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!