The other day when I was just mooching around the web, as you do, I found this :-Mixed Media Art Journal ~ New Beginnings (start-to-finish) - YouTube:

Now it's not textiles and it won't be everyone's cup of tea, but it helped give me some design ideas for the Horizons quilt I am working up in my mind.


So, I started with a couple of pages from an old recipe book.


 Then I mixed up some Brusho inks - turquoise and yellow (but I put a bit of brown in the yellow to make it slightly duller.)  I put the inks into a couple of spray bottles I had.


First of all I put a layer of gesso on the paper.

Without letting it dry I sprayed the ink - blocking off the area I did not want covered (though it did run more than I had intended).  The turquoise at the top, the yellow below.




Then I gave it a quick blast with a hairdryer before adding a lower layer of colour using a credit card and then over printing using a couple of old print blocks I made a couple of years ago.


 I use cheap acrylic paint as you can see.  It works fine for my needs.


Ok, so this is where I am up to. A couple of additional block prints and a layer between land and sky using a cheap pastel bougt the other day in Lidl (or it might have been Aldi!)


Hmm - promising.  I will play with it some more.

Well, so far( and let's face it Saturday isn't over so there is still scope for more activity) I have managed a couple of things on my list (and a couple of things not on the list).

So what have I achieved so far today?  Well, the hound has been walked - twice!

And I did the shopping!

But I got a bit side tracked by coffee and cake ( Fibre Frenzi would approve - she does a lot of cake! In fact, come to think of it, so do Six and Friends.  It must be something to do with all that quilting )

Just up the road from my home from home (my complicated life!) is the Wakefield Estate.  And the Wakefield Estate has a little courtyard of shops.  And one of those shops is Artea Room.  And they do delicious cake in delicious surroundings!




It is a cosy, eccentric place and they will sell your work if you are an artist.  So if you are ever anywhere near Stony Stratford (just north of Milton Keynes) then do stop by.  Conveniently - they are just off the main road that takes you to the Bramble Patch from MK - how convenient is that!

And, then I tackled the beast again.  We're getting on better!  But we still have a few issues!


Like this for instance!  What happens when you forget to engage the tension!  A bit of unpicking me thinks.

But we also succeeded with a bit of this.  So not all bad.

And it's too cold to try to get outside to tidy the garden, so, when Whippet X has had his exercise, I feel a day of crafting activity coming on.



I have lots to do:-

• Finish the binding on a lap quilt
• Start the quilting on another lap quilt set up on 'The Beast'
• Do some design work for Horizons
• Finish the third Spanish Gardens piece (last little bit of embroidery needed)
• Tidy sewing/studio room

I am thinking about another quilt - Horizons.

My expansive photo library is providing inspiration.


To the west of Cordoba in Southern Spain there is a stunning ruin called the Medina al-Zahra, a Moorish City and Palace dating from 940.

This was more than a palace. It was purpose built on a site specifically selected for it's amazing views over the countryside, facing south over the lush plains of Andalus and towards the Moorish homelands of North Africa.  And it was conceived as a thriving city to support the central palace complex.  It was a statement of commerce and wealth - it was not developed as a fort.

I really feel that it could provide the form for Horizons.

Thinking along this theme I will also need textures.  I found a gallery on this blog.  The textures hold real potential for some aspects of horizons.  I feel a book purchase coming on!

These two little quilts have taken just over a week - what was I worrying about?

If you have been following my progress you will know that my ideas were developing nicely.

When I left you the first quilt - the words quilt - was assembled and ready for stitching.

First up, bit of a tip.  If you want to try my technique - using paper bonded to fabric - don't quilt using lovely expensive wadding.  The stiffness of the backing does not allow the 'bounce' of any wadding to show through.  For these I have been using an inexpensive acrylic felt for the wadding.

So, I knew I wanted some additional applique on the little quilt top, so had a rummage in my stash of organza fabrics (I collect there when ever I go to a loud and brash fabric shop - you know the type, cheap poly cottons in glarish colours you would never wear - because they usually burn and distress so well.  But that is another post.)



I used the technical wonder that is Bondaweb to stick small small rectangles onto the quilt top, and then I quilted those rectangles down using a standard embroidery stitch on my machine - a fancy zig zag. (I rarely use these stitches, preferring on the most part to free motion stitch anything down).



A traditionally applied fabric binding, and Quilt 1 is finished and ready to post on the CQGB site.

Meanwhile the other little quilt needed far less stitching.  The shoes say it all really.  So again, using a standard embroidery stitch but with a variegated thread, I stitched a simple border of hearts.


 Again I did a traditional fabric binding, but pondered over the colour to use for the binding - green, to pick out the colour in the thread, or lilac?


Then I attached the shoes - using an invisible thread.  And voila!  Quilt 2 is ready to post.



And I already have ideas for Quilt 3.  But I have a horizons project to start and lots of things to finish!!