Featured

It was slightly overwhelming yesterday to receive not one but two publications in which my work is featured. I knew they would be coming but it was still a lovely surprise to have them arrive on the same day!

The first one is an article I wrote about the 52 Journals exhibition for the magazine Fabrications, Quilting for you, May/June 2015 issue . And to my great delight all 52 Journal Quilts are featured. I had left the option of which ones to choose to illustrate the article to Sally Stevens, the editor of Fabrications, and she managed to squeeze them all in over 6 pages, starting on page 84. If you are interested in buying a copy you can find it on newsagents' shelves here in the UK but you can also buy a copy here where ever you live. As you can see above one journal quilt even made it to the cover (bottom right)

The other publication that landed on my doorstep is the book 1000 Quilt Inspirations; Colorful and Creative Designs for Traditional, Modern and Art Quilts, by Sandra Sider.

It features two of my 52 Journal Quilts as well as 2 other journal quilts made in 2013 inspired by themes on The Sketchbook Challenge site. This is indeed a very colourful publication, simply featuring the most stunning array of small quilts. There is mention of the techniques used in the Image Directory in the back but mainly it's simply eye candy. I'm so pleased to be part of it. You can obtain this from Amazon UK here.

As you can see above one of my JQs even gets an entire page to itself! I had a little party all by myself in the studio yesterday in celebration. It's not often days like that come around!

 

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Amalarian in Tuscany Book

When I first joined the Blipfoto site back in November 2010, one of the first journals I started to follow was that of Amalarian. The first attraction was that this blipper lived in Tuscany and featured many delightful pictures of the countryside and flowers in the area near Lucca. But very soon I realized that she was also a very thoughtful and kind person who was very supportive of me and my photographs, always leaving considerate and insightful comments. Her real name was Molly and we somehow seemed to click even though we never met in person.. My first visit when checking out the site every day was to her journal.

It was therefore such a shock to learn that Molly had died on the 9th May 2011. It seemed beyond belief that someone who was so full of the joy of life was no longer with us. Fortunately her photographs remain on the Blipfoto site as a fitting tribute to her and I have returned to them often over the intervening years.

And that goes specially for the very last picture she ever posted, of Luigi, her dog, as seen above. I don't think I have ever looked at it without crying.

It was therefore wonderful to discover via a fellow blipper that the book,Amalarian in Tuscany, is now available filled to the brim with her stunning pictures and also her beautiful written words, published in her memory by her husband. You can see it at the top of the page. Amalarian was Molly's username on Blipfoto. ,Again I must admit that I have not yet managed to look at it without welling up and I know that I will return to this book time and again.

I have all the necessary information about how to buy this book and if you are interested simply e-mail me using the e-mail address in the sidebar of this blog.

Exciting Stuff

We've had quite a lot of excitement in the last few days. First of all some of my work has made it onto the StencilGirl blog and you can see that here.

Then I had an e-mail form the German quilter Gudrun Heinz who organizes travelling  exhibitions featuring small quilts, on a theme, every few years, the latest one on Boredom. She wanted to let us know that the exhibition is featured in the Spring 2014 issue of Burda Patchwork, a magazine that is published in both French and German. I managed to lay my hands on a French version online but in the meantime Gudrun was good enough to provide us with a picture of the spread. Above right is my little piece featuring my father and our cat Roxy. I wonder what he would have made of the fact that he is featured in a magazine now. The exhibition has already been to lots of places, starting at the Festival of Quilts in Birmingham last year, followed by outings to St. Petersburg, Moscow,  Murmansk and Riga and will be going on to Prague, Solothurn, Karlsruhe and Bremen and no doubt many other places. Gudrun is very good at finding venues to exhibit as well as keeping us informed.

The next excitement concerned the annual 2nd hand book sale held in Peebles where I found a veritable treasure trove of books. A set of 3 wonderful books about Venice, a book with a beautiful red/gold cover about Scallops (which I will take apart to use that cover), images (copyright free as published in 1919) in a book about Saint Francis, a guide book about Venice (in which I discovered postcards and a map after bringing it home, oh yah!), some old maps (all for collage fodder) and a French book with a gorgeous cover that I will use to alter. All for the princely sum of £16. 

The final excitement was felt by John (well, it was about time he had a treat too!) when we discovered a massive tree felling in operation on the Shiplaw road going home. The sight of so many trees was almost too much for him! It will be my blip for the day so I got something out of this too!

Love the patterns of those stacks and I know I'm not the only one!

One Little Word Dream Book

I finished making this One Little Word Book today, following Kiala Givehand's instructions on YouTube here. She made it in a day. I need hardly add that it took me considerably longer! And not just because I had to wait for the right supplies such as large enough paper and the Hypotrochoid Art Set. You don't know what that means?? Me neither! But it turned out to be a reincarnation of the Spirograph. Remember those? Oh dear, that dates us terribly. In the process I also discovered a great fondness for Liquitex Glossy paint, which gives paper an amazing leather-like texture.

Kiala's video is free to view on YouTube and it is part of her monthly book making series of videos where all the books are made in just one day. She did the same thing in 2013 too but then the books were made weekly. but also in one day. All free so if you're interested search them out on her YouTube channel. There are some amazing book structures to be found in the various videos. 

She called this particular one, the first in 2014, One Little Word. Some of you will be familiar with the concept of adopting one little word as your Word of the Year. Kiala choose the word Breathe for her book. I'm not doing the One Little Word project but for my book I arrived without much thinking at the word Dream so used that for my book as you can see below. 

This is the entire book opened out and below are the individual pages whereas at the top is the closed version with closure. No more instructions from me here as this is Kiala's project. But I have to say that playing with that Hypotrochoid Set proved immensely addictive!

Books, tapestries and giraffes

I spend the day in Edinburgh on an Artist's Date, even though I was very far from in the mood. But I was determined to catch the Paint . Print . Page exhibition by the artist book group, a member of which (Susie Wilson) taught us several books to make at the recent Thistle meeting. The exhibition is on in McNaughtan's Bookshop and can still be found there till this coming Saturday (don't forget the bookshop only opens at 11.00). It was wonderful and I also managed to pick up a little booklet (published in the 19th Century) about grave epitaphs for only £3, a real steal.

Then passing the Theatre Royal I went on to the City Art Centre where there was a wonderful exhibition of tapestries. Called That was then: this is now, it also incorporated embroideries. It was inspirational. Specially LOVED the work by Jo McDonald who worked with vintage paper and music to produce her work Also the embroideries by Anna Ray, with such titles as Irrational, consisting of the words I will not be irrational repeated over and over again. A piece with the text: In a way I would be kept, In a way I would be lost had a really serious message hidden in it's beautiful simplicity. After that I paid my first (and also last!) visit ever to the Edinburgh Dungeon, which was a lot less scary than I had been looking for and further irrated me as the whole show is in English (or really Scottish) when there were only 3 English speaking people in my group, everyone else was Spanish or French and they literally didn't have a clue. And at a cost of £16.50 per person it was also daylight robbery! I thought it would be fun but it so wasn't.

Many of the attractions today did have a strict No Photography rule so I had to find other images to show, such as the Theatre Royal and these giraffes!

These giraffes are positioned by the roundabout near John Lewis and leading to Leith Walk. I don't usually go to this side of town so hadn't come across them. They were stunning and very large as you can see. I blipped the face (shown at the top of this post) today as I found it the most stunning picture. The giraffes are accompanied by engraved text on the pavement which reads:

Giraffes! a people

who live between earth and skies

each in his own religious steeple

keeping lighthouse with his eyes.

It didn't say who had produced it but what fantastic text for a giraffe.

Lenna's Little Book

This has been a bit of a day, where I rushed to Loch Lomond this morning to deliver 3 quilts for the upcoming (18th - 21st May) Loch Lomond Quilt Show and I'm out again this evening to a meeting of the Tweeddale Quilters where apparently there will be fabric for sale. Very dangerous! But before it's really late I wanted to show you the Little Book I made for Lenna herself as the hostess of the Little Book swap she's hosting on her Creative Swaps site. The booklets for the swap have been shown here earlier but I wanted to wait with this one till she had received it so that it would be a surprise.

The folding is the same as for the other books but I started with a paper page which was covered with printing. This was a try-out for a new toy I obtained recently i.e. a Xyron Design Runner. And what fun it proved to be plus it also works on fabric. Wonderful. Anyway it came with cartridges featuring all kinds of lovely text and I played to my heart's content. Then I covered the page with fluid acrylic paints using spray bottles. And as promised in the brochure the text didn't run.

At the top you can see the theme of the book for Lenna which was of course friendship and I also added a taste of romance as we are both inveterate romantics. The front and back pages (seen at the top) are also adorned with my picture (when I was very much younger!) I practised with the Design Runner on fabric and then tore that into strips and added it to the pages together with stamped images as well as pictures from collage sheets.

I was particularly happy to discover the XOX on one of the cartridges and have been adorning not just this book but lots of other items with it. I have big, big plans for my new toy in future projects and have now gone one step further and acquired an accessory where you can make your own text rather than depending on what is on the commercially available cartridges. Oh boy, when I'm bad, I really go on to be even worse.

To pull the little book together I added a uniting element to each and every page. One of my most favourite textured stamps consisting of tiny little dots. I bought it in the children's craft section of Hobbycraft and it has proved invaluable, despite only costing a couple of pounds! I used blue and red Staz-on inkpads.

I'm happy to say that Lenna loved it as you can read in her blogpost here.

Musidora Research

As promised I'm returning to The Mystery of Sin Journal Quilt. First of all because both my winning JQs were published in the latest issue (No. 71, April/May 2011) of the Fabrications magazine, together with other submissions for the Fantasy Journal Quilt competition. You may have already noticed this in the sidebar of the blog.

But I said in my previous blogpost that for my information on the vintage engraving that I used on this JQ I had trusted the Ebay seller I obtained it from. However I like to do my own investigations so one day I plonked myself down behind my computer to start what is almost my most favourite thing to do online: a spot of research (after all I'm a trained reference librarian). I googled Musidora and discovered first of all that the name comes from the Greek and means: Gift of the Muses (should have guessed that, I did classical Greek!). It also took me almost immediately to the name of the original painter of this vintage image which was Sir William Hamilton (1751 - 1801), a romanticist par excellence. It was painted around 1795 and the engraving was done by P. W. Tomkins.

So far so good, but what had led William Hamilton to produce his painting, what was his inspiration? And where did the name Musidora come from? It took quite a bit longer to come up with that but finally I discovered that the inspiration for the painting was taken from the poem Summer by James Thomson (1700 - 1748). He broke with the poetic tradition of his day and turned to nature for the subject matter of his poems. Summer is mainly about the power of the Sun over the earth, as well as the power philosophy has over men. In Summer, he mentions two lovers, Damon and Musidora.

Damon finds himself accidentally (isn't that always the case??!!) observing his sweetheart Musidora, when she thinks herself alone in the woods and taking a bath in a stream. Of course this romance results in a happy ending. The language in these poems is slightly (!) over the top for those of us living in the 21st Century! Here is a taster:

This cool retreat his Musidora sought.

Warm in her cheek the sultry season glow'd;

And, rob'd in loose array, she came to bath

Her fervent limbs in the refreshing stream.

I then sought out some more information about James Thomson and that's where a splendid example of synchronicity came my way once again. James Thomson is a Scottish poet although by the time he wrote The Seasons (of which Summer is a part) he had travelled from Scotland to London. The poem was written druing 1726 - 1730 and was revised by him from 1744-1746. It was extremely popular in its day and his style of writing fresh, vivid descriptions of natural scenes in rich blank verse let to the romantic movement later in the 1700's. And guess where in Scotland James Thomson was born? In the Scottish Borders.

So in the end I made a circular research journey only to end up back where I was when I started. At home in the Scottish Borders. Oh how I love these co-incidences. They make life worth living.

As you can see I could not resist the temptation after all that, to see if The Seasons were for sale on Ebay and I bought a lovely dainty version printed in 1797, although it has been re-bound at some stage after that, probably to have matching bindings fit for a 19th Century library.

And once again I had gone off on one (as John describes my research fancies). I only have to walk around the house to find evidence of past adventures, searching for info on Dutch Flower Painting, French vintage nude photography, the glass artist Chihuly and much, much more!! They all have one thing in common. More books for my collection!

Lenna's Little Books

Lenna recently announced a new and exciting swap on her Creative Swaps site. It was for little books and if you're interested there is still plenty of time to sign up here. At first I wasn't sure if I would have either the time or the inclination to make Little Books but I did know that I wanted to have the PDF file about them with lots of information and instruction about how to make them that Lenna provides to each participant as part of the registration fee which, by the way, also includes the return postage, regardless of where you live.

But once I had downloaded it I found myself doing trials using plain copy paper. Well with a little bit of effort I could use painted paper so I made 3 A4 sheets using my Inktense pencils. They are a bit deceptive as the colour doesn't explode till you add water, for which I used a water brush. Then they are beautifully rich and I love using the same brush i.e. not cleaning in between while shifting from one colour to another so that the colours run into each other in a water colour way. Gorgeous.

Then with the help of Lenna's clear and excellent instructions I folded and cut till I had 3 little books at the ready. It's not a requirement of the swap that you decorate the books you make but for me that is the most fun part of making them so I got to work using both postage stamps and rubber stamps. The title for all the books is Ars Longa, Vita Brevis, which I translate from the Latin as Art lasts a long time, but life is short (Latin is a very concise language, just about the only thing I like about it, having been made to study it for 5 years).

The pages I'm showing you here come from each of the little books and above is the first and last page of one. On the last page I have used one of my Blipcards! As they have a thick quality I sewed them on. Something I also did with the pages of my book. You could, of course, use glue but I prefer sewing!

Here you can see how I used postage stamps and Cavallini vintage labels with butterflies and plants. They were outlined with pink gel pens.

I also used one of my most favourite texture stamps, bought in the children's department of Hobby Craft. It consists of tiny little dots and is a great way to unite the pages. I used it with both blue and red Staz-On inkpads.

Thank you to Lenna for coming up with another great swap idea and for encouraging me to take part. You were so right, I did enjoy myself no end!!

I also made a separate little book, specially as a hostess gift for Lenna herself but I'm keeping that one a surprise and won't show it here till it's in her hands! Sorry, Lenna!!!

If you take care of each moment, you will take care of all time.

In case you're wondering the blog title is a quotation from the Buddha and is appropriate to today as I visited the Samye Ling Tibetan Centre . This is hidden in the depths of the Dumfries & Galloway countryside and the drive to it (about 50 miles) was on another (B709) of those single track winding roads that I love so much, going up and down dale, both figuratively and literally speaking.

Driving along these hidden gems in the Scottish countryside is one of my greatest delights, even though it requires your full attention as far as the driving is concerned. Fortunately there are few cars and my main obstacles were in the shape of cattlegrids, sheep, phaesants and even a gaggle of ducks. The only other people on these lanes are also there to admire the view so everyone is going very slowly which is just as well!
I went to the Tibetan Centre to visit an artist studio, open for the Spring Fling ("Scotlands's premier art and craft open studios event", I'm quoting from the brochure here!). In this one studio 2 artists exhibited their work. One a painter (Bella Green) and the other a textile artist specializing in felt (Helen Hastings). I completely fell in love with one of Bella's paintings (a mainly red painting feauring various elements of Venice) but as it was £200 I just about managed to resist this temptation although I did buy one of Helen's felt brooches (a bargain at £5).

I then had Choco Aztec tea with a vegetarian pastie (a strange combination but both very delicious) in the Tibetan Teashop. A visit to the Tibetan shop was next on the agenda. Despite the Buddha advocating finding enlightenment within yourself, there were many, many books for sale to help you find it and I bought Buddha's Little Instruction Book from where I took the title of this blog. Various prayer flags also came home with me to hang in our courtyard. Pictures will follow once they're up. I'm strictly not religious but if I had to lean towards any of the world's religions it would be Buddhism. It is a very peaceful belief system, as opposed to most of the other ones! Also no god(s)!
More wildlife got in my way when I tried to leave as a peacock was admiring himself in the blackness (even though it was not very clean!) of my car. I shoed him away several times but he was back by the time I strapped myself in again so in the end I needed the help of a Tibetan monk before heading back!

On the way home I sort of passed a second-hand book shop. Okay, I made a point of passing it!! And peace finally descended for me when I entered the shop and set too. I know Buddha abhorred all material possessions but me, I need my books (and before I get any comments, all that other stuff I'm so happy to own!) Today the finds just kept on coming. A vintage songbook, 3 vintage newspapers (early 19th C), a 19th C. book about Venice (sorry, I can't leave these behind despite already owning one copy of this one, but the one I obtained today was older), two bound editions of magazines (The Badminton Magazine of Sports & Pastimes, 1895, and The Harmsworth Magazine, no date but my estimate is end of the 19th C).Last but by no means least I swooped down on The Imitation of Christ (very, very Catholic!!), dating from 1882 and with pictures like the ones shown above on each and every page! As I had not spend £200 on that painting I really felt I deserved to spend the £32 to obtain all these beautiful books. The mind might contain all possiblities (another quotation from the Buddha) but the outside world has quite as much to offer in my humble opinion! I scanned a random page to show you and guess what it read at the top of the page: "Of self-denial". Do I need to say more?? Good thing I'm not a Catholic!

Wild at the Edges

I don't usually review books here in the main body of my blog but instead there is a regular feature in the right side bar called Reading Now. But Virginia Spiegel's book is too important for that!

It's such good news that it is so easy nowadays to self-publish your own words. It means that authors can write the books they want to, rather than the books publishers would like to see the light of day. This means that books about art and/or quilting are blighted by "projects" which publishers seem to think are what we buy books for. Well, not in my case and I suspect in the case of many other artists.

Instead I (and I'm sure many others too) want to buy the sort of book that Virginia Spiegel has self-published using Blurb. It's called Wild at the Edges; inspiration from a creative life. It also illustrates that self-publishing does not mean skimping on the illustrations because this book is rich with the most beautiful photographs featuring both Virginia's art and pictures of the place that has so inspired her, the Boundary Waters. It is also beautifully written.

Virginia shows us her life and her trips to the Boundary Waters together with her sister and how these trips provide her with the time to recharge her creative batteries, as well as with endless inspiration. Fellow artists will recognize her description of the creative process which can be both a struggle and a joy. She encourages artists to really look amd see our surroundings, write haiku, to persevere with our art, work hard and be stubborn.

Finally I would highly recommend that you buy this book from Blurb in hardcover. I know I will be looking at it again and again and re-read various chapters when relevant to what I'm doing. And I also want to make sure it's there whenever I want it. The difference in price is small and the benefits of hardcover great!! Go for it!