Woohoo!

I submitted a piece of work for selection for a textile exhibition way back in January and I've just found out that it's been selected, which is rather exciting for me. The exhibition is called Textile News and is organised by Dr. Gudrun Heinz, the theme this time was Freedom. I chose to look at the idea of breaking free and my piece took the form of a bird rising up and flying free. It is made from layered and pieced organza which I dyed in shades of greys, greens and blues. I then used hand embroidery stitches including feather stitch, blanket stitch, fly stitch and stem stitch to add detail and texture to the piece. It's an important piece for me as it got me back into creating work, giving me a goal to work towards and a bit of an incentive to get going. I enjoyed doing it and I'm now working on a much larger piece along a similar theme and using similar techniques.

The exhibition is touring and the first venue is The Festival of Quilts in Birmingham 11th-14th August this year, it then carries on to Moscow, Prague and Einbeck.

You can find out more about the exhibition here http://www.quiltsundmehr.de/TEXTILENEWS2ENG.htm

This is one of my preliminary drawings for the piece:

Ink drawing exploring the theme of freedom

Table Top Sale

If anyone is in or around Carlisle on Sunday I'll be down at The Sands Centre where they're holding a table top sale. I'll be selling stuff the guys up at The Heathlands Project have made in the Arts and Crafts section. To find out a bit more about The Heathlands please visit: http://www.glenmore.org/Pages/HeathlandsFirst.html

Easter Crafts Workshop

Today I did an Easter craft workshop with Carlisle Mencap's Playscheme, we made chicks, cards and collaged decorations. It was great fun and they made some really cool stuff, I spent quite a lot of time doing prep for this workshop so I was really pleased it all worked out!

Holiday Inspirations

We've just come back from a few days away in beautiful County Durham, the landscape is so wild and magnificent. We went to Killhope Lead Mining Museum yesterday which was fantastic and makes me very glad to live now!

One of the ways the miners used to pass the little spare time they had was to make spar boxes; collections of minerals they'd found whilst working in the mine displayed in (you guessed it) boxes. Some of them are really lovely works of art. There is also a piece in the museum by a contemporary artist (whose name I cannot remember and who I cannot find reference to on the great interweb, please let me know if you know who she is as I would like to properly credit her and see more of her work!) in response to the site and the spar boxes. Her piece is a beautiful, contemporary take on the theme which draws inspiration from the surrounding flora and fauna.

Installation view

Detail

Detail

Cauldron's Snout Waterfall-I climbed this!

I feel quite inspired after our trip away, hopefully this will translate into action over the next few days!

Stained Glass Owl #2

So, this is my second stained glass owl. I made him much simpler than the first one (learn from your mistakes!) and the combination of practice and a simpler design has led to a better finish I think. I'm really pleased with his eyes, which are glass nuggets held in place with wire. My course has just finished but I'm looking forward to carrying on and improving. I've almost finished my first leaded piece as well so I must crack on with that.

Magikal Arts and Badges

Yesterday up at The Heathlands Project (http://www.glenmore.org/Pages/HeathlandsFirst.html) we opened our Magikal Arts Exhibition. The exhibition is of work produced by the students who have just completed the Arts and Crafts OCN at Heathlands. It was a great day with a great turn out and the exhibition is fantastic. During the day I was busy helping everyone who visited to make badges, we had some great designs and ideas. These are the two that I made (I did the stitching on the bird one a few days ago!)

Stained glass owl

Last year I started a creative glass evening course at Trinity (Carlisle.) I really enjoyed it as it is quite different to anything else I've done. I've just finished the piece I was working on and although it is far from perfect I'm very happy with how it has turned out. It's done using the copper foil technique, as favoured by Tiffany, and is about 25 cm high. I'm looking forward to the course re-starting this week and having a go at leaded glass. In the mean time, I'm off to design my next copper foil project!