FOQ Preview

It's almost time for the Festival of Quilts 2023.  It starts on Thursday but there's still time to get tickets.

In the Creative Textiles Studio, I will be showing and talking about my fabric books on the afternoons of Thursday, Saturday and Sunday.  I'm working at the Sales Table on Friday morning.

If you are a regular reader you will already know about my fabric books.  Here's a taster of what I will be showing.  Watch on YouTube if you need subtitles.

If you do come to the show do please introduce yourself.

Thanks for joining me today.
Bernice

Scroll book update

In Don't Scroll Past I showed you how far I had got with the scroll book I'm making.   I had started to stitch in random places.

One of the problems with deciding vaguely what the finished piece will be, is that things don't always fit.  I knew I was going to put a piece of wood at the top for the fabric to wrap around, but wasn't sure what that wood might be.

Then I remembered that I still had some bobbins in a drawer.  However when I got one of them out it was just to small for the width of the fabric.  It wasn't possible to make the fabric narrower unless I undid quite a bit of stitching.

Thankfully I have a very amenable husband who was willing to sort it out for me.  In the photo below, the top bobbin is the original width.  The middle one shows where he cut 1 centimeter of the spindle out and glued the bobbin back together.  He inserted the centimetre piece into the middle of the bottom one which is now the right size for the fabric.

I usually print on the fabric before I start stitching but I thought I would experiment with using the thermofax screen over the stitching.  It was more difficult than usually because of the lumps and bumps but not impossible.  You can find the words of the poem on the thermofax screen here.

I have attached the fabric to the bobbin.  I could continue to stitch the piece if I feel like it.

Fabric bonded to itself around the bobbin

Bonded to the bobbin

Partly rolled up

Completely rolled up

Thanks for joining me today
Bernice

Exhibition Days Away

We went away for a couple of days because I wanted to go to two exhibitions.  We could probably have done both in one day but it was nicer to go at a slower pace.

Firstly, we went to the Willow Gallery in Oswestry to see their current exhibition Stitch by Stitch.  It was lovely to see work made by people I know including Jo Smith, Liske Johnson, Karen Herrick and Cas Holmes amongst others.

Jo Smith: Garden Friends - Red Fox

Liske Johnson: Squinting at the Sea

Sorry ladies about the quality of the photos - I was snatching them with my phone.  It's a popular exhibition and between the people and the lighting it was quite difficult to get good photos. (well That's my excuse!)

Then we went to the British Ironwork Centre. This was part sculpture park, shop, cafe and craft studios. It was also advertising the Knife Angel but we didn't ever find it which is odd because it's very tall.  I'm pleased we saw it when it was in Worcester.

From Oswestry we made our way to the Pontcysyllte Aqueduct where we had lunch and a short walk beside the canal.

A narrowboat crossing the aqueduct

The view from the aqueduct

The aqueduct

From there we drove through Llangollen and stopped at Horseshoe Falls.  I thought this was going to be a waterfall but turned out to be a cast iron weir. It enables water to be taken from the River Dee to feed the Llangollen Canal.

We continued our journing to Ruthin where I had booked us into a hotel.  The view from the bedroom window was fabulous.

I was going to write about both days but we did so much in each day that I will save day two for another post.

Thanks for joining me today
Bernice