Monstrous Women at Cynon Valley Museum & Gallery

  

For those of you who haven't ventured there, I recommend a jaunt to the  Cynon Valley Museum and Gallery at Aberdare. This lovely gallery has some great exhibitions as well as the museum to peruse, with a cosy little on-site cafe if you fancy a bevy and a bite before you venture back home. This exhibition looks great : 

3 March - 14 April 2012 

A Monstrous Regiment of Women

"This is an exhibition of works by a number of Wales’s women artists. Their work is sometimes outrageous and sometimes unnatural. They work in a variety of media often using materials in unusual combinations. These artists maintain their own visions and at the same time experiment constantly within their practice, exploring new fields.  Most of these artists have worked, exhibited and sold internationally.

This exhibition forms part of the celebrations taking place throughout the world on the 8^th March, International Women's Day, which is supported globally by the United Nations"

(CVMG newsletter)

Linda & Laura Kemshall at Monmouth New Leaf gallery

If you're passing Monmouth (or even make a special trip!) the Kemshalls have a small selection of their work on display at the  New Leaf Gallery . It's on until the 17 March so don't wait too long or you'll miss it ;-)

Festival of Quilts 2012

The 2012 programme for Festival of Quilts is now available to preview - tho you can't actually book tickets until March. Festival of Quilts (or FOQ as I fondly call it!!) is now the largest and most vibrant quilt exhibition outside the USA (some say anywhere), and this year they will be celebrating  the 10^th anniversary of this event at the National Exhibition Centre, Birmingham, this August. Whether or not you have ever made a quilt, this festival is a must for anyone with an interest in textile arts.  Take a sketchbook, camera, brown paper bag (to blow into when the excitement gets too much!!) and a second mortgage for all the wondrous materials/kit/gadgets/books available to buy.

Knit fest & peacock progress

Had an enjoyable weekend having mucked out the craft roost and becoming reacquainted with the table top! Firstly I had a blissful afternoon with the lovely Alison knitting and talking our heads off. I think I did more talking than knitting tho!

Look at that clear table!!

I've been knitting a twisted cowl in this lovely variegated bamboo yarn I found in my stash that I've had rather a long time. Also Alison came bearing balls of Rowan Fine Lace for me to have a play with so am doing a bit of swatching to see how it behaves itself. Alison was knitting some fab new top secret designs - to see more about her designing adventures follow the link on the 'Places of Interest' column to the right.

But today has been more about picking up the threads for my project which is to design a piece of patterned fabric, based on the peacock theme. I'm going to use a few different techniques to make 2m of fabric with pattern and a border design - well that's the plan anyway. Toyed with the idea of doing this digitally, but don't have photoshop and will take too long to get my head round it for this project deadline, so going to go for good old fashioned hands-on methods. For one of the larger motifs I'm going to use a stencil - though how I use it is a decision for another day! May screen print it, or use it simply as a stencil.

 after much doodling I settled on the motif above which I'll keep as an 'original' so I can make more stencils if needed. So first job is to trace it onto some freezer paper. I've made a reverse image tracing too.

Thankfully remembered to add a couple of 'bridges' before cutting it  out or I'd have had a Doh! moment. After cutting it out I thought I'd make use of the cut away pieces to make a rubbing plate which may come in handy at a later date. I'm also going to cut one from acetate too so it will last longer and cope with some repeated use. So my next step will  be to actually use it! I've started colouring up some fabric for sampling using some old dye I've got hanging around (doesn't need to be colourfast just for a sample).


Wanted to add a bit of subtle visual texture so added some salt while it's wet - but I think it's turning out a bit too subtle!! Oh well, will have to wait and see how it looks when it' dry.

So, that's what I've been up to - how about you guys?

It ain't pretty!

I have a loft guest tomorrow so it's the incentive I needed to give 'the laboratory' a good mucking out - thing is it definitely seems to be getting worse rather than better!!

Will I ever see that table top again????

I can't believe what stuff I'm finding - plenty of duplicate items where I either couldn't find or forgot what I had already - found 5 packs of needles so far and about eleventy-two notebooks, not to mention a rather shockingly shameful number of WIPs I'd forgotten about (which is in addition to the gazillion I hadn't forgotten about!!)

Feathers

Loved the feathers, why not bring it to class on Thursday.

Birmingham Exhibition

I wish I could go, but we are on holiday.  Please bring back lots of info for me to give me badly needed inspiration.

Sewing for her pleasure!!

Fashion, Embroidery & Stitch is at the NEC at the end of March, along with Sewing for Pleasure - great day or weekend away for fibre-oholics!! So much to look at, and indeed buy, so best get saving the pennies. I'm going to try and be very sensible by going through what I've already got and thinking about what I actually need before I go - can be armed with a modest list and stick to it then - other option is to just see what catches my eye. Wonder which tack I'll actually take..........?

Can you have too many beads ???? :-)

Welcome to Stitches' Coven

I am as usual finding new ways to procrastinate by creating this blog - but hopefully it will help me to galvanise into action and get on with producing some lovely textile pieces - with a little help from some friends of course who I hope will join me in sharing their works in progress too.

Starting point for my project to design a piece of fabric with pattern

I'm not progressing very quickly, but I have some ideas now starting to come together.....................