More readers!

I have noticed a strange phenomenon... Since Wednesday afternoon the number of people looking at my blog has increased noticeably. A friend pointed out that this could be because of the North Somerset Arts Week brochures starting to be distributed but I didn't believe her at first. On day 2 though, I had to start believing as there wasn't any other reason why more people would be coming to have a peek. If you are looking at this as a result of getting an Arts Week brochure, I'd like to thank you very much for your interest; I hope you find something that pleases you (most of the things I'll be exhibiting are on the earlier pages so have a look around), and if so, do please keep coming back to see more. I am honoured. It would be lovely to meet you in person during Arts Week.

I have picked up in total 2400 brochures (out of 40,000 printed in total) and passed most on to fellow artists to distribute, and between us all they should soon be going viral all over the region in libraries, shops, cafes, schools, surgeries, galleries and various other locations. They look beautiful and it is good to be so involved. I have a few more plans for things to make in preparation, and am in the process of getting my original meadowy picture back home from Norfolk to display at the exhibition. It seemed the right thing to do as it's the picture featured in the brochure.

It's my birthday today and plans were slightly scuppered by a boy waking up with chicken pox this time. It's lucky I have a tiny bit of a hangover and don't feel like doing anything very much. I did have a little time and energy to do some sewing this morning:-

I am feeling good about the definition of the trees now I've stitched round them, and the way the felting process has made them look gnarled and wintry. I just have to work out whether the ground is finished and whether I need to put something else in the background. I think I need a second opinion...



Snowflakes again

I have been trying to stay positive in spite of a small poorly child, the chance of another one (and myself) getting chicken pox any day now, and Siberian style weather instead of the balmy Barcelona holiday we had been expecting. It has not been easy at all and today I have been very close to losing the plot. Of the £474 we spent on the holiday, the insurance company say they should be able to repay us about £70. The poorly child is still spotty and infectious but is full of beans again which makes being housebound all the harder. We could go out and burn off some energy walking somewhere, except that it is so bitterly cold out there and one daft child has left her gloves and hat at school for the Easter holidays. It started snowing again this afternoon and despite the gloom it gave me an idea. I was thinking about the amazing snowflakes I saw the other day that were proper snowflake shapes, and I decided to ignore the children and get my sewing machine out. My good friend Laura had given me a piece of soluble fabric a while back and I have been trying to find a use for it ever since. I've never used it before so it was a bit of an unknown quantity. I stitched and stitched for about 20 minutes and ended up with this:-

Then I had to do some dissolving. Laura had written a little note saying "Solufleece cold water dissolvable" so I got a bowl of cold water and called the children over. The healthy child popped it in:

And bingo within a couple of minutes the fabric had disappeared:-

After a bit of drying, I have a bit of a higgledy-piggledy snowflake, about two inches across:-



I can kind of see the joy in this soluble fabric malarkey. If I could make a series of different sized snowflakes in varied designs, maybe with some metallic thread, they could look interesting sewn onto a piece of mottled felt. Nearly enough to pull me out of my gloom... 







Embellishments

So this week I have been spending a little time embellishing two pieces of felt I made a while ago. I made them both on separate occasions at my dear friend Laura's house when we were having a creative moment, and as we were meeting up for another creative morning, I thought I'd better do something to show the others to prove I've been doing something since the last time we met. The first one was a simple swirly pattern, the size of the circles determined by the size of the finger I wound the wool around:-

I was quite annoyed with it once I had felted it, as the swirly circles I'd created had mostly transformed into hexagons and it wasn't at all the look I was after. I left it for a couple of months before I felt able to deal with it again. This week I could put it off no longer so I grabbed it and started stitching in the hope I could inject some swirliness back into it. It helped a bit but it was still lacking quite a lot of oomph:-



So I took it round to Laura for some second and third and fourth opinions. Everyone was positive but it was still hiding under a bushell. I let it drop beside me on her sofa while we carried on talking, and then we saw where it had landed, right in the middle of a blue hessian cushion, and suddenly it was love...

So I came back home with renewed vigour. I tried to buy a similar coloured board to mount it on, and ended up with an apple green one. I still thought it needed a bit more embellishment of a different style and last night I remembered something Laura told me a while ago and felt like an experiment: if you want to use a thicker thread in your sewing machine, wind it onto your bobbin (as it won't fit through the needle) and work on the reverse. So I gave it a go:-



I think it might just be finished although time will tell. And my five-year-old says it is fabulating, which I take as a compliment.

I have also been embellishing the Valentines' Day kitsch red and pink hearts one I made at Laura's house. The printable fabric I ordered from was wonderful and once I had worked out the message I wanted to print the rest was easy. 



I think I am pleased with it but it's not really my style! I'm not quite comfortable with it yet and it feels a little bit too personal (says she having made an overly-familiar nude!). But having seen one of my favourite blogs Dog Daisy Chains extolling the virtues of Moo card-printing, I am thinking of getting some of my designs made into greeting cards ready for North Somerset Arts Week. If I can get a really decent photo of it I'm hoping this one might sell as a card, and oddly I'm more comfortable about that than I am with the original felt.

Anyway tomorrow we are off to Barcelona for a few days so a bit of Gaudi inspiration might be coming on if the children give me a chance to immerse myself...