Catching Up

I often have times when despite my best efforts blogging just does not happen. Life still goes on though at full pace, workshops taught, meetings attended, trees chopped down (don't ask about that) and making time for stitching. Last Saturday I went down to the Yarrow Gallery in Oundle to visit the Textile Lincs exhibition with Lorraine from the group.

 I had never been to this part of the country before despite it being relatively close to home. I do not have permission to share the fantastic work of the other ladies but I will share mine. The theme was Memory and my first piece was "Memories of home" as when ever I travel I miss the flat landscape and vast skies of home.

 This is a hand stitched piece and all the textiles are recycled and hand painted or printed. Tina gave me a small piece of a mohair scarf which became my rape field. It is mounted on a painted canvas.

 The second piece was based on a stack of love letters from 22 years ago and the memories came flooding back when I read through them as I stitched, sorry I don't seem to have a close up photograph of this one. I wanted to be able to show the writing so in a way this became reverse English paper piecing. Again this was mounted on a canvas and there are three "holes" which just seemed to work and give space to the work. Hanging below are love letters cut into heart shapes and stitched round.

This was a quilt that I had to pries away from DS2. He is very tactile and this appealed to him as it is backing with a brushed cotton lilac sheet I discovered in the charity shop. It is made from recycled sheets and shirts, all cotton. Each of these fabrics brings its own memories to the work, who has worn them? Who has slept on them? Where have they been? How old are they? I decide to quilt this very simply as I wanted the fabrics to shine through and not be covered in stitch. This exhibition is on until Saturday November 26th (see post below for times).

 I also received an amazing package from Ro Bruhn in Australia. I offered her some of my daffodil dyed fabrics and in return got some amazing sun dyed fabrics. They are all so gorgeous that I have tried to show them all. Thank you so much Ro, I already have an idea of how I will use them.