A wonderful trade and a lucky find!

I've been such a lucky thing this week, I was approached by Lisa to make a trade, she does the most amazing ATC's often using old photos (ephemera.) I was rather cheeky when she asked me what I would like to choose, I asked her if she could make me something special for my Grand daughter who has recently auditioned in the first part of the process for the Royal Ballet School. For those of you who haven't heard about my talented little Grand daughter, she was a Champion Acro Gymnast winning a bronze for her country last year at the age of 11. She has now changed her direction and is doing extremely well training as a dancer and hopes to go very far indeed.
As she works so very hard at what she does I wanted to send her something special so Lisa very kindly agreed to make me an Atc themed to Ballet. She sent me two! beautiful cards and my Grand daughter is just so thrilled and these little cards will be going in frames to go on her wall.

They are simple wonderful images, they remind me of Degas' work, what do you think?

Here is my lucky find, I subscribe to the local Freecycle groups and I just happened to be reading through the offered goods and look what I came across, over 100 Embroiderer's Guild Magazines, for Nothing! There are three decades here, it's an amazing addition to my library and they were being offered by a very nice lady not 15 miles from here and her name is Patricia, well, of course she is a very nice lady with that name, no seriously I was over the moon. These sites where you can recycle like this are marvellous, you imagine if I tried to buy all these. If these sites were not available they might have ended up thrown away, now isn't that an awful thought. Very soon I am going to be having a clear out and I will be advertising a lot of Machine knitting wool and scraps of fabric to freecycle, so hopefully some knitter might be just as pleased with their find. If you are reading this Patricia thanks again.

The last two images are the gifts that I have sent to Lisa, if you are reading this Lisa and you haven't got your parcel yet, don't look if you want a surprise, lol. Lisa wanted a landscape ATC which I have made inspired by a local view. I have also become quite happy making little fabric brooches and there is one below, made from felt and fabric beads and embroidery. Hope Lisa likes them.

Next post will be the February Challenge get ready for some work on Tone.

Best wishes Tricia x

The Weald of Kent In Autumn

It had to be done, all the native trees are turning here in Kent, long behind many non native trees which are already bare. So I had to get out there and take some pictures.

A couple of weeks ago I took many woodland pictures, which I have uploaded on to a new to me picture hosting site (Pixum) Well, I tried out there special offer and found them to be very good value. The pictures were sent pronto and at a very reasonable introductory price. Under £9 for 99 standard prints delivered to my door.
Anyway I went today in what was left of the afternoon sunshine and took nearly another 150 pictures and I placed them into another album, I will get these printed up too, I intend to use all of these photos as inspiration for a body of work on Landscape.

I have only put the first few onto here today, many of those I have taken have focused on the Kent hedgerow. Many close ups included.

Some, like this one above, and the last one below, are views from my rear garden. I am so lucky living in this part of the world.

These are just general scenes but as I say there are more focused ones in the album, like this one below, which are full of texture, light and colour.

I am quite happy to share these images if anyone would like to use them as inspiration for landscape work, all I ask is that I am credited with the source photo from which the work comes. If anyone would like to see the full album or indeed my woodland album, please let me know and I will post you an invitation. Obviously in the Albums you can view them all as a screen show and see much clearer on a larger image. I hope you enjoy them as much as I know I will when I begin to work on my sketches for the work I am planning to do. My idea, is to capture this little part of Kent for posterity.

P.S. here are the sheep from the field at the back of my house, that provide me with all my lovely fleece!!

A Round Robin, Some dye work and a walk in the woods.

Ok, I'm tryng to catch up. This is only a fraction of what I have been doing lately but it's all I've got pictures of as yet.
This picture below, is a felt background which has been made as a base for a Round Robin that is taking place on my challenge site. The idea was to make a felt background based upon the theme of Landscape. Once we have made the background we will post it to the first person on the list. Eventually our background will make it's way back to us after everyone has added their own bit of stitching etc.. I am looking forward to seeing how this works, it is the first time I have held one of these, if it goes well we will probably repeat it on another theme.


This next picture shows, not very well because of the light, apologies, but this is the big bag of fleece I have been dying. This wool is all from local sheep, infact some of them are in the field behind my garden right now. You wouldn't guess the dye is from a drink powder, Koolaid. I experimented and mixed the colours,
The reason why the colours work so well is because of all the citric acid in the powder, it helps it to cling to the wool fibres. Sorry the picture doesn't do the colours justice, as it was taken in artificial light. I've still more to do, but I have some silk to spin first.

It's been a really funny time lately for our family, we had some wonderful things happening with my Grand daughter but we also had some pretty awful times too. This has made it all rather stressful and tiring so today I decided it was time to take some time out. I went for a short but beautiful walk in the woods.

The colour is just starting to turn here in the South of England.

The light through the trees was so beautiful.
I took loads of pictures, I haven't had the time to go through them all properly, but I am hoping to use some of them for inspiration on my landscape work. That'll be on the next blog. Bye for now Tricia

Struggling with my direction and some landscape work.

Even the title shows my muse has vacated. I just replied to a blog and this is what I wrote:

I have been reading your blog for some time now, I felt I had to reply to today's entry because I feel I am having similar feelings about my own art work.
The trouble with textiles is that there is the functional which is the everyday utility that everyone recognises. Then there is the conceptual. As well as this I have a real problem within my own art work in that I love decoration but always feel hesitant to use it.

Whilst I was studying towards my art degree in textiles we theorised on the use of borrowed images from other cultures and times. It always puts a big full stop in my mind to anything I would like to do; Gosh Art college has a lot to answer for.

Anyway, I also haven't been able to focus for some time, I flit from one idea to the other and I really don't feel that I am allowing myself the freedom I need. I am not sure whether any of this is the same or similar to the way you feel but I just felt I had to write and let you know, that if it does ring any bells with you, then you are not alone. Good Luck with your directions in the future. Tricia

As I said, I am struggling at the moment. I am wanting to make some meaningful artwork but the only direction that pulls me at all is landscape, I get so far and then I feel lost.

To that end I have been doing a lot of photography. Then I thought, why, it will cost a fortune to print all these pictures off in colour, even on a small scale. That made me think about something that I did learn to some use at college. We were taught that true sketching should be just that, sketching should just mean capturing the essence of a subject. We were always pushed to this end by making 2 minute studies of the life model. The model would pose and in 2 minutes the model would be told to change the pose. This way you were never able to get more than the essential down on paper. So I adopted that idea with my digital camera. After a couple of minutes it turns itself off when I am studying a scene. Below are my very early attempts at capturing the essence of some landscape photos I took recently. I know what the scribbles represent, and that's all that matters, I suppose.

It's the shape of the landscape I am trying to capture, not the detail.

It is harder than you think when you are on a self imposed time limit. Yes, I am rusty, I admit that.

Well, enough of that, here is a drawing I made of a photo I took sometime ago, not sure if I even know where the photo is. Anyway, the drawing was made in Oil crayons, perhaps I should move on to colour with the above drawings next.

I decided to try to make a small piece in felt from this piece of work. Here is the result:

I am not entirely satisfied with the result. I do feel my landscape work needs much more exploration and experiment before I will be happy with it.

Adding my swaps

Before I place the cards I have made on here, I am adding a picture of some of the wonderful foxgloves from my garden which I grew from seed. I am putting these flowers here to cheer me up, it's been a terrible week for me in more ways than one but the main reason is that I have lost a very dear cousin who died on Monday. She was in her mid 70's which is no age these days. It came as quite a shock because as far as I knew she wasn't in poor health. It just goes to show that none of us knows what is round the corner. She will be in my memories for a very long time as being someone who would be there for everyone, she would help anyone and always had a good word to say about everyone she spoke of to me. She will be sadly missed by many.

Well as promised here are some of the cards I have recently made for swapping with different people. These have all been posted now, I hope that the recipients like them.

This is a needlefelted landscape I made to swap with Helen on the postcard group of Stitchin fingers.

This next one is winging it's way to Alis from unlimited textiles.


the one below is a small atc that I made for the hand stitch lottery on the textile challenge site run by Carol T. The stitch I was given to use was fly stitch. I have used the stitch on the path as well as the flowers.


This last ATC is on it's way to France for Anne who made me the beautiful cross stitch teddy. In this needlefelted piece I thought that Anne might like to see a scene from where I live. That's why I decided to make a very small scene of two oast houses, these can be seen all over Kent . I hope Anne likes it.

Another Swap safely received.

I can put this one up for viewing now that I know that Doreen has safely received it in Australia.

I made this especially for her and I was inspired by something that she said to me. She asked me for my surname and I said that I often forget to give it probably because I don't like my married name. Well, when I told her it was Cook she said to me, where would Australia have been without Captain Cook and that she thought that there was nothing wrong with the name.

Well, when I couldn't decide what to do for her I thought about what she had said. Well, when we lived up north we went to a place about 30 miles from where Old Cap'n Cook was born. It's a lovely place called Robin Hoods Bay, you can see it on the internet as it is a very well known holiday and tourist attraction on the North East along the Yorkshire Coast. Many an artist has sat and painted it from different views as it is so quaint and picturesque.

So there you have it. This is why I made this ATC for Doreen, I am really getting into this landscape work in needlefelt. It's like painting with wool.

Miniature Art, buttons and brooches

The Image above shows the size of these brooches next to a £2 coin.

I've been working very hard due to the inspiration I have been given by Helen, it was something she said about my Celtic wallhangings which made me realise that an opportunity had been staring me in the face.

Well, to cut a long story short, I was about to make some of my felt buttons and then I decided to make some brooches too, the latter being with a Celtic theme/flavour. Some have got miniture landscape pictures in them, the others are purely decorative motifs that I have been studying for some time. There is a wealth of inspiration in Celtic Art.

I also decided to try some thread painting and this time I managed to do exactly what I wanted to do. I bought some little tubes of microwave dyes called Quick Colour. I only bought the primaries and it is so simple to get the effect. You don't need many drops to dye some thread so it works great to get the variegated thread that I have been trying to get for some time. Here are some of the examples: the picture does not do it justice but believe me the colour combination I acheived was just so rewarding.

Well back to the brooches:

I am obviously happier with some of these than others but each one is very different either in colour or design.

Here are a few of the other more decorative brooches:

I am now sewing a backing on to each of these brooches with a brooch pin included like this:

The last of the pictures I am placing on here today show my felt buttons, these are great fun as you can see and are useful for knitted jackets but can also be used as an ornament to a textile piece of any description. They often remind me of sweets, depending on the colours I use. Each button is secured with an embroidery method I invented myself based upon a minute cord made on the fingers which is attached to the back so that attaching them to the textile piece is made simpler.

I will probably be putting some of these items for sale on etsy once I have finished them all. I hope that you have enjoyed looking at these as much as I have making them.