Textile Tuesday: 1500

Progress on the #brownpaperbagchallenge

(this is how they looked last week)

And another one in progress

I just noticed that I have 1500 followers! How exciting, what a milestone.

Thank you to each and every one of you for being here!

Someone once wrote in the comments that Wild Daffodil is like a Crafts Magazine, and I loved that. One of the greatest joys of blogging is to share inspiration and ideas and give and receive support for all forms of creativity.

But the greatest joy is undoubtedly the sense of community that builds and the meeting of like minds – I really do thank you for every single visit to the blog, every like and especially every second spent taking the time to comment.

I really do value the wonderful friendships made along the way, that enrich my life and my creativity.

Huge hugs are beaming their way across the miles to you.

~

To mark this milestone, I would be interested to know

1. What you enjoy most about Wild Daffodil?

2.  What you would like to hear more about?

As a little Give Away, I will send one of the above pieces of textile art, when finished, to one of you picked at random.

Thank you for being here!

❤

 

Advertisement

Textile Tuesday: A Challenge

The Brown Paper Bag Challenge.

Thanks to Tracey of Yarn and Pencil, I have joined in the #brownpaperbagchallenge that is running on Instagram at the moment and in the Facebook Group ‘Stitch Meditations’.  It is the fabulous idea of Anne Marie Desaulniers.

Tracey alerted me to this by tagging me on IG, and I am very glad she did.

Another form of Scrap Happiness, another form of fabric collage

The idea is to put fabric scraps into a brown paper bag, without thinking about it  – just any old bit of fabric lying around small enough to fit in the bag. There is a video on Vimeo by Liz Kettle demonstrating the approach.

Then just pick out pieces without looking and make a small collage

Then stitch.

I cut up part of an old sheet into 4 inch squares and the first thing that happened was that I got caught up in the collaging, so instead of just doing one, I went on to do 4 before I felt like stitching.

And now I just pick up any one of the 4 and do a bit of stitching at odd times in the day. It is really very relaxing. I often do it while the kettle boils. The artist Fran White has done a whole series of sketches and paintings based on that very premise. I met Fran at the Seawhite Studio last year. I have been fascinated by the development of her journey with her #whilethekettleboils series.

This square is turning into a mixed media piece

with a piece of ‘colour catcher’ paper in the middle and I am thinking of adding some of the orange plastic mesh onion bag. I might also add some beads and/or buttons, we’ll see – the piece will tell me as I go along.

~

Have you seen any interesting textiles, are you on a fabric fun adventure or will you have a go at the Brown Paper Bag Challenge? – put a link in the comments if you would like to share any textiles this Tuesday – links to archive posts welcome.

Sunshine

You are my sunshine

Matching the temperatures outside today.

One-a-Week Photo Challenge: Cross

the stars in my world

creativity blooming

with needle and thread

~

Three generations of cross stitch.

The blue and yellow Binca pieces on the top were made by my children (now 35 and 41) at school. The white Binca is being decorated by Little Miss M (4) and Master R (7), he has made the first arm of the cross stitches, but got frustrated when he came to the corner, his mathematical Virgoan brain could not get it to be precise enough, so we had to take a break. I hope we can return to it next weekend. Shall I undo the corner bit? …… Hmmmm these moral connumdrums we Grannies face.

You can see my cross stitches on the fabric collage underneath, the start of another textile experiment.

Linking with Ronovan’s weekly Haiku Challenge.

This week’s prompts: STAR and BLOOM

~

Cathy and I have put together a list of subjects for the whole year – jump in as and when you feel like it with current or archive photos, and leave a link in the comments to be included in the monthly Round Up.

Textile Wall Hanging

“Nothing Between Me and the Sea”

Just a few days into my stay in the treehouse, the old worn sofa was to be replaced.

The sofa had been draped in a throw to cover its age, so when the throw was removed I saw the fabric – Yikes! I could not let that wonderful vintage fabric be thrown in the skip! 

I asked if I could have the fabric – and as an aside said – “but this sofa is so comfortable is it really going to be thrown away!”

A bit cheeky of me – sometimes the recycler/environmentalist/hoarder in me just will not be silenced!

Elizabeth said I could have the fabric and I was as happy as a pig in straw for the next few days, tearing, cutting, washing, drying and sorting the sofa cover.

The design was intriguing – a strange mix of sea and land flora and fauna: butterflies, birds, coral, shells and all sorts of strange plants. I started to play ….

….. making small fabric collages, stitching each piece on a background with a simple running stitch. At home I would have used my machine, but there was something very soothing about sitting curled up on the new sofa looking out at the sunrise or sunset and slowly stitching.

The weather was beautiful and most days were sunny.  I was often on the beaches between sunrise and sunset, collecting shells and beach cleaning. The photo below was taken on Christmas Day

After bracing walks on the beaches or coast paths, what better than to go back to the cosiness of the treehouse for some gentle stitching.

The idea of a wall hanging was simmering away and I wanted to incorporate one of my own quotes

“whatever the question, creativity is the answer”

After the sofa-moving, Elizabeth and I had a lovely chat and I heard the story of how she and her husband had found this place to live, over 25 years ago. The story had an air of magic about it.  It became clear to me that this hanging was for Elizabeth and needed to be finished for Christmas Day.

Some twigs cut from the ash tree were perfect to hang the piece from,

with tassels of torn strips of fabric and shells from the beach sewn to the bottom edge.

Whilst Elizabeth was looking for a house all those years ago, she had a dream about a house with nothing between her and the sea and ……… well the rest is her story to tell, but there is nothing but fields between the treehouse and the sea and the phrase stuck in my mind, and it needed to be on that hanging.

Rather than start a new hanging I covered my words with another piece of fabric, so that Elizabeth could have both

On Christmas Day circumstances conspired to mean that Elizabeth and I came together for a cuppa in front of her fire, I gave her the hanging, we had such a lovely long and gentle chat sharing life stories, and a friendship was born. The stay in the treehouse took on an even more rich and magical quality.

And hurray! my comment about the sofa meant that Elizabeth realised that all it needed was a new cover and that it really was comfortable – now it sits happily in her house for all to enjoy.