Stitch St. Ives

as our crackle paste samples are taking rather a while to develop crackly textures

we (my sister and I) have carried our weekly workshop over for another week

to enable some serious cracks to appear on our prepared bases

I will try and post some in progress photos with my Saturday Snippets

and our finished samples will appear here next Wednesday (15 March)

meanwhile ... I've also had other things I needed to work on this week

such as preparing this poster for Jo and Steve who organise Stitch St. Ives

Stitch St. Ives is a textiles, mixed media, art and craft supplies show

where I will be having a stall with my very good friend Margaret

we both will have our hand dyed fabrics and creative textiles/embroidery packs

and I will also be selling my melted textile packs, hand made beads

painted textured / gilded fabrics, vintage collage packs,

silk ribbons and snippets and lots of interesting bits and pieces for creative textiles

I really love dyeing my own fabrics and creating lovely textures

it's exciting and inspiring to have something a bit different

Margaret dyes her own fabrics and threads

and really loves making Dorset buttons

so many different designs and in contemporary colours

my friend Jo hand dyes silk velvet, blanket pieces and makes hand made felt

she also sells her hanks of McIntosh Magic which are a selection of luscious yarns

for weaving, knitting, crochet and embroidery

we all sell beads, fleece, wool tops and threads for creative embroidery

Ingrid Wagner will be at Stitch St. Ives with her BIG knitting needles

and BIG yarns for knitting, crochet and rag rugging

Erin will be there with her unique range of hand created paints

printing kits for stamping and lino printing etc.

and will be demonstrating some printing techniques

Pipps & Co. will have everything you could possibly need

for spinning, felting, weaving and dyeing

gorgeous yarns for knitting, weaving and crochet

and fleece and hand woven yarns from Perran Yarns

after all that gorgeousness and retail therapy you will probably need

a nice cup of tea and a slice of cake from Café Art

if you fancy a day out or a weekend in St. Ives

do come along and say hello

we are looking forward to meeting you

autumn treasures

I've had such a lovely autumn day today

It's been very foggy. Proper fog with proper Cornish mizzle thrown in for good measure. It's dark and cosy indoors and I've finished all my work. I've been putting in some long, long hours in the office this week and I feel happy because I've finished! Today I got to play a little …

Nature's treasures

Arranging gathered finds…

various pieces of peeling bark, bark from a Tenerife palm tree, seeds, pods, acorn cups and dried berries

The finds are arranged on some fabric that Julie gave me from a project she did on distress. I'm really interested in the project that she did so I was able to find out all about it from her when we met up recently. I will tell you more as I enter into the same project shortly ...

I'm sneaking my favourite leaf in again!

Hello leaf!

So, continuing with my love of autumn colour, today my treasures are gold and copper, precious metals and gifts from friends ...

These beautiful leaves are so gorgeous I wanted to show you them again.

They were made especially for me by my friend Cathie

These treasures were a second wonderful package from Cathie

Gold mesh and metallic fabrics, a long strip of copper, gold and copper charms with words and numbers, a Native American herbal teabag and some delicious white chocolate. White chocolate is my favourite and this chocolate was a real dream. It was Ghirardelli's "Vanilla Dream". I've never had it before, I've never even seen it in England. It was the creamiest, meltiest in the mouth sort of chocolate

These were gifts from my friend Julie. We met up recently when she came to St. Ives on holiday with her husband.  We immediately got on like a house on fire, spent a long time chatting over tea and muffins, exchanging gifts and having loads of fun

The fabrics were all results of various experiments by Julie where she left a package of fabrics, papers, photos and images tied up and hanging in a tree for months. The object of the exercise was to see what natural effects the elements had on the various materials. I am currently putting together some bundles of materials to have a go at this myself

The other fabrics were the result of Julie's experiments with blackberry dyeing and the two more colourful fabrics towards the right are Julie's experiments with rust dyeing. Julie also gave me a sketchbook covered with copper fabric that she had made herself and printed with sea horses and on top of that there is a small piece of the painted fabric she used in copper and purple.  I really love the rust dyed fabrics which I've used in my photos below

This little pumpkin guy was made for me by Monique of Blueberry Fields. We did a swap together. She gave me the little pumpkin and I made a calico birdie collage for her. He is so cute! He is just four inches and smells so sweet of sugar and spice and all things nice ...

Monique also sent me a huge bundle of leaves in all shades of Autumn. They are beautiful with a very slightly waxy feel to them which I like. I have them pressed inside a big book to finish drying out

Here is my little pumpkin guy

With the help of Monica of The White Bench I am trying to dry out this pumpkin and gourd so that I can gild them. I have already had one fatality. One of the gourds was shrivelling up nicely in a very interesting way but it got way too smelly and then the stalk fell off so I had to throw it away. So far, these two pumpkins are still fine. I think it will take months and months for them to get how I want them. I was going to dip them in wax until Monica shared her gilded pumpkins on her blog

Autumn treasures

I was recently inspired by Sharne to try some natural dyeing with spices

Paprika and Cumin

I chose Cumin and Paprika because they looked colourful and I was enthusiastic until I smelt the Cumin. It's not to my personal taste buds, or should I say “smell buds”.  I had some simmering away in my dye pot for 15 minutes. It produced a mustard brown coloured dye. The fabrics came out very pale yellow

The paprika did not smell so strongly and produced this vibrant "tomato soup" coloured dye






















I will show the dyed fabrics here when they have finished cooking

Have a lovely weekend whatever the weather x

Hand Dyed Fabrics

Thinking about my fabrics for the tropical art quilt I experimented with different ways of colouring and dyeing pieces of cotton and calico. These are small samples that I recorded in my sketchbook and include cotton dyed with silk paints and salt crystals, shibori on silk, tie dye on cotton and calico with batik wax trailing and silk paints

Spaced dyed cottons and threads using cold water dyes















Calico with hot batik wax spooned on
Marks made with a fork
Coloured with copper metallic silk paints

















These are early experiments with batik wax
I'm pleased to notice that I've improved the technique
a fair bit since these early samples!













The patterns were made by scratching into the wax with a fork













Cotton dyed and salt crystals added to draw the dye














More dyed cotton with silk paints and salt crystals













Cotton tie-dyed in yellow - I used a Dylon cold water dye















Silk dyed with a shibori resist - coloured with silk paints
















More cotton dyed with silk paints and salt crystals