Treasures

My mother-in-law’s been cleaning out the closets and passed a few treasures on to me. Firstly we have a hankerchief from Eqypt, brought back from from World War 1 by her father.

Its on very fine silk and is a little worse for wear for the number of years old it is. Now I’m going to have to find out how to appropriately conserve this piece. Here’s a close up detail…

Next I was given a shawl from her mother’s trip to the UK by boat forty years ago. Its a very pretty number with lots of silver thread.

In better condition than the hankerchief but with a couple of small moth holes.  Here’s a detail…

And lastly a little treasure trove of Buttons! I love buttons they can add so much to a mixed media piece or ATC or be the artwork in an inchie. A few interesting antique ones in this lot.

In the meanwhile ‘ve mulling over a bit of autumn.My next swapbook page is about it so here’s what I’ve been thinking so far…

May end up stitching over it too. It needs a bit of a lift. Its designed to be 13.5 cm square to fit the little swap books we have. In the meantime I’ve been playing with a bit of Pearl Ex in its watercolour form to see what it can do. Results in the next blog.

August happenings…

This month’s Reddy Art Quilters challenge involved swapping a piece of fabric that you love with another member of the group. Only thing is that our tastes are widely different!! So what one loves, the other sometimes wonders about!  I recieved what looks like Christmas fabric – gold lines over that kind of emerald green. Eeek! What will I do?  And then I happen to turn it over…

August Challenge

And the back was really interesting! (Original fabirc to left, back is green fabric under blue sheet of paper). So I had a bit of a play with some colour diffusing paper and paint. The nature of the paper means that watercolour paint travels a long way in it and it has a very fabric like texture to it.  It is also very robust as I painted a few pieces and even when it was saturated with water it was still a very strong paper and acted like fabric.  Its also almost translucent like, with the paint going through to both sides opening up possibilities to do something more 3D with it.

I then used Transfer Artist paper to transfer a few words reflecting my play session. The paper will be fixed to the green fabric and then I think I’ll paint a few highlights and have a go doing a bit of stitching over it all. The advantage of using the TAP is now the paper is sealed with polymer and thus will be a bit more water resistant. NOT that I’m ever going to wash this piece!!

Just thought of something…is a quilt still a quilt if its framed? Or does that negate its quilty-ness? Just thought of doing a paper quilt but its fragility may mean framing would be the best thing.

Anyhoo – time to play!

August ARTion…

Marbeling, saltwork and some drizzel painting

Been doing a bit of painting. The weather is beautiful here at present, cool in the evening and warm during the day. Just right for painting and dyeing. Its good to get a heap of backgrounds together then when I want to do something I have the raw materials to get straight into it.