Hundertwasser wall hanging.

All the elements have been machine stitched in place with blanket stitch.  The quilting is complete and now I have the borders to stitch on.



 

I needed some fabric for backing and borders so popped to Tylers Patch at Barleylands.  As I passed Craft Arena, I saw the new QA was in - bedtime reading!!

I don't believe it!!!!!!!!

 Decided to have one more go, and 'volia' uploaded pics. 
After all the rain of the last few days, when the sun came out, I grabbed my camera and couldn't resist catching the wonderful colours on the Virginia Creeper in my garden. 

Water is so soothing, I love to hear it trickling and can watch reflections in the water for hours ( well, if I had hours to spare, I would!)

Upload misbehaving.

For some reason I can't upload photo's tonight.  I have tried several times and am now giving it up as a bad job.  I was just going to show you my work for this evening, it will have to wait until another night.

Failure.

Last night we went to a careers presentation in Basildon.  Kezzy has to decide where she wants to continue her further education as it coming up to the Open Evening's at all the colleges.
What was left of my evening, was spent TRYING to get my photo's to look vintage.  Unsuccessful, must try harder!

My next two projects.

It has been a busy evening on the phone and computer making arrangements with my cousin in S. Africa for his visit at the end of October.
I shall be meeting his daughter, so tonight I started to make her a journal with some of the old Vollbrecht family photo's.  I shall be reprinting this photo tomorrow as I need to adjust the colour to make it more of a sepia tone.  The embellishment idea I got from Diane, thanks Di, it fits my theme well.

 For my cousin I have started a Hundertwasser style wall hanging, so will be busy over the next couple of weeks getting these finished.



I made this to wish someone good luck in their new job and posted it 2 weeks ago.  I think it must have got lost, as I haven't heard that it has arrived.

To make her dress,  I used a dressmaking pattern onto a card backing, which I coloured with distress inks and glimmer sprays,  then some additional stamping.

My brother flies out to India tomorrow, he is going to be filming the Commonwealth Games, I hope his accommodation isn't too bad!

RRC vessels and recipe;0)

 Margaret was unable to join us due to her meeting going on for soooooo long.  Here are the photo's of the finished RRC vessels as promised.  We all started by creating a fat quater of fabric on a given theme.
This fabric for this vessel on the was created by Debbie and is based on Africa. My input on this vessel was to quilt it.

                                                     

 

The fabric for the vessel above was created by Nickie and is based on Europe.  I had to cut up Nickies fabric and stitch it back together in a different shape-nerve racking!!!!

  Fabric for this vessel was created by Diane using Australia for her inspiration.  I made this into a vessel when I was visiting my Great Aunt.  

  

 Margaret used India as her source of inspiration.  I loved embellishing Margarets vessel.

                                                                   My Continent was the America's, and it is about the differences between the  North and South.  I have enjoyed organising this RRC, and working on all the different vessels.  The hardest task for me was to cut up someone else's fabric and rejoin it.  If it's your fabric and it goes wrong you make another piece, but when it's somebody elses, well............Deb embellished my vessel and made green Tyvek beads to represent the dollors (greenbacks) and gold sheers machine stitched for the coins. I am really pleased with it.

 I made some cakes for us to eat with our coffee and the Pecan Tassies (from the Pampered Chef booklet) pictured above went down very well.  In fact I have been asked to make them again next time I have a get-together.  It is a really easy recipe and I have written it out for those of you who feel like doing some cooking.

 Pastry shells

115g marg.

100g soft cheese,( I used mascarpone as I had it in the fridge.)

140g plain flour.

Filling

25g marg

175g light brown sugar

1 egg

1 tsp vanilla essence

115g chopped pecans

Preheat oven to Gas 4.  Mix butter and cheese together until smooth.  Add flour and mix to form a soft dough.  Roll out on a floured board and cut out circles to line bun tin.

For the filling, melt marg in microwave and then add sugar, vanilla essence and egg.Stir in nuts.  Put a spoonful of mixture in each pastry shell.  Bake 20-25 minutes until a  light golden brown.

As I used a large bun tin I only made 12 tarts but if you use a smaller one you should get 24. ENJOY!!!!!!!!!!  

RRC swap night.

Nickie, Diane, Debbie and hopefully Margaret are meeting here tonight to get our RRC piece back.  We all created a piece of cloth many months ago, which has gone around the group.  Tonight that piece of fabric will go back to the originator.  I can't wait to see what has happened to my piece of fabric one it left my sticky mitts.  Off to make some cakes.

A very wet Sunday here!

I have now finished the 2nd butterfly  for the Holocaust Museum will be going in the post this week. (The one I was cutting at our exhibition yesterday ended in the bin as I was not happy with it).
I was hoping to get a lot more done today, but Kezzy needed a lot of prodding to get her homework done.  (It was like watching paint dry-gloss of course!)  In the end she let me help her.  Not much of a Sunday for her, taking her all day to do two subjects!

Because it has rained here all day, I thought I would post these images I took the other day. This rose, apart from the lovely sunset colour,  has the most wonderful smell.

The Morning Glory is such a glorious shade of blue, I still have a lot of buds on this plant, I hope they flower before the frost comes.

I think fungi are so interesting, finding this one brought back happy childhood memories as well.

Exhibition.

Maldon Art Trail was on this week, and even though there was a cold wind, we had a steady flow of visitors to view our exhibition.  This photo shows Margaret talking about some of the work on display.

There was such  lovely sunset this evening when I was driving home, I stopped three times trying to get a good image of it.

 

Not really a lot to show for my evening in my playroom.  I have made some flowers applied Xpandaprint  and attacked it with the heat gun.  I will not start painting them until I have made all the components that I need, to ensure that they are all of a similar colour.
The rest of my time has been looking for things to hand stitch at Maldon tomorrow.  I am stewarding at our F.E.T exhibition, and if the weather is as bad tomorrow as it has been today, I don't think we will see many visitors.



I needed some more Xpandaprint, so popped to Craft Arena.  Unfortunately for my purse, Denise had, had a delivery of some new ribbons.  Just couldn't resist these ones, they will look lovely in my vintage journal when I get round to making it.

Butterflies and Beatles

I have finished my vessel completely now.  I painted the' fabric' to match the vessel.  When I was 10, I had a Beatles brooch in the shape of a guitar with the faces of the Beatles under a plastic cover.  I decided to make my flower centres in a similar manner.  I had photocopied and reduced the images that I needed, Tim Holtz Distress inks was used to age the pictures and then coated with Glossy Accents to seal it. 

Tonight is my first evening at home since Saturday and an added bonus was the fact that I had it to myself :0)  .  My butterfly for the Houston Museum is finished but I have started another one, this time with a lot of yellow so it will be like the one in the poem.  I shall take it to Maldon with me on Saturday so that I can cut back the layers while I am stewarding at our FET exhibition.

More 'I will use it one day!'

I got up early to use the house computer to print off the minutes from our EG meeting the other week as I have got a Regional Day Committee meeting tonight. After a frustrating hour, I was still unable to print the info as the computer doesn't speak the same lingo as my laptop-aaagggghhhh!!!!!!!. While I was waiting for the computer to chug through all the opening sequences, so as to keep myself busy, I started looking through the box of old photo's that Mum had given me ages ago. I did say, that I have a job to part with anything, it is a family trait! The postcard above came from my paternal Grandmother, unfortunately, the writing on the back has faded with time. All I know is that it is from someone called Henry.

In the photo above, are Christmas cards from WWII, one from my father and one from a family friend both sent to my Grandparents. The photo of the German army was taken by my father when he was a soldier working in reconnaissance.

I shall be doing something with some of the old photo's of my maternal family soon as my cousin is coming over from Jo'burg( I haven't sen him since I was 11) in October and I would like to make him a keepsake.

Butterfly

I went with my daughter to collect my youngest grandson from Playschool, and as the sun was shining we had lunch in the garden-wonderful!

I have started to make my butterfly to send to Trudi, she is then going to be sending it with all the others she collects to the Holocaust Museum in Houston.

See button in my side bar for more details. Lots of cutting away still to do.
Had another night off from cooking, (the third). We went out with our friends Lucy and Roger to a local Italian restaurant. They are on television at the moment. Roger is in the program 'Police Interceptors' and Lucy is in the program 'Emergency Bikers', she is the first female police motor biker for 20 years.

Vessel ala Lynda Monk cont.

Continuing work on the vessel, a coat of emulsion was painted over the gesso. I then glued the first line of words and bars of music from 'Yesterday' by the Beatles where the vessel is divided.

It was then time to start adding colour, I have used Golden paints. The base coat and then dried.

Then a second colour was dabbed on and left to dry.

Dabs of grey applied. Then a final wash of colour.

A close up so that you can see the colour. Looking at this picture, you wouldn't know it was made from felt.
I now need to ponder/ work on the embellishment to go in the 'Quant' shape voids at the top.

Vessel ala Lynda Monk.

Hubby and I both have a job to part with anything that might just come in useful ONE day. As I couldn't wait to go to the shops to buy a tube, I scoured the house, and found this whiskey tube to use as the former for my vessel. (we must have had this tube at least 12 years)So after cutting voids, I stitched it around the vessel. Xpandaprint was then applied and heated to create texture.

I then painted it with gesso and wont be doing anything else to it tonight.

Tomorrow night it is E.G. with Anne Sillifant. Unfortunately I can't go to the meeting. Instead Hubby and I are going to see Chris again as it would have been her husband's birthday. It will be a difficult day for her.

A lovely and very leisurely lunch at Chris's, not getting back until just on 8pm. Kezzy enjoyed playing with the six dogs and helping with the horses. This is buttons doing his party piece.

Pudds on wheels.

We have been invited out for lunch to day at Chris's before she goes away to Tunisia. I offered to make a couple of desserts as she is working tonight ( me and my big mouth). While I was out on Lynda's course Hubby had a phone call with a request for some bread pudding as well if I had time. So, two bread puddings (one for my Hubby, to keep him happy), one Raspberry Charlotte and one Baked American Cheesecake to go.

Samples made with Lynda.

The samples above are eight different mediums onto felt, including garnet gel medium(top right) which I liked best. The rust coloured ones are molding paste and gesso on Lutrador.
Distressed Tyvek onto vilene with gesso and the one on the right has ink and salt on top.

Xpandaprint, one onto Lutrador and the other scrim which was then gessoed to vilene.

The start of my vessel, I hope to do finish stitching this tonight but wont start cutting it up until I find my former.

Lynda made some stitched samples for all of us, so that we could experiment with the Golden paints. It must have taken her a long time to prepare all our kits.

An absolute brill day :0) with Lynda Monk.

If your EG is looking for a workshop to do for your Branch, I can highly recommend Lynda. Sitting on our chair was a bag of goodies, everything we would need for the workshop and extra to play with at home. It contained Tyvek, plain and coloured as well as distressed, lots of felt, pieces of Lutrador, scrim and materials for making a vessel. Just in case we forgot any instructions there was a ................. DVD, and we all got to keep our Thermofax screen as well!!!

It was a very busy day, which is just how I like it, I hate having to stop for lunch when all I want to do is play and learn. This was the start of the morning, Lynda showing us her samples of which she has many, and demonstrating what our first task was. There were eight different mediums for us to stencil onto fabric to see how they looked and which effect we liked best

Here are just some of the samples drying on the table (we had labels in our goody bag, so that we could write which medium we had used in each sample).

After lunch, it was time to play with the Golden paints, another demo.

We also made samples with Xpandaprint. Nickie and I used different makes, and my one from AVG gave the best results.

We had some visitors pop in to see us during the afternoon, Santa and his little helper!
Another demo, this time showing us how to make a vessel

Then it was heads down and start machine stitching.

Although we didn't get to finish the vessel, they are well on the way and hopefully there will be some completed ones at our meeting on Monday night. Mine wont be one, as someone took my former home by mistake, so unless I can find another tube with a similar dimension, I am stuck for the moment.

So if your Branch has get up and go and likes to try new ideas, you know who to contact.

Thank you Lynda for such a great day.