It seems impossible that time is moving so fast and I must hasten to finish my piece for the Alzheimer’s Society project, Gathering Memories. These will be exhibited at the Brockenhurst Show in April (21st and 22nd). I hope mine gets chosen – well actually I will be content just to finish it. I am using a trapping technique and layers of Lutradur with a ‘broken’ tree to symbolise the way that this cruel disease breaks and ruins minds.
Hopefully some of my little Fosshape tiles will fit in – ironing the fabric over a stamp is good fun and we have been playing with that idea on the free course that I’m giving to all who purchased the WOWbook. It was designed to take into stitch a design idea that we have been using with mountboard, ink and bleach. Everyone is having such fun with the design part that they haven’t really got to the stitch bit yet. Here is some of the work.
I can’t tell you how much I am enjoying running this course. We are all making and sharing and the Facebook group is a very lively one, with lots of work being shown. I based the course very loosely on a City and Guilds course I used to teach locally and we are assimilating a little colour theory while having a great time experimenting. I am very surprised at how much it feels like a ‘real course’ and how distance learning makes us all feel closer! The work your see here is from a section of the course that examines the effects of tint and shade. Tint is achieved by the use of gesso – see below – and we are working with ink and bleach to demonstrate shade. I used my friend Jane Wild’s piece (below, right) as a great example of a Macintosh theme. We spent a lot of time, Jane and I, playing with this concept for a CD, called Paper and Beyond, that we produced some years ago.
Here is some course work (below) from Irene Gray – a Fosshape tile and Mara Webb used Decovil for a lovely folder, right.
Work on on shade from Lynn Collison, left, completes the picture.
Fiona and I were at the Craft4Crafters show in Devon on Saturday – I demonstrated some techniques to make a ‘feather pot’ which used Extra Heavy Pelmet Vilene and stamped Fosshape.
We took granddaughter Sophie and her friend Alex who is very into stitchy stuff. They had a good and productive time attending lots of the mini-workshops. Sophie made a lovely little origami box and Alex some really good cards. For once the weather was kind and we had a good journey both ways. Fiona and I had a good sing-along in the car to some Golden Oldies, much to the horror of the girls.
Hard to to believe but we are already receiving some wonderful work for WOWbook2. WOWbook1 has been very successful – beyond all that we could have hoped, so we will press on with the next issue, for publication in June. Watch out for the announcement of the artists – we think we’ve found a great bunch of talent.
