pattern and impressed on the owner of the chair (another 3 in the pipeline) that on no account must he go shopping for fabric on his own. He has to take a lady along with him. I think the men were quite relieved when Keith arrived but Judy has been volunteered to go with Ron to buy the fabric, watch this space.

Wel the best laid plans etc. Just after dinner last night I got a call from the Intensive Care Unit at our local hospital. My friend Wendy had failed to recover fully from an operation to pin a broken shoulder and she had given them my number as an emergency contact. It appears that Wendy had had a stroke in the recovery room and they had had to put her on a ventilator. I had a very restless night worrying about her, she has no family alive so her friends are the next best thing. The hospital promised to ring me, regardless of time should they be any change for the worse. Luckily there wasn't. I've spent most of today sitting by her bedside holding her hand and talking to her. She has no movement at all on the left and limited movement on the right. She cannot speak but its still early days. They took the tubes out this morning and she is now breathing on her own.

I guess my sewing days will be limited for the foreseeable future, guess the challenge quilt will be one challenge I'm unlikely to finish. Just goes to show you never know what's round the corner.

April Journal Page Finished

It's taken me ages but at last it's in the bag, so to speak. The background is space dyed velvet in burgundy,pink,green cut and reassembled between two different green silks several times to create a 'brick' affect. Stems were made from machine made cords and the flowers from layers of pink, purple and gold organza. The flowers were attached with beading. I've called it "Climbing the Wall" because that's how I felt when making the background. This is for the Contemporary Quilters 2009 Journal Page challenge. All I have to do now is upload the photos to their site.

I've just had a nasty fright though. Earlier this year I signed up to make a ChallengeQuilt based on the last book I had read. The aforesaid quilt to be 20" square. The deadline date I thought was end of May, nope its Friday!!!!! and I haven't started so I'm off now to begin, wish me luck.

Machine back at last

Don't know where the last week has gone, well I do its been a round of hospital visits and a trip to Leeds to pick up my newly serviced Bernina. At last I'm able to do some sewing. I did spend some time doing hand sewing but I was really surprised to see just how much I'd missed my machine. Mum's op went well and today she is ensconced in a nursing home for rehabilitation, so far so good...... This is Ruby the Second (well third actually as number one went to the bushfire babies). I made Ruby for a swap but my friends puppy had other ideas and he adopted her. We found him licking her enthusiastically and she was not in good shape for sending onto to my swap partner. So this is her twin all ready for the off and I have it on good authority that her 'sister' is well loved and is acting as a pillow in the puppy basket.

I've received a couple of swaps in the post this week too. The three little atc are from Anne, Pat and Susan of Mixedmedia_atc_uk fame. The card below is from Tracy Border in response to the swap on Surface Design "Anything but cotton".

These are my cards for the same "Anything but cotton" swap. They are layered sheers, polyester brocade burned back and appliqued onto a velvet background with metallic thread.

The private swap this month is on the theme of geometric shapes. I had fun creating the background with Markal sticks and then overdyeing with the markal acting as a resist. The shapes are layered sheers, which I made at our "Serendipity" meeting last week. I've had fun burning patterns into sheers and have one more design I've burned out but I have yet to do something with it.

No rest for the wicked

and boy I must have been really wicked. Keith's shed has taken up all the spare time over the past few days and you wouldn't believe how much you can store in one small shed. Everything was taken out and spread across the garden and spread into the house. The shed was then inspected and a decision made to buy a new one. This meant extending the base which in turn meant digging up half my flower bed and relocating the plants. Luckily Sy took over here and bless him he's worked really hard laying the base again. Marc came up on Saturday and between the pair of them and several of their friends erected Keith's lovely new workshop/shed. He's a happy bunny and hopefully it will keep him out of my hair long enough to allow me to sew.
These two cards arrive in the past couple of days they are Jennifer and Brigitte's response to the theme 'geometry'.

Mine I hope will be completed tomorrow when we have a 'burning' day with Serendippity. We're taking a technique from Margaret Beal's book and seeing what turns up. I'll post about that later in the week.

I managed to get March's journal page finished, yes I know I'm late but I did start it in March. I scanned the page which was just a tad long for the scanner, hence the missing top and bottom barders. I really must take a photograph of it before I can post the photo into the group folder. I've also made a start on the April one but will show that when its complete. I still haven't got a theme for this years challenge and I procrastinate so much that the month is almost over before I decide what to do.

One challenge I've enjoyed doing is the house challenge on Textilechallenge. This month's house is Jan Lewis's "Country Cottage" theme. I chose to do a crazy patchwork background (well almost) and embroider the seams. I got a bit carried away at times and Jan's house was in danger of crumbling under the weight of stitch. The window is the inside of a tomato paste tube.

Mum had her hip op yesterday and is doing well but to say that this last week has been a bit hard on the old stress levels would be an understatement. At one point I thought I wasn't going to get Mum into hospital but in the end she went quietly. Between Keith's shed and Mum I really needed the calming effect of sewing the house challenge. I'm hoping that next week is much calmer.

Today's title is - spirals

I seem to have missed some of the 'Today's title' not sure how but did manage this new one. Spirals was the challenge and I looked up from my pc screen and this is what I saw. The spiral end of my watercolour pencil roll. Finally got around to cutting up the larger piece I showed last week and it now fits into a CD case. The challenge here was to created a stitched garden that would fit into a CD case. Actually it is just a tad too high but I doubt I'll leave it in there. I think I'll probably put it on an artist stretcher.

Closed inside the CD case.

CD case open.

Catch up

Yes Julie the word I was looking for yesterday was 'Kantha' I remembered it at 3am this morning. I usually wake around that time and remember things I've forgotten during the day or I get my best ideas at this time too. I keep meaning to leave a pad by the bed to collect them but that would mean putting the light on and waking my other half.

This is the Kantha piece I started at Ushaw, not sure it will get finished. Its three layers, the bottom one being a fine cotton, next a blue muslin on which the tree of life was stencilled. The top layer is yellow organza. I chain stitched round the stencil and cut back to the painted layer. The intension was to put small shisha mirrors in each of the tree branches but the mirrors are so small it was difficult to cut them. Plan B was to embroider in each branch and I may yet do that. Kantha running stitch was worked around the outline but I need to take it in another direction, perhaps stitch some shisha's to the background fabric and run round those. Whatever I end up doing the Kantha stitch needs to change directions or its at risk of looking odd.



The postman brought me two lovely Flower Pages from the Mixed-MediaATC-UK group swap. The red one is from Julie Mackinder who and is a riot of fabric colours. You'll find Julie here.
My second flower page from this swap is from Susan Monk and a lot of work has gone into it. My pages were far too thick and now I've got a couple of pages I can see where I went wrong. I love the flowers on Susan's page the beading is wonderful.

Another couple of swap from the mixed-mediaatc-uk group are the stripe atc one and the Blue atch one. These are my striped atc's ready for posting out. The background is painted paper, lace, beads covered in Golden's heavy medium gel. The edges of each atc are slightly different in fact each card is a variant.

These are my Blue swap cards from Maureen, Jeannine and Marie each one a mini masterpiece.

I've been to Leeds today to take my 730e in for servicing at MKC. I keep getting a rotary hook message and every few minutes it tells me my bobbin has run out or to clean the lint. It is a nuisance more than anything else but it has done a few thread miles so deserves a service. I won't get it back until a week on Friday - the day my Mum goes into hospital - so my son is going to pick it up for me and bring it back home. In the meantime I'll dust off my 1630 and do some fmeing.

We took the opportunity to go out for lunch today and I've eaten so much I can't move. All I want to do now is go to sleep so guess it will be an early night. I'll probably need the rest as tomorrow Keith wants to dismantle the shed, relay the paving under it, paint it, re-reroof it and reassemble it. Sy and Julie will be giving a hand which is just as well as he wants it back in use be Monday!!!

Ushaw

Jenny and I set off for Ushaw Friday lunchtime and returned home Sunday teatime, tired but happy having had a wonderful weekend amongst friends and fellow embroidery enthusiasts. Ushaw is a wonderful venue, a neo-gothic collection of buildings that was originally built in the early 18th century as a Roman Catholic Seminary for young men. It expanded into three schools with children (girls were accepted at primary level) covering the ages from 5 to 18. The main church is one of Pugin's and always astonishes me everytime I go there.

This weekend the daffodils were out in the grounds around the buildings.

View from the workshop window.Toni Handley our tutor for the weekend kindly stood for this photo and allowed me to post it and her embroideries on my blog. Toni is a wonderful teacher, friendly, knowledgeable and very free with her help and supplies.
This is a panel from one of her Indian treasures (bought in India for her). Its reverse applique a bit like mola work.

The weekend started with lessons in shisha work followed on Saturday by stamping and stenciling and ah.... the word has gone, quilting type running stitches.

Sample of Toni's shisha work.

Toni kept her shisha mirrors and other accessories in these little bowls which I thought looked very colourful.

This is my piece, well the only one I actually liked. I did do another couple of shisha samples but hated the rather thick yarn and crude look so I did them again in finer yarn.

One of the 'quilt' of stencilled and stamped pieces done by the class, mine's the black one at the bottom. I wasn't exactly sure what it was and was pleasantly surprised once I'd put the stencil on the black. Not sure whether I'll actually finish it though.

Vivienne Brown was the second tutor on the weekend, her class was experimenting with printing on fabric. There were was very exciting but I won't post photos as I haven't asked permission but I have got one or two ideas from them so might do something along those lines and show you that later.

Been a busy few days this week full of hospital/GP appointments for both me and Mum. Mum's hip replacement op has been brought forward to the 18th April and mine has (not hip op) has been put back until 10th July. The delay is due to lack of communication between two hospitals but this has now been sorted out. The delay also means I can go on holiday next month not feeling sore.