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!

The earth moves again!

We are getting thoroughly fed up with all this rain. Where is it all coming from? I know where it's going as we are surrounded by seas of mud!

Our trusty earthmovers dug a trench for a drain on Friday and excavated a large hole at the front which will eventually be levelled up with our spanking new drive way. They have removed tons of earth and a very dilapidated fuchsia which had long since passed its best and today they are in the process of levelling the hard core and tamping it down while the rain falls! They are coming back "dreckly" to finish it all off with nice chippings and Tarmac. "Dreckly" being the Cornish version of mañana! Still with it all levelled and hardened off at least we will not be paddling to the car through a muddy lake!

On the artistic front I have been busy. Yesterday I attended a workshop with Susan Denton learning about colour. Susan is a well known quilter who was a member of Quilt Art but has not run classes for a while. The exercises she set us were very challenging but she made sure that everyone understood the tasks and spent a lot of time helping us individually and as a group. Susan had provided us with all the fabric we were likely to need and everyone came away having learned a great deal.

Here are some photos of my exercises

We chose 1 light, 1 dark and 1 medium fabric. In my first sample I chose the lime green as my light fabric and in the second, as my medium. The result is that the medium fabric looks darker on the light fabric and darker on the light. This can be a useful way of manipulating the colour.

In the next exercise we chose two medium fabrics, one slightly darker than the other. In this way it is possible to make the two medium colours look as if they were the same simply by using a light or a dark background. Mine didn't quite work on the light fabric, but sort of did on the dark.

 The final exercise was to choose 12 to 16 fabrics and grade them in even steps from light to dark! This is a black and white photo of my choices, which wasn't bad, but not perfect.

We then had to cut out small squares and triangles and stick them on a background drawn out as a traditional block.

The task was to place the fabrics in such a way that it moved from dark to light across the  block, but in a random way. Not sure about my result so I may do another one before the next class on Monday.

Hard work, but my it was fun!!!

My quillt for the Quilters Guild "Green" challenge is finished and is winging it's way to Exeter and it does look quite good.

Next up is the serpentine panel which is giving me a few headaches but I think I'm getting there. This is the photo I'm using so it should be quite dramatic.

Watch this space!

When the earth moves....

chez Leonard it really moves!

Hence this wilderness

becomes like this

and before you know it you begin to have a garden!

Of course you do need one of these

and a couple of strong men who don't mind working in the rain! They will be back next week to lay the flagstones and we will be off to the garden centre to buy some plants.

In the meantime I have been busy sewing. The tree rhythms piece is finished, mounted and gone off to the competition. I'm not expecting anything but I'm hoping for some feedback.

The green challenge quilt is waiting for it's hanging sleeve before going off. The serpentine panel is proving to be a real challenge but I hope to get it done on time.

In the meantime there are two new cushions which I've made by way of displacement activity!

So now it's off to the garden centre so we can get a plant or two!

Carrying on....

Despite all this horrible weather is throwing at us we are not doing too badly. Many poor souls are having to cope with floods, wind damage and who knows what so a few sleepless nights listening to the rain and hail crashing into our velux window in the bedroom is really neither here nor there. We have been a bit concerned that our lovely big conservatory may not withstand the high winds we've been having. but although it creaks, groans and rattles a lot, and there is the occasional puddle on the floor, so far it seems to have survived.

But we have a new garden to start building and we can't get out so my DH is busy with his oak planks and I'm busy at the sewing machine.

So far the woodwork has produced this

which has replaced this.

Something of an improvement!

Next up is the bookcase for the alcove on the right of the stove and when that's up we can at last start unpacking the books!

The sewing frenzy has produced quite a lot too.

A new cushion for my dear MIL who has got very fed up with the old patchwork cushions she made donkeys years ago and asked for something a bit brighter.

Two little sample quilts which I've made  to practice the technique of inserting very narrow strips. I'm planning to make a large quilt, or rather a series of quilts on the theme of "layers" based on a photo of slate I took many years ago.

My entry for the Embroiderers  Guild member's challenge which is on the theme of "tree rhythms"

I had great fun making this. I made a stamp for the black trees and used this to print on some fabric I had already dyed. I also used a cork and a pencil to print the circles. The stitching is mostly free machine embroidery, cable and whip stitch, with a few hand stitches and some couched threads to finish off. My DH used his woodworking skills once again to make a frame for it as the rules specify that it must be mounted and ready to hang.

The next quilt is for the Region 4 Quilter's Guild Challenge on the theme of "Green". Once again I delved into my stash of handyed fabrics and got out all the greens I could find. I was really surprised at just how many there were given that green isn't a colour I use very much. As I was on a roll with inserting narrow strips, I rather went to town with some really bright orange and pink fabric to make a contrast. It wasn't my intention to make a quilt where there weren't any straight lines at all, but that seemed to be what happened when I started joining the separate blocks together.

Forward planning is not my strong suit and so it took quite a while to get the different elements arranged in a way that I was pleased with, and also to get the size right and to get it roughly rectangular.

I decided to quilt it using perpendicular parallel lines of stitching and now that it's squared up and ready for binding, I'm rather pleased with it.

Next up is some simple patchwork to make some new cushions for us before I start on the art once again! Watch this space!