Carers week UK

(click on photo for more info on Parkinsons)

A very interesting if emotional week for me, when official offers of help have been discussed over the telephone all this week. It was not until yesterday when I took hubby for an emergency consultants appointment at the hospital that I realised it was Carers week see here. Might explain some of the activities going on.

I have been a carer for a long time..... but did not recognise the "title" as applying to myself. I struggled last week as I was not very well myself, and was so worried as my assistance is constantly needed.

My personal experience is that a medical diagnosis is made on the ill person.....( or in this case two separate diagnosis) and left to the carer to deal with. I had no idea that I could even ask for assistance. I thought that only those who were permanently in wheelchairs or in bed qualified for any help.

I think the reason I am talking so publicly about this is please do not struggle like I did/ have been/still am. Absolutely no-one will tell you about what to do, or what is right for you or the person you are looking after, or for you. You have to do everything yourself.

I think if another person says to me there is information on this website or here is a leaflet........ I will scream out load ---- I do not want information ... I want help in sorting it all out!. What I actually needed was some one to look at us and after discussion say... here is what you need and here is what we can do for you as an organisation.. and I will get X and X and X to phone you with these areas they can help with. Are you happy with that. As a society we are so frightened of taking responsibility for helping others and are always offering opportunities to pass on information but not actually doing anything. Perhaps I am guilty of this too... by writing this post.

I was so lucky in finding that wonderful person on the end of the telephone at my Local council.. and to her I say a huge thank you....... a number of phone calls have happened since she became involved.....I am still waiting for any real physical help to materialise.... but I do know the ball is rolling, and all this could take up to 6 weeks to get going.

In the meantime I just hope I can still handle the situation. Thank goodness I have my stitching and art to keep me sane.

Good for you ! Improves your health!

Well its official, creativity is good for you, it improves your health. Read this article in the Daily Mail for confirmation ( here), but I think we knew that anyway... didn't we?

My daughter has certainly been creative and using my studio a great deal. She has agreed to take a Sales table at the local School Fete this Saturday........ and has been making lots of "goodies" and I get the job of sewing the buttons on! Also helping at the stall on the day will be a task for me.

I really hope it goes well, that the sun shines and she sells out of all the lovely pin cushions, cards, lap quilts, cushions, bags and brooches she has hand made. I wish her well in her creative endeavour.

Flowers from a thoughtful friend

These beautiful flowers were a big surprise from a very thoughtful friend. It has been a very hard few weeks for me, but these have really cheered me up. Thank you so much... I know you will read this, just want you to know how much I appreciate the good wishes.

Stitching.......and Japanese textiles

I have been machine stitching onto my hand dyed fabrics.. just loved moving the colours with stitch.

Not sure exactly how I am going to use the result yet... might end up as a book cover.

Had the monthly branch meeting of the Embroiderers Guild at Marlborough today..... a very thought provoking talk about Japanese Textiles by Jennifer Hughes. Jennifer showed us some wonderful original textiles - this first one is stencilled and so is the second one below.

Then here are some examples of tie and dye.. some pieces of fabric have been tied but not dyed...... lots of indigo as well.

Beginnings and Endings

I have had an enjoyable week by revisiting my painting on fabrics experiments.
This is quite a large quilt, well in length anyway, and I am not totally sure about the best way of mounting this for exhibition purposes. I think it may need a large frame on the back for support.
The good weather has helped the process of painting with dye, as the drying times have been halved. In theory this could mean I can do twice as much work... but my brain does not quite work like that.


Completed Journal quilts for the Contemporary Quilt Groups challenge 2011. Feb - May

These are the first 4 of 12 - the challenge for these 4 was to use circles. The fabrics are hand dyed, and then I appliqued the shapes and used lot of quilting as a surface texture. They are individual, but I prefer them together in this chequerboard pattern which accentuates the complemetary colours. At the moment they do not have any bindings.... when the challenge is complete we are given the details for binding by the organiser. Its now time to think about the next 4 Journal quilts.

There are times......when.........

It turned out to be one of those days.... My haircut was booked 9 weeks ago.. and an extra week (to my normal 8) was added as hairdresser was having a well deserved holiday in Malta. No problem... except it turns out he is still in Malta today.
Malcolm took pity on me as I could no longer see. The fringe had overtaken the glasses, so he kindly cut the fringe, and bless his cotton socks... would not take any money for it. However I shall have to phone again on Tuesday when my hairdresser is back.. we hope!

So I decided to use up the rest of the time I had purchased at the parking meter, to go and visit the Art Gallery in Old Town... and I was well rewarded. The Gallery is still showing some of my favourite works... a Lowery and a Sickert Drawing and my all time favourite by Gillian Ayres. Here are the details.........

and here is a photo of the painting taken at an angle to try and show the surface texture Gillian has achieved with the paint..... but if you want to see it for real... go to the gallery. Well worth the trip in my humble opinion.

Amazing use of colour and paint......just love it.

Swindon Open Studios 2011

Last night was the official Opening night for the Swindon Open Studios. It took place at Artsite in Swindon ,where the Substance exhibition is still running at the moment. The Substance Exhibtion made a good backdrop to the evening. Video here... Gordon Dickenson made the video, afraid I had already left the building!
A most interesting evening, meeting some of the other interested artists. The Open Studios is taking place on 2 weekends in September -- 10-11 and 17-18 September.


A powerpoint slide show was running of participating artists work as a taster.

I am considering opening my new studio for the weekends in question. I am not sure how many visitors there would be to my studio, as I do not live in the centre of town and do not know any other artists living nearby. Could be an interesting experience.. .....well I hope so anyway.

Substance Exhibition- open evening

I attended the open event to the substance exhibition last night at Artsite in Swindon see here.. a most interesting event. I forgot to take my camera... typical... but this is one of my pieces of work. My work was in response to my admiration for Julia Caprara. textile artist, who I greatly admired and was so fortunate to be able to work with.

My Batik work from a previous post is now ready to stitch into. all the wax has been removed and the colours are a bit pale to photograph well, so I have the paper work design to the left to give you a hint of what I am up to.

At the moment I am still a hospital visitor chauffeur, my good friends' husband is still in hospital, and as she does not drive and is disabled I have very willingly driven her to the hospital twice a day for the last eleven days. It does infringe on my stitching time.... but some things have to be.

Substance Exhibition

Have just delivered my work to the above exhibition.. it opens on Wednesday 18th May. I am stewarding next Monday (23rd) and Wednesday ( 25th) afternoons if you would like to pop in and have a chat.

Have a look at the Swindon Open studios blog for a photo of my submission of my work- here

GWE meeting

Isn't it wonderful to work with like minded stitchers... we had our GWE meeting today( click here for blog) and we had a very good mini workshop on Batik and dyeing... great fun.

Have a look at the new edition of Workbox magazine ( June /July 2011) our latest 2 exhibitions Meadow Larks at Cirencester and Fritillary Tearooms at Cricklade are featured in an article. I am particularly pleased with the layout and photos. Really good article. Thank you Workbox. ( click here)

Dyrham Park

Had another wonderful day with some of the grandchildren when we visited Dyrham Park near Bath. We really enjoy ourselves there, the deer in the park are a big favourite, as are the cakes in the cafe.. ......there's a surprise! The park is wonderful for getting rid of a lot of excess energy and the views of the surrounding countryside are great. The tour of the house is aways of interest and the tiles from the dairy are fascinating......it is always cool in there.

Here we are in the house.... enjoying a moments rest.

Ta Dah... 500 the post.....results

Amongst a great deal of excitement...a family member pulled the following names from the hat for the 500th Post Giveaway :---- Congratulations to the winners .... who are:- The fabric postcard is won by quilthexle and the sample of hand dyed fabrics by Angela. Please email me your address and I will mail your goodies to you.

Frittilary Tearooms

I have just returned from sampling some wonderful tea and cake at the Fritillary tearooms in Cricklade. The cakes are home made by the Cricklade Bloomers and I had Strawberries and Cream, sponge cake.... Yummy! As you can see I was not alone, such a good choice on the menu as well. In the photos are the 5 panels of work we ( Great Western Embroiderers) created in textiles for display in the tea rooms this year. All the designs are based on the North Meadow in Cricklade.

We are delighted that Cricklade Town Council have also made a request to display the panels in the Council Offices after their time in the tearooms. The panels will also be displayed in the windows of the town council offices for 2 weeks in August, when the judging for the Britain in Bloom competition takes place. Cricklade are finalists this year and very proud they are too.

They have been made Champion of Champions a high accolade indeed. Well done Cricklade Bloomers.

Textile Tearooms

Had a great meeting of the Great Western Embroiderers yesterday. We have been working with Natural England to create pieces of work for the tearooms in Cricklade to show what a wonderful resource the North Meadow can be for the community.

The work will be on show this weekend in the tearooms and for the next 2 weekends as well. Here is a photo of one of the banners of work.. there are 4 more. If you would like to know more about the North Meadow and the fritillaries click here The fritillaries are just blooming now.. so are a wonderful sight . Do take your camera if you decide to visit. If you manage to go this weekend, then please drop into the tearooms for a cup of tea and a slice of cake and of course enjoy our pieces of stitched work.

Just to catch up, went along to the West Country Embroiderers Dorset Day last week... most enjoyable and a good talk in the afternoon about Palestinian textiles. ( Photo above is of Salisbury)

I have been working on a new piece of work, and thoroughly enjoying myself. Here is just a snippet.

500th post giveaway

Thought it would be good to celebrate my 500th post with a couple of give aways. The first is in the photo above. One of my stitched postcards and the second is some samples of my hand dyed fabrics. They are in the photo below. If you would like have one of these.... please leave a comment for me and a name will be chosen out of the hat on 16th April 2011. I think spring has finally arrived too, the garden is starting to wake up and the flowers are looking truly wonderful.

I washed out all my space dyeing and shibori yesterday evening, and by time I was ready to hang the pieces on the line to dry , it was dark! At least the neighbours could not see me.

Fortunately we had no rain overnight, and so this morning I bought the dyed pieces in and ironed them. I have to say I am very pleased with them.

Mad March and Space Dyeing

This dyeing of fabric and threads has been quite a mission this mad month of March. Lots of preparation, thinking and waiting is required to complete this technique. Now I have a recipe that works for me, I really enjoy doing it and the results are worthwhile.

Here is the batch I have managed to get going for this afternoon.... some shibori too. I have not used that technique for a long time, wonder if they will be OK?

You may remember me doing a lot of my dyeing in previous blog posts ( click here) I still use the same recipe. I find it works well for me.

Here are the all over colours, so useful to have.

Here are also some space dyed I dyed last week. Just love the way the colours run and fuse in together.

Now just have to sit and wait overnight for the latest dyes to batch. Then wash them tomorrow..... a bit of patience is required for that as well!

Quilting

I have been using my dyed fabrics, and practising my free machine quilting, as well as rotary cutting. All my own design..... but obviously you will recognise that it is just an arrangement of squares and rectangles. I have learnt a lot by doing this piece... patching or is it called piecing(?) and quilting too.

Stitch and Craft show Olympia

Went along to this show with my daughter. I used to go last century, but have not been for a long time. Was not sure if I would enjoy it or not, but viewed it as a day out. But enjoy it I did. There was lots to see and do and we finished the day sitting at this table making small cross stitch buttons to wear... you can download the charts for the buttons from the Cross Stitcher site here. They are simple designs, but fun to do. As we went on the Sunday it was not overbearingly crowded... so very pleasant to walk around.

Drawing with the sewing machine

These pieces of work were created over 2 days.... 2 days of really good stitching fun. All the drawing was done with free machine stitching. A refreshing change from using a pencil.

This piece above was my practice piece... almost a doodle piece. Testing the stitching, testing the marks the machine made. Really important to try things out.

This was the large table in the middle of the room with lots of items to draw. Isn't the table cloth a wonderful red?

This is completely stitched by machine. Ignore the flower pin at top right..... took the photo before I realised it was there... duh! Tried to give myself an exercise of white on white.....that was hard !

Bath Stitchers- Workshop

It was lovely to be invited by the Bath Branch of the Embroiderers Guild to give them a workshop. I always enjoy working all day with a group, not only were this group great fun and so adventurous, they also succeeded in creating lots of work of a high quality. The workshop they chose to take was all about abusing stitches. Great fun.

Impressed with the work? I was.

Dyeing day and more

Please note this is dyeing with an "e"...

I was running short of some colours of fabric for my next project. So dyeing it had to be. I resorted to using hot water dyes as the weather is really too cold for cold water dyeing and the associated batching time in a warm room.

I enjoy the consistency of hot water dyeing.... but hate the stirring of the brew, and become quite impatient. The results are always guaranteed to be good though - so I force myself to be patient. So pleasing to get good results everytime..

So here are some of the pieces of cloth I dyed this week, still need a few more colours, but at least I can make a start on some journal quilts I want to make. I use a lot of my own coloured fabrics, my fabric stash of purchased prints is not very large.... but I have quite a few yards/meters of neutral fabrics for dyeing and printing.

My daughter came round today to make use of my studio again . We managed to make this little quiltlet for grandson.

He has had his room re-decorated and this will be the first of 2 wall hangings we are making for his wall. Yes... he loves dinosaurs as do lots of 6 year old boys. We have finished the top of the other, but still have the quilting to do and finishing. This one is already on his wall.

Time flies

Problems with blogger this week have halted my posting , but I seem to be back in business now------at last!

It has been a busy week, lots of lovely textiles on Monday and Tuesday.

Had a talk on Monday to the Embroiderers Guild group I belong to by Alison Harper and most interesting to learn how she reuses refuse such as crisp packets to create her textiles, not my preferred method of working, but it made me think.

Then on Tuesday working with the lovely local GWE group I belong to... we had a great time stitching and chatting together all day, preparing for our next exhibition in April.

Another excitement is the arrival of this lovely stripey linen scarf in the post from a new gift shop ,a good mate has recently opened.... have a look here and on FB.

Art around the world anyone?

So do you go to lots of art galleries and exhibitions?
That's OK on a local level when perhaps you have access to exhibitions and galleries and fellow artists, but getting to some of the bigger art galleries to see works of art is often impossible and involves making a lot of travel arrangements.
So when I fell across this I was impressed. Have a look at the google art project
Just as much fun as google earth. Let me know what you think in the comments

Disappearing Patchwork

My Daughter has recently expressed a passion for creating patchwork, so she organised childcare for the day and came round to my studio to play. We had a great time.

The result being this disappearing 9 patch . I got the pattern from the chick pea studio
strangely it is called a birthing quilt ( not quite sure what that is? )... but the instructions were clear and simple for my daughter to understand.

We did not make a quilt, but a cushion cover for youngest Grandaughter. I had already digitised and stiched a name label for her. Needless to say grandaughter is thrilled with it. The cushion even had to go to nursery today. Isn't it wonderful when a piece of work is so appreciated? Even if it is a soon to be 4 year old? The matching quilt is the next project.... it has been ordered ;0)