Summer School

It hardly seems possible that a week ago I was enjoying a wonderful weekend in the company of some lovely ladies who share my passion for Contemporary Quilting or textile art.  Belstead House in Ipswich was the venue for a whole weekend of hard but stimulating work with Jo Budd.  Other classes being held were with Linda Maynard for Screen Printing and Helen Parrott for hand stitching.  My class with Jo Budd was titled 'From Microcosm to Macrocosm' and would involve painting and printing fabric with a view to producing abstract textile pieces.

I have to confess to being apprehensive about the whole experience but I needn't have worried.  Jo was a very sympathetic and supportive teacher and my fellow classmates were all very friendly.  

On Friday night, after a very enjoyable dinner and a welcome drink, we adjourned to the classroom for a very hectic time making marks with different types of binders, both opaque, white and clear, on different weights of fabric.  These were left to dry overnight and would form a starting point for applying dyes on Saturday morning.  Sadly I didn't photograph this stage of proceedings and anyway, it would have been a very boring photo as some of the marks were barely visible.   

On Saturday after a hearty breakfast, yes, even I ate a cooked breakfast, we got into the business of applying dye mixed with a binder to the prepared fabric and then moved on to making monoprints. 

You can see that our workspace was a hive of industry with none of us really knowing where we were headed. 

To help us view all of our pieces we each had a display board or sheet of insulation board.                         

This was my board. You can see the results of the 'resist' technique at the top of the baord.   I still have to wash those pieces out so Iexpect they will look much different when I've done that.

After dinner on Saturday we adjourned to the gardens for a review of existing work that we had all brought with us. 

The yew hedge provided an impromtu display wall.

Sunday morning saw us up bright and early and back in the studio ironing the fabrics we had printed the day before (before breakfaast, I might add!).  Then the real work began (not that we weren't exhausted already!).

Jo was keen that we should all work in natural daylight so work stations were moved to take advantage of any available daylight, including the garden.

I had really looked forward to this final part but I found it soooo difficult!  My planned method of constructing a layered seascape didn't seem to work and eventually I threw everything back down onto the work bench and started again. 

These were my second attempts:

While I felt that a lot of my fabrics had similar marks these three above, together with a sheer overlay on the lower right area, looked as though they would work.  With Jo's input they grew into this:

It made quite a difference widening the view and I don't know why I didn't try this myself.

The arrangement above became split to give this

and I have a couple more possible compositions to work with.  The idea now is to use stitch both to bond the pieces to their base fabrics and also to provide surface interest and texture.  You may have a while to wait as I have to finish my quilt for Festival of Quilts first.

A quick glimpse of the screen printing room.

and of the hand stitching room.  We were all so busy that there was very little time to look at everyone else's work although there was provision in the schedule for this.

Well, I have more to bring you up to date with but I'd better save it for another post or you will be nodding off!  I apologise for the randomness of image size when you click on in this post but I've got a new laptop and I am also working with Photoshop Elements 6 and I'm not familiar with all its eccentricities, most particularly how it stores it's photos.  I seem to be saving countless copies of things in various folders.  I've also taken so many photos lately that I just havn't had time to re-size them all.

Been 'n gone 'n Back Again!

Where does the time go?  I just cannot find enough hours in the day at the moment and it's not going to get any better any time soon.  But I'm not complaining.  Happily good things are happening at the moment.

Last week we had a lovely break away on the Isle of Wight, just off the south coast of England.  We went away with our local coach company so there was no driving to worry about and we could relax from the off.  And boy, did we need it.  Despite our earlier holiday in St Ives we both needed a good rest.  We stayed at the Melbourne Ardenlea Hotel and enjoyed using its pool which we had to ourselves each time we went in.  Very decadent!

We had a very leisurely week, which was just what I needed, but we did get out and about and of course, there were photo opportunities.

First port of call was Osborne House which was the favourite holiday home of Queen Victoria.  While our friends toured the house DH and I spent time in the gardens looking for patterns and textures. 

I think these dragons were friendly!

All around the terrace gardens were these beautiful ornate stands of  magnolia.

 Inspiration for quilting patterns?

I do like views through interesting shaped windows.  This was in the Swiss Cottage in the grounds of Osborne House.  The house was built for the children of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert but was  used by all the family.

Not wonderfully exciting but I have plans for this textured planking in Photoshop.

Equally this fern design on a garden bench is due for some playtime.

This beautiful beach in Shanklin was the scene of a pleasant couple of hours of beachcombing .  There had been many falls of the cliff face and as a result there are lots of different types of stone on the beach.

There is potential in these pics for some design work.

Not quite up to the standard of Alum Bay, the cliffs at Shanklin have distinctive layers of colour. 

Speaking of colour, how about this gorgeous stone? 

This beautiful shell is embedded in a large rock and it was about10" (25cms) across.  How many years had that been held unseen until the stone fell and shattered on the beach?

The highlight of the week, apart from having a lovely swimming pool to ourselves, was a reunion with my best friend from school!  I had not seen L since 1974!  Can you believe it?  We had kept in touch loosely for a while after I left school to come to college in Lincolnshire but life pulled us in different directions and although we each knew where the other was we never got round to meeting up until now when I decided to contact L as she lives near the Isle of Wight.

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It was amazing to catch up and spend a delightful couple of hours over tea and cakes (and a beer for the men!) in a lovely cafe/pub.  The years fell away and we just picked up where we left off.  We both hope that it will not be another 37 years before we meet up again!  (don't think we've got that many years left!)

And finally, I am beside myself with excitement!!! Tomorrow I am off to Belstead House near Ipswich for a weekend in the company of very talented ladies and the most amazing tutor!  I am going to Contemporary Quilt Group Summer School and my classes are with Jo Budd who I have spoken about before.  Her colours are wonderfully subtle and she creates wonderful textures with her use of dyes and stitch:

 I wrote this about her exhibition at Festival of Quilts in 2007: 

"An artist called Jo Budd had an exhibition of large textiles which you can see in the background of this photo:

Her work is beautiful. I think work spanning different periods were on display here. The piece you can see here looked like very fine materials which had been dyed and had been stitched by hand to provide surface texture. The edges of the fabrics were frayed where they overlapped. I thought her work was inspirational with great textures and I will be looking into her work some more."  

It has taken me 4 years to get the chance to work with her and I am so looking forward to the weekend.  Mind you, I will probably be totally horizontal by the time I get back on Sunday evening.  Our schedule shows that the evening work session goes on till 21.45!  Eeeek!  Someone has mentioned wine though so there is some hope!  ;-)   I'll be back some time next week to show you what we get up to.

More of the FOQ

I thought I would post one or two more details from my day out on Thursday, specifically details of one or two of the quilts. Unfortunately I do not have details of whose work they are so I hope that everyone will respect the artist's copyright (I hope I am not breaking it by posting here).

This is a small part of a much larger piece and I love the colours that have been used and the textures created by the treatment of the fabric which has been slashed.

Jo Budd's work that I mentioned yesterday is also worthy of another mention. Her colours are wonderfully subtle and again she creates wonderful textures with her use of dyes and stitch:

So far I have not use machine stitching in my own work and Jo Budd's work inspires me to take hand stitching further.

I realised after some time that, dotted about the exhibition were small quilts exhorting you, in different languages, not to touch the quilts. I particularly liked this one in chinese:

I'm not sure what the significance of the bat is though.

Sorry but I don't think blogger is playing tonight and the pix won't enlarge.