More gothic than Venice

On Thursday Roger & I went to St. Albans - a place we had never visited before.  It has the most amazing cathedral.  I don't much care for cathedrals but this one had medieval wall paintings and tremdous architecture which reminded me of my Venice sketchbook and Michelle Ward's gothic stencils.

Some of the brickwork patterns reminded me of La Mezquita in Cordoba.

And this made me think of interesting decay in textile pieces.

I belong to Workshop on the Web created by Maggie Grey.  Each month there are several textile ideas form a variety of artists.  In the March issue Gillian Cooper provided a phototutorial on 'A mixed-media approach to surface design' which involved gelli plate printing on fabric.

I love gelli prints but usually do mine on a variety of paper surfaces.  So I had a go and ended up with these two lovely pieces of fabric.

The first prints of each of these came out really dark so I took each piece and using cellulose glue put a layer over the top.

This is the original piece of fabric and a piece of repair tissue

which combined to be this and I added some extras.

 These two - fabric and teabag paper

combined into this image.

At present I'm not sure where this will lead but I am planning to try some sketchbook work!  Shock, horror!

I'll let you know how I get on.

Thanks for stopping by.
Bernice