Ouch!

After the weekend in Richmond, I got in the car awkwardly and have got a bad back, ouch! My lower back is very sore and am getting a pain in the hip and down my right leg to the knee. Have had it checked out and am now taking ibuprofen and told to keep moving. Awkward to sit for very long, bit of a pain. I was looking forward to a weekend away in Devon this weekend, but have had to call it off as I can't drive for very long.

Meanwhile the story in the news yesterday was this...

Lots of snow. There were snow showers during the day yesterday and this was the view from the back bedroom window. 30cm of snow was expected yesterday night but it didn't materialise here.

Somewhere under there is my car! Today was a lot better; the sun came out and it's starting to thaw. The temperatures will drop tonight so will be very icy. Don't like the sound of that.

So yesterday I spent in hibernation. Stayed in and done some creative stuff. Above is my attempt at mixed media. This is my version of an item in Stitch magazine by Angie Hughes, but I had to improvise as I didn't have some of the items listed. The pink part is some scrim Bondawebbed onto a PVA'd calico base with strips of daisies on it. The blue bit is scrunched up tissue Bondawebbed onto the same base, with some slubby yarn zig-zagged on top. After painting some embossing powder was sprinkled on while the paint was slightly damp and I used a heat gun on that.

Also made was the BQL Calendar quilt challenge for February, with flip and sew strips. I used a variety of blue strips from my scrap bag, plus what remained of some blue bamboo print fabric that I had. I noticed that a couple of the fabrics used had frogs on, so they had to be included. So I named this little quilt "Frogs for February".

This is the back of the quilt on which I've used some of my hand-dyed fabric. I hadn't found a use for this and wouldn't use on the front of the quilt but is made ideal backing. Being virtuous and using up what fabric I've got, did it make any difference to my stash? None whatsoever!

Yet another bag!

Hot on the heels on the November bag in my last post is the December bag - this was finished yesterday (4 December). I had all the bits from my stash, nothing extra to get so just got on with it.

Doesn't look too bad, does it? If you click on the Flickr site on the side bar I'll have pics of all my bags from the BQL bag challenge on there.

Anyway with the awful weather - very icy on Wednesday then snow on Thursday (though it disappeared really quickly) they were days to potter around. As well as the bag making I also had a bash at making felt. I've made needlefelt with the embellisher, but in Sew Hip magazine there was an article about making wet felt. So again I already had stuff on hand so here goes..I had some roving (which a friend gave me a from her spinning days) in 4 layers going across and down laid in a baking tray.The above pic shows the soapy wetted roving (very squishy). This had to be pushed into the tin until the fibres held together. The felt was then placed onto bubblewrap and rolled up and thoroughly kneeded.This shows the felt drying on teatowels, you can see that I also made a cream piece. The felt dried overnight and I was surprised that it didn't take that long to do. I may have a go at felting the some of the pieces I've needlefelted and see what difference it makes to the fibres.

This Saturday will see DH and I going to York. I got a new camera last weekend (which took the above photo's) - a dinky little thing in purple (just my colour). So we'll put it through it's paces there. Hope I'll have some photo's to share.

Playing around

Recently I've been playing around with a few things just to see how they work. The first pic is of rust dyeing. When I was at the Festival of Quilts I met up with a few people from the BQL Yahoo Group. Sandy Snowden's stall was the meeting place where she showed examples of her rust dyeing and gave some instructions. Someone else mentioned that they used salt water to soak the fabric and sprinkled wire wool onto the damp fabric. Hmm.. I have salt in the cupboard and some wire wool too, let's try it. The damp fabric was placed overnight in a plastic bag with the wire wool and was washed out the next day. I'm quite impressed with the little speckly bits on the fabric so I might do this again sometime.

Another thing that I have tried is painting on a quilted piece. Other quilt artists have used this but I've never tried it. I have this piece of "quilt sandwich" on which I did some free machine practice for one of the bags that I've made (2nd pic), so cut to just bigger than post card size (3rd pic).

I've painted with white acrylic paint as a sort of primer, then mixed purple with the white and painted over that. I had some Stewart Gill bronze metallic paint which I dabbed over the whole thing with kitchen towel

The result is in the 4th pic on the top right of the photo (should have taken one on it's own really) when I'd finished paining and sandwiching together for a postcard.

The other postcards in the 4th pic are finished off UFO's that were hanging around. The one on the top left is wavy quilted using variegated threads on fabric paint dyed fabric. On the bottom left are oak leaf prints with a layer of Bondawebbed organza on top with hand stitching. The bottom right is a fabric woven card with Chevron stitches.

The last photo, which is a bit on the fuzzy side is some mulberry bark which I've glued onto calico then painted with some acrylic paint (that's on the left). After painting the surface of the plastic was quite wet so I took another piece of calico to soak up the wet paint. Not quite sure what to do with these two pieces. I'm sure the paint soaked calico will find its way to becoming a postcard back.

Seems to have been quiet on the blogging front from me. I'm still sorting through loads of stuff (where did it all come from?) so I'll have a little less to take with me when we move.

Tissue paper printing

I've not posted for a little while and will be away for a week on holiday in France, hope to post some pics when I get back.

Today, I thought I would have a go at tissue paper printing. I had an assorted pack of coloured tissue paper and dampened calico. I laid the tissue paper on top and dampened a bit more with a spray of water in the first picture. The colours bled out onto the calico and this is the result, in the second picture when dry. Like it, not sure what to do with it.