Bundles, Sketchbooks and Rumbles

Before Christmas Maggie Grey had an online auction of handmade books in aid of the Teenage Cancer Trust.  I put some bids in but was unsuccessful.  However, after the auction a couple of latecomers were offered for sale and I was lucky enough to get this very pretty book made by my friend Emma who lives on the Isle of Skye.  

For the moment I am just enjoying Emma's work but I do intend to add to it, maybe with some Gelli prints.  

When we saw Carolyn in Mousehole she reminded me about the Erosion Bundles that we had both done in previous years.  I still have quite a lot of the last bundle waiting to be used but I thought I would join in again and make a new bundle.  The idea is to collate various materials and add things that will create colour and wrap the whole thing up and leave it at the mercy of the elements for three months.

I've tried to keep things simple this time and have used blueberries, tea, plant material and rusty bits and bobs to generate the colour.  I've used all sorts of fabrics and wrapped everything up in a piece of Cornish flag that had been hanging on the shed for months.  I've tied the bundle to our back gate which has some lovely rust and mossy colours on it so hopefully there will be more colour.  It's going to stay there till 1 April when we'll see what we've got.  Hopefully it won't be crawling with yucky things like the last one was.

We had a bit of excitement here last week.  Last Wednesday night just before 10.30 I heard a great roaring noise that I thought was the wind getting up and next thing something clattered to the floor in my sewing room.  Turned out it was an earthtremor, 3.8 strength.  We don't get that many tremors in this area and the last time I was aware of one that strong was about 25 years ago.  There wasn't any damage anywhere but it was a bit unnerving for a while. 

Back soon!

I've got a new baby!

I cannot tell you how much shrieking went on this morning when this lovely trolley bag arrived courtesy of Sew Divine in Reading.  Totally out of proportion to the actual object but I have been struggling with an inappropriate trolley going to and from classes and clubs for weeks and now I have a trolley case that my machine fits into safely and that I can put straight in the boot (trunk) as is.  No more standing in the rain/snow/ice prising my machine in or out of a too small artcart to collapse said artcart to get it in the boot.  Bliss!  Thank you Bob for your very prompt service.  (BTW rumour has it that Janome and possibly Benina are stopping supplying these bags.)

You may have heard of erosion bundles in your travels around the interweb and last year I placed several said bundles around our garden and left them to the mercies of the elements.  I recently brought two of the bundles in and put them in the freezer (in plastic bags) to kill any unwanted visitors.  Yesterday I undid one of the bundles  and carefully pulled the materials apart.  Some had rotted completely because the bundle had been out for a full year.  I've put together some collages to give you a general idea.

The image above in the left bottom corner is what's left of a photograph and is almost transparent when held up the light.  

 There are some beautiful layers occuring in the various pieces where I had layered bookpages, sheep music, fabric and various coloured materials together.

I can see some of these surfaces being used as layers in Photoshop.

These too will be fun to play with in Photoshop.

Some of the pieces are a bit suspect in terms of mildewy marks and I did think of rinsing them but I think I will actually use them as they are and seal them with Matt Medium as a lot of the surfaces are paper. I wonder if some could end up as a Journal Quilt?  

Last week at Stitchcraft I did a taster day for a Delft Quilt and came away with a panel that hopefully tomorrow will turn into a cushion cover.  The workshop was led by Liz Hands who I have mentioned previously.

These are the efforts of all the participants and as you can see there was a good variety of colours.

For my square I used some of my snow dyes and fussy cut to get some detail in the flower.  Tomorrow I plan to finish the embroidery and then construct the cushion cover.  I've already added the borders so once the mebroidery is finished I only have to add the back panels.  Watch this Space!

Snow Dyeing Results

There's nothing like a bit of snow to get you blogging every day ;-)  So, withiut further ado, here are the results after the fabrics were rinsed with cold, warm, hot with Metapex, lukewarm and lukewarm water (cos I can't stand the cold) and then spun and ironed dry.  The Metapex, or Synthrapol, is a detergent that holds the loose colour in the water and stops it going back into the fabric thus shortening rinsing time and saving sore hands.  (Many thanks to Annabel who gave me this tip a long time ago).

This (above) is what the silk noil and silk scrim from yesterday actually look like.  The colours from the scanner were well off the mark.

These colours are not totally accurate but they do show the exciting marks that the snow has given.  They remind me of storms brewing or of gas clouds in space.

The next images are from the tray dyeing,

Above is a piece of 80/20 batting, cotton velvet and a scrap of vintage cotton doily.

And finally the pieces that were in the pot

I can't remember what the fabrics on the left above were but I think one is a bamboo cloth.  On the right is the overdyed onion dyed cotton and the light fabric is Evolon.

This piece above is a very old piece of cotton sheet that is very thin and worn but which has taken the colour at the bottom of the pot beautifully.  All of the colours are a bit more turquoise than the computer is showing.

I am quite pleased that I did get some nice greys in a couple of the pieces and the rest are all leaning towards turquoise with deeper tones, all of which will make an appearance in some future project.  As ever I used a range of fabrics to see what happened but sadly I didn't note anything up so I can't be sure what I was using if I wanted to repeat the exercise.  Will I never learn? lol

My erosion bundles enjoyed sitting under their coating of snow for a couple of days and some of them disappeared completely from sight.  There are two bundles sitting under the snow on top of this old watering can.  What mysteries await?