The West Country Quilt & Textile Show

Last Saturday I spent the day at The West Country Quilt & Textile Show with Traverse who had an exhibition there.  I had a wander around the show and these are the quilts that jumped out at me.  Most of these were in exhibition galleries rather than competition quilts.

Shenge Fish Market by Isabel Hollis

On To Glory by Judy Fairless

Red Sails in the Sunset by Penny Cole

The Sentinels: Silent Witness by Anne Beare

All That Remains by Gillian Cooper

Yellow Starflowers by Elinor Sigler

Birchington Breakwaters by Margaret Ramsey

Haven Brow at Sunset by Amelia Leigh

Processional Way by Judith Barker

And finally part of a beautiful mixed media zigzag book by Hilary Beattie.

I'm almost tempted to make a quilt myself and enter it into next year's show:  August 20th-22nd.

Thanks for joining me today.
Bernice

R

In our Living Your Word of the Year group we are using a fortnightly (bi-weekly) A-Z challenge throughout the year to help us focus on our word and live it out.

Because of the way I have made my journal it's a case of going with the flow of what background the pages have when I turn to them.

However I didn't like that page so I decided that would become the September calendar page and I turned over to this instead.

I had decided to use the word reflect for R.  September is often seen as a new start especially for those connected with the education system.  And whilst I haven't been a teacher now for 27 years, I still find September a starting point.   It can be a time to reflect on how the year has gone so far.  A time to look at what I committed to this year and whether I should still be committed to those things.

At the beginning of July I reviewed the first half of 2019.  I feel now is the time to look forward - to decide how to make the best of 2019 and maybe even think about 2020.  Or is it too soon?

I decided to use a photo of trees reflected in the canal and sticking to the monochrome nature of the journal pages, used one of my photos from my Master Practitioner project.  And where else is better to reflect on things than by still waters.

And the pages together

Thanks for joining me today.
Bernice

Join Our Inspirational Facebook Group: Living Your Word of the Year

Join Mary Brack, Valerie Sjodin and I in our Facebook group where we are giving participants the opportunity to live out an A-Z of their own word throughout 2019.  Mary explains what we are doing in her blog post.  We don't like a lot of rules, so we will have suggestions and options to spark creativity, and to help in recording and exploring our word’s meaning in visual and fun ways. We will each blog about our experiences and our art.

 Living Your Word of the Year 2019

Hashtags on Instagram:  #livingyourword2019

Check out the other blogs:
Mary: www.foundonbrighton.com
Valerie: www.valeriesjodin.com/blog

To ensure you get updates from Valerie, Mary & I why not subscribe to our blogs.

A new project

Recently I went to a workshop at Clare Bullock's studio where we made some felt and then stencilled on it with acrylic paint.

I really loved this technique and fortunately at home I already had some cream, pale brown and pale orange wool tops.  So I spent 3 happy hours making 9 pieces of felt.  The photos show the front and back of each pair.

Front

Back

Front

Back

Front

Back

Front

Back

Front

Back

I used the various stencils and thermofax screens that I have which make me think of Venice.

I tried several ways of laying these out together.  Here are a couple of arrangements.

I shall handstitch on each small piece and then assemble the whole piece.  The pieces may not be put back together in either formation shown here.  A lot will depend on the stitching.

I'll let you know how I get on.

Thanks for joining me today.
Bernice