Wednesday 23 September 2015

Beach walk

After days of rain the weekend looked fine so we rushed off to the beach for a walk, we had a good walk up the beach and back watching the rain coming in across the sea. We just made it back to the car before the rain hit the shore.




Every time I see a picture like this I think I should do something in greys and blues with a touch of white, these colours look so amazing in nature. But what should it be? a moody face would be cool.


Sunday 20 September 2015

Date for your diary

Arts in the Ville is an arts festival in Helensville, North West Auckland, NZ over labour weekend Oct 24th - 26th. There will be pop up exhibitions throughout the town and live demos of wood carving, pottery, painting, felting and knitting. We are going to yarn bomb as much of the town as we can and the new art centre is having its opening.
As part of this I will have my studio open from 10 - 4 each day, you will be able to  collect a map from pretty much anywhere in town so you can find me. I will have work on display and I will be stitching something, not sure what yet! I will try to tidy up!



Friday 18 September 2015

bling bird

One of the demo's I did while I was in Christchurch was surface stitches, I had 2 pieces set up, one was patterned fabric I was stitching onto and the other was using traditional stitches to decorate or bling woollen applique. I love how the same stitch can look so different when used in a different way. I just made this bird up as I went, no planning which is not like me but I love him, I had the button in my pin tin and thought it would make a perfect eye.


Wednesday 16 September 2015

using up scraps

I have had this design for a while now, I drew this boy at the skate park last summer, I have worked it small in long and short but thought it would work larger for a long cushion in applique.

 
It still needs its satin stitch edge but all the fabric is stitched down.

Tuesday 15 September 2015

Shirt Skirt

Kit was having a clean out of his section of the wardrobe and had put 3 shirts on the pile to go to the op-shop. They didn't stay on the pile for long and have now been made into a new shirt skirt.


2 of the shirts were old Ben Sherman's so I had to keep the labels on the front.

I used the collars and cuffs around the hem.

As part of the Arts in the Ville arts festival in Helensville ( Oct 24th-26th) some of my up-cycled clothes will be in the St John's op shop window.

Monday 14 September 2015

Watching the planes

The craft and quilt fair in Christchurch was held at the Air Force museum in Wigram. There were 3 planes just the other side of the display walls for the show. On the first morning, before the show opened I took my quilt 'Watching' the other side of the wall for a photo shoot, just seemed the right place to photograph a quilt about ' Big Brother' alongside some Air Force planes!



Sunday 13 September 2015

Christchurch Craft and Quilt show.

I have just copied this picture from All Things Patchwork instagram page because I forgot to take a picture of my stand in Christchurch. The show was great, lots of people interested in my work and very sensible questions mainly about long and short, with a few about where you buy gold Dr Martens! That has finalized my decision to put a long and short project in the book.



Friday 4 September 2015

Book in for Contextart

The workshops for Contextart are now live on the website, www.contextart.com.au I am booked to teach 2 workshops, a fun surface stitch 2 day class and a 4 day Icon.
it looks like a fantastic week, I can't wait to go.

You will design your own bus queue and then learn a collection of embroidery stitches to turn that design into a contemporary piece of embroidery.

 
The Icon class will cover long and short and then you can choose how the halo is worked, fabric, stitch or metal thread. The Icon could be modern of traditional.

Thursday 3 September 2015

Bag Moths

Here is New Zealand we have a strange moth called a bag moth. the female never leaves her bag which she makes out of leaves and twigs that she finds around. These bags hang from trees etc. and they seem to love our house. We are home to about 6 at the moment. The close up is of the one that has made her home outside my studio door. I love them, I have the stat of an idea for making fabric bag moths which are huge and would hang from the ceiling! we will see where that idea goes.