Go read this.

Hilary B - can talk: The Studio Edition:

And now you will feel so much better!

Real life studio used by real life artist!

And I could scare you even more with studio of Son No 1 - the mess is glorious and now he has Whippet Puppy (no relation to Whippet X, who views him merely as a snack!) the mess is compounded by little tell tale packages and puddles (housetrained Whippet Pup is not!).

But Son No 1 is moving to a new studio with a showroom and is determined that he will keep on top of his creative mess!

By the way, the wonderful, wonderful Hilary B can talk!!  But boy, can she sew too!




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When I set off on my journey into Blogosphere I decided to call my blog "Living to Work - Working to Live" to reflect the fact that as a full time salary earner, and in a fairly high pressure role, my textile life often had to jostle for place with other commitments.

This month has really been one of those months.  I seem to grab 5 minutes here and there.  But I am working on something - really I am.

Back at the beginning of the month I showed you this.


This is one of my favourite techniques for making back ground papers.  You 'paste' tissue paper onto a backing fabric (in this case calico) with a pva/water mix and then sprinkle a dry ink or dye onto the surface and then let the water work it's magic.

This was black brusho ink in powder form.

Over night the ink meandered across the paper and I got this.



This is from the original piece at the top which was quite large.  I cut it into several A4 size pieces for a Journal Quilt piece I am working on.

What is lovely is that this is black ink, but the colours have seperated slightly.

The image is a paper template I have been playing with to get the scale right.  You might remember it from here. (it is lurking behind the ivy).

This evening, as part of this work I have been researching images relating to Scotland and to Australia.

There is a connection - really, there is!

But for now, that is all the time I have been able to grab!

I have a confession to make.

I have bought one of these.




Not the Janome, but a Freestyle Quilt Frame!

It arrived in two big boxes, and Whippet X and I opened them tonight with the help of a good friend. The makers helpfully include a video explaining how to put it up and how to mount the fabric.

I haven't tried either yet - it was too late by the time we had watched the video - and it is unlikely that I will get any time this week.  But I think once it is up it will be straight forward to use.

And it comes with a laser light - but there are no instructions for that.  While I understand what it does, I am not quite sure where you put the paper.  I'll report back once I have started to use it and worked that out (which won't be for a couple of weeks due to work and family commitments)

A new toy - I think it will make working with paper quilts a dream!

I've got a commission.

Not for any embroidered pieces - no I have a commission for some dog coats, for a trendy new fashion showroom about to open in Shoreditch.

In fact said trendy new fashion showroom belongs to Son No 1, he of the book keeping requirements.

Said Son has acquired a whippet puppy (so now we have a Whippet X in the family and his close cousin Whippet Pup - actually no relation at all but those Whippet Ears just have to be related!)  Although I saw Son No 1 on Sunday we were so busy that I forgot to take any photos of Whippet Pup, so that will have to wait for another time.

Anyway Whippets - be they X or the pure thing - hate the cold and the wet and demand outer wear.  But being in fashion Whippet Pup cannot just have any old coat - he has to have some thing stylish and on trend.

So, I am sourcing dog coat patterns to adapt.  But I can't find anything half decent.  All the patterns I have found so far are, well, naff!

So, if you know of any decent patterns, then let me know.

Meanwhile, back to the internet to source waxed cotton.

It is a ridiculously early hour on a Sunday morning and I am wide awake.

Wrestling with sleep, and loosing, seemed like a waste of time so, instead, I am up, contemplating my laptop, drinking coffee and putting off a grim day of paperwork for Son No 1 by getting distracted by the web.

And I found this, and for anyone interested in quilting arts it is worth a look (and also follow the links)

Linda Kemshall: Exhibition open:

Do you think that Linda Kemshall is ever up at 5am on a Sunday doing book keeping, or has she got her life more in order and if she is up at such a ridiculous time then she is being creative.  (One thing you can't call book keeping is being creative - surely that is not the point!)

Once this is all sorted (and it has been a bit demanding lately) then I will get back to the memories series (which is progressing very slowly!)

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I am a big fan of the Kemshalls.

A couple of years ago (I guess it must be about 4) I did a one day workshop that they were running at The Bramble Patch.

They set me on my art quilt journey.  Later I did courses with Angie Hughes and Brenda Boardman that really shifted me up a gear, but Laura and Linda set me on my way.

How, then, did I manage to be so ignorant of this?

DesignMatters TV:

You can have little taster sessions - try before you buy.

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'Textiles' turn up in the most unlikely places.  Or, to be more accurate, textile related bits of interest.

If you pop by the blog from time to time, you might know that I have a bit of a complicated life.

I 'live' in Hampshire.


But my 'studio' (the back room that I like to think of as my studio, at least) is in Northamptonshire.


Dear reader, Northamptonshire is the forgotten county!  But I won't wax too lyrical about that now.  Instead a bit of history.

Reading the page from the Cowper and Newton Museum in Olney, I learn that lace was probably made in the Eastern Counties (Buckinghamshire, Bedfordshire, Northamptonshire) prior to 1563. This was, and apparently still is, a flax growing area (though I cannot say that I have any noted any growing).

The big influences arrived when refugees arrived from the continent during the 16th Century.  The first wave of lace makers came in 1563 to 1568. These were Flemish Protestants who left the area around Mechelen (Mechlin / Malines) when Philip II introduced the Inquisition to the Low Countries:


But in 1567 it is estimated that 100,000 left Flanders when the Duke of Alva became head of the Spanish Catholic Army. Most of that number came to England.

Second wave of lacemakers, many from Lille, left in 1572 after The Massacre of the Feast of Saint Bartholomew (about which I know nothing, but a bit of googling calls). Exactly how many is not known but many apparently hundreds came to Buckinghamshire and Northamptonshire.

Now I sort of knew this, as the centre of the lace industry was in Olney (which is actually in Bedfordshire, but is right on the border with Northamptonshire) but what I did not know was quite how extensive the industry was.

Now my 'home from home' village (Deanshanger - well a suburb of Milton Keynes really) is in South Northants and between MK and Buckingham.  Recently it has a village history day - so I popped along.

And it was fascinating.  In the late 1800s there were over 50 people living here who were registered as lace makers.  There was even a Bobbin Maker - Jesse and his son James Compton .

When you dig around on the internet you can see that the influence of the lace industry lingers on.  There are still lace makers in Olney and bobbin makers in Wilmslow.

And these people were trying it.


I wasn't tempted.  I have too many projects on the go, and don't think I have the patience!

Somewhat showing my ignorance, one thing I did not expect in my short break to Cornwall was to find the grave of Sir John Betjeman. 

But we did, in the prettiest of little churches, tucked in the rolling dunes just at the mouth of the Camel Estuary.

What a view - if my bones have to rest anywhere then this is as good a place as any I think.

The little church is in high demand as a wedding venue and the porch and door had been decorated.





 (Ps, that's Molly, best friend of Whippet X, waiting patiently outside the church.  Not sure she was so impressed with the flowers).

And inside, they were all geared up for Harvest Festival.


 And in the porch, this lovely romantic tombstone (which did not photograph so well).

In my last post I quoted a paragraph from a blog by Clive Hicks-Jenkins.  I make no apology for quoting it again because I think it's important.

 "An artwork needs to earn its keep. I’m not interested in art as wallpaper, so comfortable to live with that it ceases to be any more than decoration. I want to be moved by art, confronted, irritated even. I expect it to call out continually. I want to look at it and have it look right back, ask questions of me, lay down a challenge, demand attention."

And now I want to direct you to another blog.  Go and read Kit Lang's latest blog entry and read about Marie -Joseph Angelique.


To me this encompasses all of Clive's requirements.  I have no idea if Clive reads my blog, but Clive, if you do, go look at this piece by Kit and tell us all what you think.

Meanwhile, back in my somewhat more mundane world, not a lot has happened on the Memories piece since I left you.  For my sins, and as well as the day job, I do books and other boring stuff for Son No 1.  And I thought I had finished August at the weekend, but no!  He found some more invoices!

It turns out that I had most of them, but nevertheless I had to cross check them.  I also intended to do his Cash Flow, but have failed dismally and that is going to have to be this weekend's glorious task.

But on a high note, Whippet X and I are off for a long weekend in Cornwall with my dear friends Rob, Andy and Molly (Molly is a dog!).

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the winners of the fox art prize | Clive Hicks-Jenkins' Artlog:: "An artwork needs to earn its keep. I’m not interested in art as wallpaper, so comfortable to live with that it ceases to be any more than decoration. I want to be moved by art, confronted, irritated even. I expect it to call out continually. I want to look at it and have it look right back, ask questions of me, lay down a challenge, demand attention."

This is a direct quote from one of the blogs I follow.  Clive does not do textiles but he does wonderful illustrations which I really love.  And this quote sorts of sums it up in many ways for me (and I do hope Kit Lang and Annabel Rainbow drop by, because this applies to them and is why they are among my heroes!  Clive just managed to express it better than it did!)

Any way, he recently curated an exhibition in Jersey and these are the competition results and I thought they were worth sharing.

Enjoy!
'via Blog this'

On my last post I asked the rhetorical question 'Why do I blog?' -I asked this because lately I have been a bit short on creative time and that can create a slight feeling of internal panic.  Asking the question helped put things all in perspective.

And quite recently one of my textile heroes (dear reader, you may be aware if you have been paying attention, that I have heroes) asked her readers if they liked her blog and what should she include in the blog.  I read it fascinated, but did not respond - I just thought I would see what, if any, turns she took.

And then yesterday, said blogger - Kit Lang - entered a new blog piece.  And wow, what a story!  Go and read it!

So yesterday, over a quick coffee in the office, I googled Angelique - the girl behind Kit's blog. And what a fascinating story - and there is a big question - 'Did she even do it?' (Go read Kit's blog to find out what 'it' is)

It seems to me from what I could glean yesterday that this girl, Angelique, was in the wrong place at the wrong time and was a 'problem that some one wanted to solve'. To think that the whole case seemed to hang on the testimony of a 5 year old, and one who only came along a bit later, and then a confession being obtained by the most horrendous torture ( I found a description - I rather wish I hadn't) seems so wrong.

And that got me thinking, how the hell did our ancestors manage to live with any sort of conscience in such times? But they did - and for us all living now we can give thanks every day that we live in a tolerant society - albeit on occasions a flawed one. That applies to the UK and from what I know of Canada, to Canada too. There are still parts of the world where women are treated as chattels, where to be gay is the equivalent of a death sentence, and where to be of a different ethnicity is cause for additional struggle.

Like that other great challenge of our times, climate change, it can all seem a bit 'too big' for us as individuals to address but the work that people like Kit produce reminds us all that there is still a fight to be won.

Who said quilting was just some gentle past time?

On which note I have started to think about my next pieces.  I am going to enter the 'Journal Quilt Challenge 2013' run by Grosvenor Shows.  The theme is Memories in Black and White.

I'll come back to this topic - it has been milling around in my mind - but last night I thought I would make some backing fabric.  So out came the PVA glue, some random wrapping tissue paper, and a bit of old white cotton I had lying about.




Basically, I mix the PVA with water and then spread it onto the fabric (if you paint the tissue it just tears) and then gently stick the tissue down on top.  You don't have to be too particular with this, as the wrinkles in the tissue adds interest and texture.

And then I dropped black Brusho ink powder through a tea strainer onto the wet tissue (giving it a bit of a blast with water to help spread the powder a bit).

When it is dry I will cut it up into A4 size.



And finally, don't you just love a conker! (oh, and I'll come back to that image in the background).