Glos Guild of Craftsmen, Tetbury Exhibition.

The Guild Crafts Tetbury 2017 exhibition is now open until June 11th. Open every day 10-6. Tetbury Market House. That is the old building in the market place up the stairs. Free Admission. Lovely mix of crafts- 26 exhibitors taking part. This is my corner. I shall be there on Saturday.

Bee at the window.

Bumble bee at the kitchen window. From yesterdays photograph. Springwatch BBC1 is being filmed not far from here and they were talking about bees lat night. Will have to see their identification charts. I looked in my books and some are difficult to tell apart. Buff tailed?

garden chafer

One of the pictures at the exhibition ( going up tomorrow)  is of the garden chafer beetle. I found my old insect sketchbook from 2010 above. The garden was full of them a few days ago.

A bee that did manage to bumble inside.

Bee busyness.

 Bees are busy in the garden. We are having a heat wave. Weigela above.The aliums that I drew and stitched in the Autumn are now in flower.

 The cotoneaster tree just hums with bees.

The iris has more blooms.

When it is hot the old bead curtain comes out over the back door to stop those bees and other insects from bumbling inside the house.

Much busyness.

Much busyness at home preparing for the exhibition next week. Much busyness in the hay field,

 and in the green lanes. Insects at work, lush growth.

Much shock and grief at what happened in Manchester.
And a new iris, waiting for years for this to flower.

More cards - pen and stitch.

Avocet, water rail, dandelion head and fieldfare- looking back through my sketchbook and drawing onto calico with a gel pen. Free machine stitching and a wash of water to make the ink bleed a little.

Exhibition preparations.

 This week I am making cards for the exhibition of the Glos. Guild of Craftsmen in Tetbury -May 31st- June 11th. I sell my handmade cards and photocards in the hope that I cover my exhibiting costs at least. If I sell a picture then that covers my framing costs and anything more is a bonus! Who knows with exhibitions- you could sell nothing or everything. I don't like exhibition preparations, I get nervous.

 I will be demonstrating, well working at the exhibition on 2 days - June 3rd and June 9th. So I thought I would show stages a piece might go through. These 2 above are collaged fabric and paper at the first stage. The coloured pieces are previous experiments. I have taken various fabrics- silk, linen, lace, calico and papers and with a watered down  PVA glue stuck them together (top right) or bonded layers together with Bondaweb( bottom sample)

 Then I machined over areas to hold the layers together

and painted with silk dyes for an overall wash of colour.  Surprisingly the glued one is softer than the bonded one. My plan is to have some pieces at different stages to show progress and be working on some in the exhibition. Hope you might pop in and see my work if you are local. Always come and say Hello if you follow my blog, I will be delighted. For those a long way away I will show developments as usual!

While I was busy stitching.............

 While I was busy stitching, a new dry stone wall was built in our garden by Stuart a local dry stone waller. It is a work of art. Patchwork? The top stones are called cock and hen.

We are going to have a new seating area further up the garden, my husbands new project in his semi-retirement.

The back of Spring Swallow- interesting to see the stitches on white.

DIS/rupt at SIT festival - The Textile Study Group

Fantastic exhibitions in Stroud at the Museum in the Park and Lansdown Road Gallery by the Textile Study Group. They have taken the theme of disrupt and each person has made it their own personal theme. This piece by Julie Erica Saunders, is an interactive piece- you can add your own stitches -  on the theme of domestic violence - hidden and unspoken. Exhibition is on until 21st May ( closed Mondays) Lots to provoke, inspire and admire. Select Trail also on this weekend.

Spring swallow finished!

 Almost exactly a month later the Spring swallow is finished. People always ask how long a piece takes and it is hard to answer because I don't always work continually on the same piece, but I have with this one apart from a few days to make a button and some cards. Anyway you can't hurry a piece of work you have to think about how it is developing.

 I really love the soft textures of this linen on soft cotton, it has crumpled and quilted with the stitching. I had to stitch it all over otherwise the fabric ballooned up but some areas have very light stitching in the sky area.

 This is the first blossom of Spring,

This is the early daisy in the grass. Now the swallows and swifts are all back - the swifts were investigating our roof yesterday for nesting sites. I need to pin it up on my wall now, leave it and then come back with fresh eyes to see if there is anything to change or add.

Stitched buttons.

 Flower button.

 Sampler with handmade buttons.

 Buttons with words.

Previous buttons over the years- these last ( poor picture quality because it is a photo of a photo ) the earliest,  insect buttons from Curious Drawers exhibition with the Brunel Broderers in 2010.

Stitchwort button.

I stitched the stitchwort and made a button.

The new bird bath and more stitching.

A machine embroidered doodle of the new bird bath and some more progress on the swallow. Yesterday when I walked by the barn on our nearby farm the swallows had returned and were skimming the fields for insects.

Stitchwort and a walk in the woods.

A wild flower for embroiderers- this is called Stitchwort. It follows on so well from my last blog- tiny stars on the woodland floor.

 My sister took us to Garston Woods near Salisbury.It is a RSPB managed woodland and we went on a guided tour and so learnt lots of new wild flower names. Bluebells as far as the eye could see.

This is a Twayblade- a green orchid, new to me. I wrote down 36 different varieties of wild flowers. Much to look up and try to remember.