Flower Carpet

The quilt show season is in full swing now and last weekend it was the Quilt UK one in Malvern, organized by Grosvenor Shows Ltd. There are less quilt shows here in the UK than there used to be and I am also making less quilts than in the past. Those two things are not connected in any way,  but for me it means a happy serendipity as I have enough work to enter the shows that are still ongoing.

As you can see Flower Carpet came back with two rozettes, one for the Surface Texture and Embellishment Prize and the other for a Judges Merit. If you are a regular reader here you will probably recognize this as a follow up quilt to Spring in the City about which I wrote a blog post some weeks ago. In fact, there is a bit of a series of flower quilts coming up as I'm working on another one at the moment.

This one is machine pieced (with black and white fabrics from my stash)and quilted. The flowers (all Alison Glass designed fabric) were stamped using Hero Arts stamps in 3 different sizes, raw edge appliquéd (using Bondaweb), hand embroidered and embellished with beads and sequins. Once finished it reminded me of Oriental carpets hence the name.

Here it is with its rozettes which I will now hang up on the wall. Most people that visit us,  think I'm some very accomplished horse rider but no, quilt shows also give out rozettes as prizes just like horse events do. Mine are mainly used to bolster my confidence during times when my inner critic plays up.

Dance Journal Quilts

I was despairing of finding anything to photograph on this dismal weather day till I picked up the recent issue of British Patchwork & Quilting magazine and discovered my two dance inspired journal quilts. They were Runners-Up in the dance themed JQ competition organised by Grosvenor Shows. Hopefully I will be able to pictured the actual pieces next weekend when they will be at the quilt show at Ingliston near Edinburgh

Exhibition Harestanes Countryside Visitor Centre

 I met up with a friend today at Harestanes Countryside Visitor Centre to have a chat, enjoy a delicious lunch and visit the Celebrating Seasons exhibition by Simon and Laura Blackwood. I love Laura's work especially and have her gorgeous book: A Celebration of Nature.

 Her work brought colour and light into what otherwise was a grey and damp day. I highly recommend a visit. It's a lovely drive there too, right through the Scottish Borders. The show is on till 31th October.

Flower Friday Begonia and Born Free

As you can tell it has been a very wet night and although the sun came out for a bit this morning it is now looking very grey again and these begonias will get even wetter soon.

Still there was some brightness to be had inside as my Born Free quilt came back from the The Great Northern Quilt Show in Harrogate  last weekend, adorned with a red Judges Merit rozette. Always a joy! You can read more about this piece here.

Gallery One view

 

I'm not often in Gallery One of the Gallery of Modern Art in Edinburgh (most special shows are in Two) but was there today to see the small Bridget Riley exhibition and revisit some Picasso paintings, as well as work by Braque, Mondriaan and Delauney among others. It was so quiet after MoMA despite the quality of the paintings on display. This gallery deserves more visitors.

Unfortunately I and lots of other traffic, was snarled up with a pretty bad accident on the Edinburgh City Bypass on my way to the gallery which delayed me for more than 45 minutes, and had to reward myself with both tea and cake sitting in the sunny garden of Gallery One's cafe before throwing myself into Edinburgh city centre traffic to go home again! This is the view from Gallery One onto Charles Jencks landscape art

 

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Edina's Roses

This quilt came home with me yesterday after the meeting of Thistle Quilters. It had been part of Thistle's stand at the quilt show in Glasgow earlier this month. The quilt was the result of a challenge to make a quilt sized 18 x 24" on the theme of "Auld Reekie", a name by which Edinburgh is also known.

After some research I discovered that one of the reasons that this is the case, was the habit of domestic servants in the past, to empty the chamberpots from the top of tenement houses into the streets below with very unpleasant results, specially for the innocent passers-by below!

I found a poem written by Robert Fergusson in 1773 which contains the following lines:

"They kindly shower Edina's roses

to quicken and regale our noses"

This refers to that habit of emptying those chamberpots of their foul smelling content.

I grabbed that poetic image of roses to use in my quilt and thus was forced to buy a chamberpot on Ebay, a first for quilt supplies!

The background is a paper/fabric collage using vintage images of Edinburgh from books and an old newspaper, collaged on a calico (muslin in US speak) background using matte medium. The frame is hand drawn and cut from a rose fabric, and then machine appliquéd on using Bondaweb, with machine done double buttonhole stitch. It is embellished with size 11 seed beads.

The chamberpot is a photograph taken from that Ebay buy printed onto fabric and machine appliqued on. I then stitched on a selection of diferent rose buttons and beads, falling down in a steady stream over the background. 

Mural in Peebles

A visit to Peebles brightened up my mood as it meant leaving the phone problems behind. You might have noticed I have removed my moan from yesterday's post. I print out this blog (using Blog2Print) each year and I don't want to take up space with all that negativity. Writing it all down was enough, it didn't need to stay there! We are waiting to hear what our service provider wants to do next if anything and take it from there.

Once in Peebles I went to see the new mural in one of Peebles' little alleyways (Pennels Close) off the Main Street and it was very colourful and bright. It pictures scenes from Peebles' history.

It also celebrates the fact that the Scottish Borders now has a railway line having been without one since the Sixties. It's sadly nowhere near us, or Peebles, but further east in the Borders. I have promised myself a train journey from Edinburgh to Tweedbank (it's final destination) one of these days but for today I admired the train on the mural.

After that I visited the Fibre X Five exhibition in The Gallery at Tweeddale Museum. There is a yurt right there in the middle of the room as well as much beautiful felt art. It's still on till the 24th October. Make sure you check the opening hours (the gallery closes for lunch and isn't open on Saturday afternoon or Sunday) and note the fact that the gallery has no disabled access. It's the same gallery where I had my solo exhibition in 2011 and upstairs from where I had the 52 Journals show last year.

Into the Wild Blue Yonder

When we opened the curtains first thing this morning we were greeted by a beautiful morning with lingering mist and sunshine.  I grabbed my camera and took some pictures before all that beauty could disappear.

 Then I heard a whooshing sound and looking up spotted this colourful balloon slowly traversing the sky.

I loved the way it seemed to hang above our chimney.

It wasn't till this moment that I realized that if I could zoom in on it, the people in it could do the same in reverse and I was still dressed in my nighty! So I scarpered inside very speedily. But it dawned on me while driving to the first Thistle Quilters meeting of the season in Edinburgh that this balloon was an excellent image to reveal my news!

I too am off into the wild blue yonder, though not in a balloon. Instead I'll be winging my way to New York next spring on a quilting orientated trip that I won. I won't show you the winning quilt yet but here is a detail below.

This quilt (called Gelli Glory) was made for a competition on the theme of Stars and Stripes organized by the British Patchwork & Quilting Magazine on the occasion of their 30th anniversary, and you will be able to see the entire quilt in the next issue (November) of the magazine coming out in the middle of October. Once that has appeared I will post it here too. The prize is a trip organized by PandQTours and both I and a friend will be going. Going with a friend will make it so much more fun and I'm so happy she too is looking forward to it very much.

Guidebooks for New York have already been bought and the trip will included a visit to the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA, and a visit there has long been a dream of mine), the 9/11 Memorial site, as well as a trip to The City Quilter where I will receive 10 fat quarters of fabric as part of my prize. Somehow I suspect these won't be the only fabrics coming home with me. A big suitcase will be needed! You will hear lots more about this adventure in due course. It is just SO exciting!

Back in Edinburgh

After not having been anywhere for a few weeks I'm now at the other extreme of having daily outings and I have finally managed to catch up with all the things I wanted to see on my list. The weather was not with me today though. I was driving to the bus stop (yes, that's how far we are from public transport) when it started to rain and I wasn't at all dressed for the wet. Thank goodness for small brollies that fit in a handbag. By the time the bus reached Edinburgh you couldn't call it rain any longer. It was more like a huge deluge.

But the minute I entered the gallery where the above exhibition is being held, I was engulfed in bright colours and beautiful art. The work was all inspired by Sheila's photographs taken during visits to the North of Scotland and the Islands as well as Iceland and Alaska hence the title North.

As you can tell it's on till this coming Saturday and I highly recommend a visit.

I had completely forgotten to take either camera to Edinburgh,  but in the end it didn't matter as it was way too wet to take pictures so instead I photographed a chrysanthemum from a bouquet at home. Once I started posting the picture here I realized just how perfectly it tones in with Sheila's poster. Love such synchronicity.

Flower Gardens

I had some hugely exciting and wonderful news yesterday but I'm going to keep you in suspense for a bit  longer about it as I want to concentrate today on my visit to the Dalkeith Flower Show. This was an amazing spectacle of colour and shapes that were an utter delight to the eyes and very inspirational.

Dahlia

Dahlia

Rose

Dahlia

Gladioli

And there was also a quilt show organized by our  very active and energetic local Area Rep for the Quilters' Guild Connie Wheeler. This proved to be equally beautiful to look at. There were some gorgeous antique quilts from the collection of the Guild with the Granny's Flower Garden pattern.

And there were also some amazing modern quilts of which the one by Connie herself and seen below was my absolute favourite.

All in all a most delightful afternoon filled with colour, fun, laughter and quilt chats. As well as a lot of joyful anticipation to do with the news I'm not telling you about it, even though quite a few people now know. 

Visit to Escher exhibition.

 

 

My Dutch mother had never seen so many Escher (who was Dutch himself) drawings in one place, but the Gallery of Modern Art in Edinburgh came up trumps!

 

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Of Muses, Princesses and Men in Kilts

Now, didn't I come up with an intriguing title there! And it's true. I was going around like a whirling dervish today trying to fit as much in as possible. That's the problem with hibernating. Once you awake from that state you realize that you have almost missed quite a few exciting happenings and have to fit it all into  this week.  Today I met up with goddesses, as well as princesses, a trapped boy, and a handsome chap in a kilt.

First up was Gillian Cooper's exhibition Unsung Muses in The Scottish Storytelling Centre in the Royal Mile, Edinburgh, located in John Knox House. I wasn't going to miss that show and it's still on till the 21st February. It's located next to the very nice coffee shop area. I enjoyed seeing how Gillian is developing her goddess theme.

On the way out I tried very hard (oh yes, I did!) not to look at the extremely tempting bookshop located in the Storytelling Centre, but somehow out of the corner of my eye I spotted an image of Su Blackwell's amazing paper sculptures. She is one of my most favourite artists making paper cut imagery from vintage books. Once I had seen it and saw the book was filled with her art it became a must-have. It's a fairytale book called: The Fairytale Princess; Seven Classic Stories from the Enchanted Forest. By Su Blackwell & Wendy Jones. To make it even more special it contains some of my most beloved fairytales such as Rapunzel, The Princess and the Pea and Sleeping Beauty. Needless to say it came home with me.

After all that excitement I stopped several times in the Royal Mile to take pictures. It pays to look up there as well as through the openings of those old Closes (narrow alleyways in between buildings). I saw the amazing carving at the top of the entrance to Paisley Close and you can see it at the top of this blog. It has an interesting story attached to it which goes as follows: on the 24th November 1861 35 people were killed when the rotten timber supports of the building collapsed and workers trying to free the trapped inhabitants heard the cries of a young boy (Joseph McIver) saying: "Heave awa men, I'm no deid yet."  When the new building on the site was finished both boy and words were commemorated with this sculpture. 

A bit further in the Royal Mile, I discovered the kilted figure standing on a beer barrel to advertise the Celtic Craft Centre Kiltmaker.

And with a bit of luck there will still be time for some stitching today. Very rewarding. 

12 x 12

You may remember that back at the end of August during the Peebles Arts Festival I met a French photographer called Angela Mejias who had an exhibition of her photographs there. She also popped in to have a look at my 52 Journals exhibition and invited me to take part in an exhibition called 12 x 12. This signifies that all entries including frames, mounts etc. have to be 12 x 12 cm (approx. 5" square). Here are my 2 pieces that will be going in the mail to France very soon. They are both dominated by circles as that is the shape I'm most known for. You will also see that they are closely related to The Documented Life Project page I did for this week. These are just smaller versions. You can read up about the technique there.

Amazingly enough (synchronicity at it's best) I was watching a video this week that used the same straight stitch with beads as you can see in the detail above. I picked it up during my City and Guilds Embroidery course some 20 years ago and love the sense of movement it gives as the beads can move along the thread. Clearly I'm not the only one that likes the idea. 

You will have seen a detail of this piece earlier this week when I was stitching this one. Here I've used reverse appliqué while the piece seen at the top uses straight forward applique.

The exhibition will take place between the 12th December and the 11th January 2015 at Udal Aretoa, Pasaia, (note this website is in Basque) San Pedro, Spain and then between the 24th February and the 14th March 2015 at the Espace Cultural, Mendi Zolan, Hendaye, France. Hendaye is the town twinned with Peebles. This is already the 19th time the exhibition has been taking place, although it's a first for me. I wish I was closer so I could pay a visit but should you be in the area it's worth having a look. As far as I know most if not all pieces will be for sale. Mine are, anyway.

Blipmeet at the Exhibition

I had some more blippers visiting the 52 Journals exhibition today and you can see Mr. and Mrs. Harebrain above. Needless to say that's their blip user name and it's Mrs. Harebrain that I first met on the Blipfoto site. My fellow blippers have been such a wonderful support to me during the show, which now has only one more week to run. It's one of the miracles of the blip community that we all feel like we are members of one large blipping family and I love meeting more and more blipping photographers in person. You can see the photo Harebrain took of me here.

The exhibition has also given me the opportunity to meet in person with friends I previously only knew online and of course the very best thing was that Lenna who I have known for about 10 years was over last week. She bought one of the pieces in the show called Shelter and you can see it hanging in her house here.

For those of you not in the know Blipfoto is an Edinburgh based site for photographers where the only rule is that you can upload one photo against the day it was taken. I have been a member for almost 4 years now and haven't missed a day yet but you don't have to blip every day.

It seems amazing that the exhibition will be over in one week's time. On the one hand the time has flown by and on the other it feels like I have been sitting in the gallery surrounded by my art since forever. I will be dedicating next week more or less full time to being there in person, but if you want to make sure I'm there send me an e-mail or alternatively phone the museum on the day of your visit on 01721-724820/

Tomorrow I will be at the Scottish Quilt Championships in Ingliston and I will reveal the good news I received regarding my two quilts in this show then!

Autumn Equinox

It's the Autumn Equinox today. Amazing than that the rose Zephirine Drouhin is on her second flowering this year which is something that doesn't often happen here in the Scottish Borders.

The sunflowers however are very much on their last legs although looking very lovely even so.

I spend the morning at the 52 Journals exhibition here in Peebles and that too is now past the half way stage. Only two more weeks to go before it finishes. The last day will be Saturday 4th October. It was busy this morning which is always great for the atmosphere in the gallery. I took some pictures of one of the walls and also managed to take an unexpected selfie while taking a photograph of the display case featuring some of the inspirational photographs that served as starting points for some of the journal quilts.

I will be at the show all day tomorrow after taking 2 of my larger quilts to Ingliston, near Edinburgh Airport, where they will be on display during the Scottish Quilt Championships this coming weekend from Friday to Sunday. That show will be open from 10 - 4.30 every day apart from Sunday when it closes at 4. At that time I will collect my quilts again. I'm getting to know the road to and from the airport rather well! Hopefully the traffic will be kind to me so that I'm able to get to Peebles tomorrow at around the time the gallery opens at 10.30. We shall have to see.

On the phone front there hasn't been much change. Yet another engineer is expected on Thursday and in the meantime both the phone and the wifi through it come and go, sometimes when we have incoming or outgoing calls and sometimes without any identifiable reason. Fingers crossed that pretty soon someone will get to the bottom of what is wrong. It's never great for such upheavals to happen but it's particular bad timing when you're trying to publicize an exhibition on various websites. Thanks goodness for the satellite connection!