And a few more......

We seem to have spent a long weary winter waiting for some good weather and at last we've had some! My DD and family arrived last week and brought the sun with them so we were able to get out and about and everyone had a thoroughly good time!

We have dipped our toes in the sea, sampled some delicious pub food, got quite a lot of chocolate, relieved several beaches of pebbles that were just lying there and groomed Sophie, our neighbours horse! It's always lovely to see them, and although it's sad to see them go, they will be back before too long!

The break from my designing activities has done me good and now I'm ready to get stuck in again. Two small pieces are finished and may be suitable for the layers challenge if all else fails. My design for the CQ challenge is beginning to take shape, but as this will be a juried show, I have some doubts about whether my piece will be accepted.

Having signed up for a dyeing course I have been increasing my stash of hand dyed fabric. One of the exercises was to look at the quilts you had made and make a list of the colours used. All but a tiny few of my previous quilts used commercial fabric and although I may have chosen colours that coordinated, I wouldn't say that I could define an intentional colour scheme in any of them! This is probably why I've never really felt satisfied with my work, but now I am beginning to think about  this a bit more.

My first dyeing task was to dye a range of values from light to dark using black dye. Not entirely satisfactory outcome especially since I managed to dye my fingers black!  Yes I know about gloves, but I didn't expect the lid of the jar to fly off when I was shaking it to dissolve the dye powder.

The method this tutor suggested was quite different from any I had used before, but what I found interesting was that the results were not much different from previous attempts using different methods. This set me thinking that, in reality, it is much better to find a method that gives the results you need, rather than worrying about whether it is the "right" one!

Two different methods giving slightly different results. At least I now have a lot of fabric in shades of black and grey and I've used them in my first four journal quilts, uploaded today in the nick of time!

I'm trying to get to grips with the technique of inserting really thin strips and it will take some practice. The next step will be to work on using different values to create the optical illusion of transparency.

For now though, we're back in the garden looking after out veggies and our new plants.!

Some grand days out!

The weather forecast for Sunday was good, so we took ourselves off to Caerhays 
Gardens to have a look at the Magnolias and Camelias. It was a bit muddy underfoot, but the flowers were wonderful. A carpet of primroses in cream pink and white greeted us as we walked up the hill and all the camelias were in full bloom.

This oddity turned out to be a Korean Pine. The flowers were really lovely and such an unusual colour. A must have for our new garden!

So after several days of wet and gloomy weather, today I took myself off to Wheal Martyn China Clay Museum with the Textile Plus group.

Walking around the grounds passing by all the old trains and machinery was truly inspirational. The birds were signing, the sun shone and there was coffee and cake in the cafe!

 This may have been a water feature, but is made out of old shovels! Magic!

 Lots of rust and textures!

And a little but of nature peeping out from a crack in the wall!

There is still a working clay pit here and we sat and watched the men working for quite a while until this little rusty chap caught our eye! Not sure how many elephants you get in a Cornish Clay Pit!

Lovely turquoise water to finish our walk and then back to the cafe for a cup of tea!

Next up is getting all this inspiration together to make something for our exhibition next year. Lots of ideas swimming around but nothing concrete as yet. I still find it difficult to think that other people have the same difficulty getting their ideas to take shape as I do. Yet there were three of us looking over the clay pit all saying, well it's lovely but I don't know where to start. In a way it's reassuring to think that I'm not alone. Back in the cafe over a cup of tea, we were all chatting away talking about what we had seen and I began to feel really inspired. That's the great thing about being part of a group like this. With lots of different ideas floating around you start to think well any things possible!

So off to the paint box!