Walks, woad and books

I have been a little bit neglectful of this blog recently. I must admit that I have been keeping Fenland Textile Studios page on facebook more up to date.  If you want to follow me this way you can find me by clicking here

 Things have been very busy and I took time off to take May for a long walk and to collect my thoughts. I live in the flat Fens and near to The Haven River. This river flows out into the North Sea and you can follow it all the way out until the land gives way to sea and marsh. I feature sky a lot in my work and walks like this let me study the sky. About an hour  into the walk though we picked up a little dog. No owner, no collar just a little face looking up at us. He followed us for another 30 minutes until I turned round and then stayed with us until the car some ninety minutes later. I ended up putting him into the back of the car and driving to my local vet. I called this morning and the dog was microchipped. He had been missing for four weeks and was waiting for his owners to collect him. A good deed done!

On Monday I used a woad vat that had been simmering for a few days. I have some commissions to do and needed to dye some fabrics, especially white on white patterns for some workshop kits. For the past two weeks I have had an extremely good work experience student with me so we have made up kits for Festival of Quilts and the Autumn Knit and Stitch shows. I now need to put them in a safe place!

 It is not very clear but the drips are falling onto some rag paper which I think I will use in card making or book making.

Last weekend I was at Olympia in London for The Spring Knit and Stitch Show.  It was lovely to meet lots of new people in my workshops and around the show. The book below was made by a little girl who did it all by herself, we only helped with the iron bit. A definite start of the future!

Starting again

Life has been pretty manic here with lots of hospital appointments with DS2, stitching teaching samples, Christmas... Well you get the idea. Today the quilt group met up in the studio as last week we had to cancel because of the snow. A very good friend came over this afternoon and the studio got a much needed spring clean and sort out (thank you Jackie).

There has been snow on the ground for the past ten days.

Last week there were some spectacular sun sets, this is the view from the window.  By the end of the week there was fog.

 

No stitch photos but I want to introduce May to you. She is a cocker spaniel and has been with us for an amazing ten days. Today was her first time at the quilt group and she behaved impeccably.   

I have no idea why one photo can be seen from the laptop yet when I view the blog from my iPad it just says photo. JPG. Anyone any ideas??

A bit of this and that.

I am slowly catching up on things and thought I would share some. I have been doing quite a bit of dyeing for commissions and my own work. I love this fabric below which was wrapped in madder root and then steamed. It is much more red in the flesh!

Six weeks ago several ladies started a beginner sampler quilt course at the studio. The quilt below is Claire's first one and she also machine quilted it. The photo really doesn't do this Amy Butler fabric justice. There was also more contrast in the actual quilt than shows here.

These two pieces, both using naturally dyed fabrics have been in an exhibition at a local gallery.

For what ever reason (probably the photographer!) my camera doesn't seem to be giving clear images. This Blue "woad" Bells wall hanging was hand and machine stitched using woad dyed fabrics. It doesn't matter how many times I have made up a woad vat it is still smelly. No wonder Queen Elizabeth 1st passed a law requiring any woad factory to not be near a royal palace.

Today was spent at the studio making up kits for The Knitting and Stitching Show at Harrogate in two weeks. DS joined me to revise for some GCSE's that start soon. I had to be very quiet but I did get lots done.

By the end of the day I had 64 completed kits and just 32 to finish.

Spurn Point

There was a lot of creativity in the studio last week. I will share this in a later post though as yesterday I went somewhere magical to primarily see an exhibition by Alice Fox.

We travelled north over the Humber Bridge,

 turned east and kept driving until we reached the sea. Spurn Point is a coastal reserve, 3 1/2 metres long and very very narrow in parts. It stretches out into the mouth of the river Humber and is now a Nature Reserve. The sea defences are eroding rapidly and you can see just how much they are breaking down and crumbling. The image below came from google.

 

 The exhibition was in the old lighthouse. This was built in 1895 and closed in 1985. It is normally not open to the public.

 I lost count of how many curving steps there were up to the top of the lighthouse but the views were stunning. This is looking out to the end of the Point.

 Looking the other way, you can just see the skinny strip of land between the sea that (on a good day) you can drive on.

 The lighthouse provided an amazing backdrop to Alice's work. She kept a blog about her time as artist in residence here. There are lots of photos of her work and the lighthouse.

 I had permission to share some images of her work. This piece was 10 metres long and hand dyed using rusty metal found on the beach and wrapped round groynes. Some of it had been submerged by the tide.

Alice dyed silks and cottons. All the colours of her framed work, handmade books and larger Spurn Cloth just seemed to compliment the colours found within the lighthouse. I know from my own rust dyed fabrics that you just do not know the colours that will finally come out. Alice has published a short book detailing her time as artist in residence at Spurn Point. It has wonderful images of her work, Spurn Point and extracts from her diary. If you didn't get to her exhibition and are interested I think that you could contact her to buy this.

Just to prove just how fragile the beach is, these show just how close the tankers are as they travel in to port.

After visiting the exhibition we walked from the lighthouse right round the point which is when I took the two photos above, It was such a magical place, and you could really sense the power of nature especially when you turned onto the side facing the North Sea. The gentle waves on the estuary side became more wild, crashing into the already crumbling sea defences from the North Sea.

I can see a rainbow

My aim was to post these last week. Last Wednesday was the Quilt Group at the studio and half way through the evening there was a heavy shower. Almost immediately there was the most amazing bright rainbow. It was a complete arc which  I wasn't able to get a complete picture of.

 This was the view looking east, below the image taken looking west at the same time.

Lots of work has been happening at the studio, making corsages for a royal appointment this Wednesday.

Lots of stitching.

DS has started his FoQ entry.

Today is a paperwork/admin day. I must not be tempted by stitch!

Cow Parsley

I have spent most of the past week frantically sewing binding onto pieces of work needed for a talk and exhibitions. Some of them have needed this for about a year. I thought I would share some images of my favorite flower. At the moment the roadside verges have not been cut back. I know this limits your vision as a driver but I just love the cow parsley gently moving in the wind.

This is my lane looking right from the house.

A close up of cow parsley.I do keep wondering what would happen if I bundle it up with fabric. One way to find out...

I love the structure which inspires my work

"A flower of childhood we’d pass days in your haze of intricate white muddled into the long grass green to white to green; young in years but rich in time lost in play and thick as thieves in your wooded world you’d nod to the fields beyond".

This was taken last year but it is one of my favorite images.

Dundee the journey home

This post is a bit photo heavy but I promised to share the train journey home from Dundee. This was taken from the train going over the bridge on the Tay estuary.

 The bridge is very long and curves round. It was a really hot day and the train heaters were on!

 I am always on the look out for lines and this field covered in plastic grabbed my attention.

 With my very poor geographic knowledge I have no idea where I was expect for between Dundee and Newcastle but the train line was right on the coast for some of the journey.

 This was through the train window which is why things look a little hazy.

This was just going onto the Forth Rail Bridge. I remember seeing a Blue Peter presenter painting this many years ago, now I am informed that the red paint lasts for twenty five years.

Love the views but have not idea where this is.

As the train pulled into Newcastle it was just getting dusky. The train lights came on so I was unable to take any more photos due to the reflections. I then got out my knitting for the rest of the journey.

I have been doing a lot of natural dyeing in the past few weeks as well. I have lots of photos to share soon.

Angela x

Stitching on

 This week I managed a little sewing with Sweetpie. I am working on more landscape samples using polyester/polycotton fabrics and transfer dyes. This photo is a bit fuzzy but she is working on some fantastic little pockets which will be made up into books.

On the lower right is some satin. The photo doesn't show just how much it shines. I still need to finish off the horizon lines. I need to complete an NVQ for work but I am not making quite such good progress. It needs to be completed by next Wednesday though so I had better  get going.

Sweetypie gave me this very large pan that was donated to her jumble sale. It is very old but I have got four meters of cotton it in to mordant for some natural dyeing. I always use aluminum acetate when mordanting cotton and after simmering for about an hour I leave everything in the pan soaking four 2-3 days as I find this givse me the brightest colours.