I am in awe of the construction of this little house it is a work of science and mathematics, never mind a work of art. I just love it, and once the quilt is finished think that I might try to move on to some three dimensional work. But let's see how things go, because in the meantime more hand made journals are calling. 

So much work bursting to get out, so little time!

I think it is true to say that we probably have thrown out more as we unpacked then we did when we packed it. This means that we moved an awful lot of junk! Does everybody move awful lot of junk? My housemate, Mark, who I have to say has been an absolute stalwart with regard to this move, is more experienced than I am when it comes to moving. He has moved several times since I have known him (he is a work colleague and we have worked together for 10 years) and has also moved aged relatives. He said, as we started to unpack and decided that actually we didn't need whatever it was we were unpacking, that in his experience more throwing out happens after the move than before it. 

Last night my attention turned to my new studio space. Everything has just been dumped in the boxes by the Packers. In fact it was a very good exercise because I found things that I had forgotten about, and taking it slowly I was able to create much more order in the old wooden filing cabinet that I use to store quite a lot of fabric and wadding (when there isn't enough to store it on a roll). This old cabinet has been with me for a few years now. I don't actually remember where it came from. I think I just found it outside a junk shop, to be honest I'm not sure about that. For a while it was with my daughter in her flat in London, but when she came home it reverted back to me. At some point, again I don't exactly remember when, it came up from my home to my 'home from home'. 

As a general rule of thumb, filing cabinets are not particularly pretty pieces of furniture. They usually come in metal and in rather drab shades of battleship Grey. This one is wood, not a particularly good wood, it has to be said, but nevertheless it is wood and has a rather trendy vintage feel to it. The drawers make excellent storage because they are so deep. 

 

In fact it could be said, that they are too deep because things get lost at the bottom. However, last night I pressed into service a box that I had been saving for sometime because I thought it was too useful to throw away! This box originally had wine in it. It's not a wine crate, but rather a presentation box that came with some gifted wine that I had one Christmas. Therefore the box is strong and fairly shallow and has a nice finish (by which I mean it isn't rough cardboard, but rather has a laminated shiny surface). It also fits perfectly inside the drawers of the filing cabinet. So I pressed it into service as additional shelves within the drawers, bringing much order to the potential chaos. ( is it only me who has a tendency to stuff bits of fabric into drawers when engaged on a project?) 

We are just going 10 miles down the road, but somehow it feels like a completely new environment. Still, I have been able to go to the new house a couple of times now and I'm sure I can make it feel like home. Meanwhile the very good news is that I will have a much bigger space to call my studio – in fact I am spoilt!  I will have an amazing space to call the studio! 

So I have started to pack. I have already filled 10 boxes and that is just packing up art stuff. There are still fabrics and other bits and pieces to go before my current studio space is fully packed. I seem to have accumulated of an awful lot of stuff!

But I've also started on the ornaments. We don't have many ornamets here, because it is only the home from home, but I do have a most spectacular clock. So this morning, as I took it down and dusted it and took the battery before packing it gently away, I thought I should share it with you and that you might like to see it.

So here it is. 

If you are a regular reader of this little blog, you may realise that I spend a lot of time at my 'home from home' which is near my place of work. (I don't live close enough to work to commute).

You may also know that I will soon be leaving this place, very soon now in fact, but Daughter No 1did  manage a couple of days with me last week in a manic session of finishing off pieces for her final project for her illustration degree.

It was hard work, we worked solidly for two days but I am glad to say that the end of it we had something to show for our work. She is making a series of dolls and hanging panels, the topic being how certain dog breeds are seen as dangerous dogs, where as in fact it is more the individual dog and in many cases the way that dog has been treated, rather than the breed itself. 

Over here in the UK the Staffordshire bull terrier doesn't have a particularly good reputation at the present time – there have been a number of cases in the press where Staffie  type dogs have attacked children etc – and if you go to dog rescue places you'll find that the majority of dogs seeking rehoming are Staffordshire's or Staffie crosses.  In the States it's the poor old Pit Bull. (Actually here in the UK, the pit bull terrier is not even an allowed breed. A Pit Bull terrier,no matter what the character is of the dog, if taken into a rehoming centre or picked up by the police etc will be destroyed as a matter of course.)

Now, I'm not going to go into the rights and wrongs of either this policy, or indeed the reputation of the Staffordshire bull terrier. (My own dog is a Staffie X Whippet, also affectionately known as Asbo dog, because he 'struggles' when he meets other dogs when he's out on a walk. Something happened in his past life. We don't know what, but we think he was probably attacked by another dog and his instinct is to attack first rather than be attacked. This is not acceptable behaviour so I have to be very careful when walking him, but in other ways he is the most affectionate and loving dog)

Anyway, daughter has been exploring the facts that historically both Staffies and Pit Bulls, which I understand were bred from Staffordshire dogs imported into the United States sometime in the later 1800s, originally had the reputation as being very good with children and were sometimes affectionately known as 'nanny dogs'. 

So her final piece has explored all the images of these breeds with children and also dolls, a signature pieces really, of dogs etc.

All of which has nothing to do with snails or slugs!

Bear with!

Now much as I love my home from home, because after all that is what it is and I have been staying here for five years, the house itself is very damp! I don't think that it has much by way of foundations, being a very old house probably dating from about 1840 and probably starting out as a fairly modest workers cottage, and it certainly doesn't have a damp proof course. Consequently, on the ground floor there is a continual problem of moisture wicking up the walls and into the solid floor slab. Now actually you can live with this, it's not ideal and we have had a few issues with the electrics, but in the grand scheme of things its okay. 

However it also means that we seem to share the house with squatters, of the snail or slug variety. I am vague about this because you never see the little blighters - all you see in the morning are the trails of dried slime where they have crawled around, usually on the carpet in the dining room but sometimes on the kitchen floor, and sometimes at the kitchen walls. 

Once, I did find a snail attached to the kitchen ceiling! He clearly climbed up the wall and decided that if he tucked himself over the top of the cupboard I might not notice!

I did! 

He went to join his friends in the garden! 

 (I do know that there are some people who are in the 'stamp on them' camp. I'm not one of those people. I'm not a fan of snails, particularly the enormous ones that decimate anything juicy in the garden, but everything has its place. I will collect them and I have been known to put them in a bucket and take them a considerable distance away from said garden or vegetable patch and liberate them.) 

Anyway, back to my tale.

We were making some panels which required paint applied onto canvas with little stitched pieces mounted on the top of the panels. We were preparing one of the final panels and had applied the paint to the canvas, had placed the little stitched pieces ready for mounting, but decided to leave everything out overnight to finish off first thing in the morning. This was partly to allow the paint to dry, and partly because it was getting very late.

Big mistake!

We came down in the morning to find that one of the squatters has decided to go walkabout all over the worksurfaces. There was a snail trail across some of the components of this final piece. It is not easy to get snail trail off painted calico or fabric that has been printed through an ordinary photocopier. 

In fact, it ruins the little printed piece that we had printed out onto organza which had been treated to run through photocopier. 

Much stress! Much anguish! Much gnashing of teeth and ringing of hands!

We did finally manage to redeem the piece, but that didn't involve preparing some alternative smaller stitched pieces to mount. It took us much longer than it should have done and it meant that we were really up against time on that final morning. But in the end things are okay and we managed to get the panels finished.

And the mould of this tale? If you live in a damp house, and particularly if you know that there are snails and slugs That's come out tonight and party, then don't leave any precious items on any surfaces that they might be able to call over. Snail trail is not easy to shift from delicate or non waterproof items. 

Right, I'm off now to really pack some boxes because it looks like the move to the new place is going to happen this week. I'll report back with more news.

Instead I'm watching You Tube. 

But, hey I found this! 

I love the idea of home made beads but hate things that look too home made ( does that make sense?).  I'm not 'hippy dippy' in my personal style. 

I've dipped into bead making before. But having found this very neat tutorial will definitely dip into bead making again. This technique has all sorts of possibilities - scraps of fabric, ribbon, scraps of paper, scraps from packaging. And I love the very clear way Lindsay shows you how to make a neat end. 

Definitely a technique to try. 

Let's start with the embroideries that I entered for the quilt and stitch show at Uttoxeter.



You may recall I told you about them here. Well thanks to a very lovely lady called Margaret Pratt, who lives in Milton Keynes and he seems to be a dynamic force of quilting nature, they were safely delivered to the venue so when I turned up to the show on Sunday to do my volunteering stint on the Journal quilts stand I found they had been beautifully hung in the pavilion with all the other embroideries.


(Though not in this picture - the glare was a real problem from the glass in the frame!)


That's the thing about the Uttoxeter show – the venue itself is the Uttoxeter racecourse. Now I'm no expert on race courses although I actually stay very close to another one called Towcester racecourse when I am at my home from home. That's it! That totals my entire knowledge of racecourse venues (By racecourse, just to be clear, I mean venues for horse racing). 

Anyway, back to Uttoxeter. The Uttoxeter racecourse is in fact very pretty. Uttoxeter itself is not a big town and the course seems to nestle on a flat plain text just behind the town itself. The pavilions, which are built around what I guess it must be the winners paddock or winners enclosure, are very pretty wooden buildings painted black and white. Altogether it has a very charming village feel to it.

When used for the annual quilt and stitch village (previously known as Quilts in the Garden) most of the pavilions around the winners enclosure are used to hang the exhibits. There is also a two story brick built building where traders occupy the ground floor and exhibition quilts are on the first floor. But it's the wooden pavilions around the enclosure that appeal to me.

This year Hilary Beattie was even given her own pavilion for demonstrating and showing her work. I only put my head around the door and took one photograph but what an ideal place to hold a demonstration! Lots of space but the room wasnt too big.

The embroideries were all hung in the same pavilion as last year, a long thin building with excellent natural light that actually overlooks the race course itself. It seemed to me that there were actually more embroideries than last year. I think this is why I particularly like Uttoxeter, it's not just about quilts. Now I love quilts and I particularly love art quilts so don't get me wrong, but in fact when I do my own work I seem to be drawn to producing work that is not so large, somehow I am more comfortable with smaller formats, and I always feel that the work is somehow finished when it is presented in a frame.

This may not come across so clearly on this blog because I have not actually mastered the art of photographing work in frames. I always get glare from the glass. But most of my work is framed and in fact when asked I tend to describe myself as a machine embroiderer rather than quilter. (This probably sounds completely bonkers because lately I have been telling you about the Horizons quilt which is 50 cm x 150 cm and I have started the Dislocation quilt which is 50 cm x 120 cm. Neither of these are framed!) 

So there I was, cantering around Uttoxeter racecourse pavilions (!) And having a whale of a time enjoying the embroideries when,low, I spotted a yellow rosette! It was hung next to one of my pieces, Seed Head, and I had won third prize! I have never entered anything into a competition show before so actually was rather chuffed! 

Now as I mentioned earlier in this blog entry, I was also doing a stint on the Journal quilts stand. My stint was over the lunchtime period and although I should have finished at about 2 PM Janet Bevan, who was to take over from me, asked if I wouldn't mind hanging on for a bit longer. She had won first prize in a competition quilts special category section which, because this year is the 100th anniversary of the start of World War I, was themed 'Lest we Forget'. 

Of course, I had to say yes! Her quilt was absolutely stunning. So I missed the prize giving!, As well as the rosette, I won some thread - apparently. However despite going to the organisers office afterwards to see if I could claim my prize no one seems to know where it was. Never mind, it was nice to be recognised!

Well these pieces, hand painted monoprints with collage and stitch (I guess what you would call mixed media!) were always destined for the delicatessen which is run by two good friends of mine. This is called the larder and is on the Castle Ashby estate in Northamptonshire.

Castle Ashby is a beautiful house on the road between Northampton and Olney. The house itself is not open to the public. I think it is still in private ownership but it is used as a venue so I think you could book it for weddings and big parties (I wish!) However, it does have an absolutely lovely garden which is open to the public and is well worth a visit if ever you should find yourself in Northamptonshire with nothing to do.

The little shopping yard where the delicatessen is, is also worth a visit. There are some really lovely shops there actually. There is a delightful little jewellery gallery called Boo Gallery, which has very unusual handmade silver items of jewellery. Lovely! The girl who owns it is also very nice and very helpful. We had a chat when I was there and she suggested that she could make a bracelet, a bit like a charm bracelet, from the single earring collection but I seem to have created (where I have inadvertently lost one of a pair of earrings). What a brilliant idea! I'm definitely going to look into this!

But back to the deli!

The plan for the delicatessen is to open a small eatery at one end of the building (which I should tell you was once a cowshed! Though the cows have long since moved out). Tony and Tracy, the owners, could have just bought some very boring furniture for the little space to be used as the eatery. However, they thought this would be a wasted opportunity so commissioned two local girls who specialise in up cycling discarded pieces of furniture (and, well to be honest, junk!). They are called 'Snog the Frog' ( really! ) and you can find out about them here. And they are very good fun!

So here is one corner of the little eatery, with a rather funky lamp!  You might recognise that it is an upturned bucket, a metal pail, with slats cut out for the light to shine through. Genius!

Oh, and there are two of the pepper pieces on the wall!