DORSET ART WEEKS

Dorset Art Weeks opens tomorrow 26th May until 10th June.  I am exhibiting my things with a group formed for the Event Allsorts Textile Artists.  We are exhibiting at Highway Farm, on the A35 out of Bridport, Dorset.  DT6.6AE for those with Sat.Navs.  We have been busy for the last couple of days setting up our things and making ready for what we hope will be a successful event.  If you are in the area please come and say hello. There are some fabulous things on display including Joy's fabulous felt creations and Hilary's beautiful quilts.
Hope to see you there.

NEW ARRIVAL

 Linda and I have just returned from a few days selling and buying in France.  We stayed with our friends Ticky and Nick who were eagerly awaiting for Rosie to produce her foal and so were we.  Wednesday arrived and we were due to travel back to the UK and still no baby.  A 7.30 a.m. telephone call this morning brought the wonderful news.  Rosie had given birth during the night.  Isn't this photograph wonderful.  I must admit I shed a tear.  What a relief that everything went without a hitch.  Can't wait for our next trip to see the new arrival.  I still don't know whether it is a boy or girl or what its name will be.  All will be revealed soon, I hope.

Our shopping trip was a great success and we will be taking our new finds to Stroud to the Antique Textile Fair at Bisley Village Hall the weekend after next.

NEW SKILLS

I spent Thursday and Friday on an Machine Embroidery workshop with Alison Holt.  The subject was 'Seascapes'.  This was a completely new discipline for me and I was a little apprehensive but I told myself that it was the experience I was after, not to create a masterpiece.  The first thing we had to do was select a photograph, and I chose a fairly simple one with not too many cliffs and huge waves.  That will all come later.  Then we had to trace off the design on to fine silk after stretching it on to a frame.  The next step was to paint the picture with silk paints after we had gone over our traced lines with gutta which would stop the paints from running where we didn't want it. Alison gave us a demonstration each step  of the way.  She showed us how to create the textures and impressions we needed with machine stitch and then we were let loose to create our pictures.  Our painted pictures were stretched on to an embroidery frame and at first I found it difficult to control the frame as it slipped very easily all over the place.  Alison always works without a foot on the machine and I was dreading this as when I have tried before the results have always been disastrous. However this time I managed to do what I was supposed to.  It takes a lot of concentration;  the machine needs to run quite fast to stitch properly and working on such a small scale is new to me but I don't think the results are too bad although there is room for much improvement.!    It is still unfinished. I need to stitch the sand, though I quite like the look of it without stitch.  I think I will do sparse stitching for the sand but there is quite a lot of texture there.  I won't be finishing it for a while as we are off to Ardingly again on Monday for the International Antique and Collectors Fair and then France to do a bit of selling at a Fleamarket in St. Lo and a bit of buying from our favourite dealers. 
Dorset Art Weeks is coming up swiftly and there is still a lot of work to be done for that.  I have made a bunch of sketchbooks and done preparatory screenprinting on old french linen for cushions,  I am going to do some more indigo dyeing on silk for scarves so I can take these with me to France to do the preparatory stitch resists.  I am going to be exhibiting with a group of other Textile Artists at Highway Farm just outside Bridport.  Have a look at our website, you might think it worthwhile coming to pay us a visit.  You will find us here www.allsortstextileartists.weebly.com .

RESULTS

Well here is the result of my Indigo dyeing yesterday.  As you can see it is a lovely blue but there are a lot more unplanned marks.  This could be for a number of reasons.  1.  I didn't do enough stitching to create a more orderly pattern.  2.  I was being a bit ambitious using a very large piece of fabric in the size of the vat I had prepared.  3.  I should have re-washed the piece of linen in synthrapol maybe,  I did give it a good soak before I put it in the vat after it had been stitched. 4.  Perhaps I should have just left it to oxidise on its own and not fiddle with it. 

What does anyone think?  All suggestions gratefully received!  Sometimes when I have been dyeing smaller pieces of fabric they have had the odd random blotch when oxidised.  Perhaps this has something to do with the mixture.  Or my own feeling is that it is something within the fabric that is almost acting as a resist. 

I am feeling a little ungrateful that I am a wee bit disappointed in the results.  Does this seem mad, I wonder.  I have been the instrument in this exercise so it is down to me.  I have been thinking about dyeing yardage to make garments for a long time now and have always had at the back of my mind that I wouldn't be able to do it with the equipment I have.  When I have prepared a larger vat before it has been so heavy I haven't been able to move it when I have needed to empty it.  Perhaps I will go to Plan B and cut out the garment before I dye it.  I will use this piece of fabric, but I may have to wear it myself!  Indigo dyeing is an interesting experience and the results can never be repeated because there are so many things that we can't control such as hardness or softness of the water, the humidity in the air, the temperature outside, how much air gets into the vat and the make-up of the fabric.  This unpredictability makes it addictive, and for someone who is unpredictable and spontaneous this makes me a convert to the cause.  Why then does it slightly annoy me when it does its own thing and not what I would like it to do?  Food for thought!

I will post pictures of the finished garment.

DYEING THE BLUES

It has been a lovely warm and sunny day today and that makes for an ideal time to mix up the first Indigo vat of 2012.   I am taking part in Dorset Art Weeks again and this starts on the last week-end in May.  The days are going with great speed and I haven't really started anything yet.  The sunshine today gave me the impetus to start.  While the vat was fermenting I sat in the sun and stitched a grid on a long piece of lovely white French linen.  I have no idea how it will turn out as I think my vat was a bit small for such a large piece.  One thing is sure it will be a lovely blue.  I intend to  make a  loose fitting jacket with it so it will be cut up and then re-arranged so the result could be interesting.  It is in the washing machine at the moment.  I will post more pictures of the fabric before I start to cut it up.  Now that I have started, I hope to carry on!!!  There is lots to be done.  I am exhibiting with 5 other ladies under the name of Allsorts Textile Artists.  We have the use of a lovely big barn at Highway Farm on the outskirts of Bridport.  Details of Dorset Art Weeks can be found on the Dorset Visual Arts website. 

I have given myself an awful lot to do this year.  As well as working towards Art Weeks there are the things I want to do for the Contemporary Quilt Group and I still have to fit in time to go off on my travels to France and various Textile Fairs.  On April 4th I will be at Ilminster Talent for Textiles Fair at the Arts Centre.  This is a lovely day in super surroundings.

Hot on the heels of Ilminster is Ardingly and then we are off to France to take a stand at another Puces de Couturiers.  This time at St. Lo.  Oh well there is no chance of me getting bored!  Exhausted yes.  What do they say about 'All work and no play.....'?

HOME AGAIN

Home again after our few days in France.  We were greeted wtih lots and lots of snow and freezing temperatures.  -10 .  Quite chilly to say the least but the air was still.  A wind would have made it unbearable.  Our road trip from the Ferry port at Caen to our friends passed without incident and we were glad to get there unscathed and be by the fireside in the warm.It was difficult to know if we would be able to get out and about to do the shopping we had come for, but the French farmers do a stirling job and they had cleared the roads of the first fall of snow so driving was not a problem on the main roads.

We went out looking on Saturday and managed to find a few things at a Vide Grenier a few miles away, and struck really lucky at the Emmaus which was having an all day sale which included their linen.  Sometimes they don't put it all out but save it for special linen days. 

 Sunday we went to work at the Puces de Couturiers and here we found some more lovel things.  Fabric boxes, pristine tickings from a lady whose father had been a mattress maker and an exquisite white lace bedspread which was from the vendor's own family.  It had been used as a tablecloth so some careful laundering is required.

 Monday was bonanza day when we went to see a Furniture dealer we have made our own.  He is such a lovely person and he is now collecting things up for us and he had struck gold.  We came away with a car stuffed with fabulous sheets and rolls of hemp and metis.  We had a huge roll of metis before and this was eagerly taken for curtains and re-upholstery.  We thought the last one was big but this one is larger.  Impossible for Linda and I to lift in and out of a car so it will have to stay put at Linda's until we have sold some to make it more manageable.

Here is Pepita waiting  for a carrot.  We are eagerly awaiting the arrival of a baby.  Both the horses went to a stallion last year.  Rosie is definitely pregnant but  Pepita is not showing yet as she is such a big horse.  Lets hope she is.  The babies are due at the end of April  which is when Linda are due to go again so we will keep our fingers crossed.  We are working again at another Puces de Couturiers, this time near St. Lo.  We were approached by a lady about doing another one in Brittany at Morbihan  but we are quite busy in May and I have Dorset Arts Weeks to think about so probably won't be able to participate in this one.  It is good fun and the french ladies seem to like our stuff.  But before then we have to set our sights on Ardingly which is looming on the horizon at the beginning of March.  It is great to know that we have lot of lovely new stock to take.

FRANCE HERE WE COME!

Linda and I are off to France on the overnight ferry on Thursday evening.  We will be making our way to stay with our friend Ticky and Nick at Les Pannards.  While we are there we will be working at Le Puces des Couturiers at Tellieul on Sunday.  We were there last year and will be taking all our English linen, lace, haberdashery, quilting fabrics, buttons and anything else we think they might like.  We were well received last time, lets hope they will be pleased to see us again.  As foreigners we are allowed to work in France on two occasions per year.  All our details and our passport numbers have to be registered with the French authorities before we go.  The law is strictly adhered to by the people running the market as they as well as us would be in trouble if it were not.  Pity it is not the same here for itinerant workers, but that's another matter.

The weather forecast is not too clever but as long as the white stuff stays away and we manage to get to where we are going without mishap we will be quite happy.  No rear ends in ditches as it was when we were caught in a snowstorm just after disembarking at Caen a couple of years ago.  Still the French police were very efficient at rescuing us and quite nice to look at as well!!!!

I am quite looking forward to getting away as here at home we are in the throes of refurbishing the kitchen, which is proving to be quite stressful.  It is only small and by hook or by crook I want a dishwasher!  We have bought and installed another garden shed to house everything while the work is underway.  In the meantime I am trying to focus on producing new work for Dorset Arts Weeks in May/June.  To say I am up to my eyes in it is an understatement.