Beside the Sea!

I have just come back from a wonderful week in Cornwall. The sun shone for virtually the whole week, my face is sun burnt & wind burnt and my legs are sore from all the walking we did! It was so lovely to sit by the sea and listen to the sounds of the waves.

This morning, I just had to have a play in my sketch book to remind my of my week. So using things I had scavenged from the beach I created my own piece of the seaside.

The page was first coated in a layer of decorators caulk then the shells, seaweed, pebbles & glass were added. Before it had the chance to start drying sand was sprinkled over the top. Once dried it was washed with blue and green inks

My very own little bit of Cornwall!

Garden Treasure Continued

I have been sketching the lovely pieces of bark I found in the garden. I love cutting up photos and filling them in to see what happens.


I have also been playing with sellotape to remove the photo from it's backing. Place sellotape over the photo and press down well. Soak in warm water for a few minutes then gently rub the reverse side to remove the paper. I've placed mine over a coloured textured piece of card. This has definite potential!

Now I just need to get some wide clear parcel tape to play with this a bit more.

A Perfect Misunderstanding

As part of my course work I have to do some naturally dyed fabric samples using plants and leaves as opposed to chemical dyes. Not having enough resources at home I headed for the library. As I could find nothing suitable on the shelves I approached the counter to enquire if they could get me in a book about natural dyeing.

Well Lisa typed in the search area to look for titles and turning to me with a somber face said....."we don't appear to have any books of that nature.......................have you tried talking to the Dr?"

At this point it dawned on me that she had typed 'natural dying' ( the 'e' makes a big difference!)
Needless to say we both ended up in hysterics once I had explained that I wanted to colour fabric rather than lay down and meet my maker!

So here are the first few pages of my samples book, none of these needed a mordent. I have to order some alum in order to continue with this experiment so more will follow later.

Garden Treasure

I'm very excited as today, by chance, I found this beautiful piece of wood in the garden. It had come out of a bag of bark chippings. It almost looks burnt around the edges and is peeling apart in layers, each one slightly different in appearance. I'm off to find my sketch book now as this is a perfect find for a little project I want to do later in the year!

The piece above is my favourite.

Waste Not Want Not!

A little while ago a friend and I decided to have a go at making a small wall hanging using the Alicia Merrett method of curved piecing. So rather than delve into my stash of 'good' fabric' I decided that this was the ideal project to use up all the scrap pieces of fabric that are too small to be used in anything but a scrap quilt but were perfect for trying a new technique.

This is the almost finished piece that has been quite heavily quilted. I had added a bit of felt applique to one section with the intention of adding more. However, I decided in the end that I didn't really like the appliqued piece and would remove it at some point. Also, because I had used up scraps of fabric the colours were very hit and miss and it didn't all tie in together.

Over dying the whole piece seemed the best way to bring all the different fabrics together. I chose a red dye, popped the whole lot in the washing machine and crossed my fingers! Actually,I was quite excited to see how it would come out.


Over dying dulled the brightest colours and tied it all together a bit more coherently. However, it did nothing for the felt applique and turned the green stem into a dull dirty brown making it look worse than ever before. My solution to this was to cut the whole thing up!

I cut it into 4 pieces following the seam lines already present. I discarded the piece with the applique on it as I really didn't like it. I turned the centre piece round, rearranged the other pieces and re cut the edges to match each other. They were then bound and the binding was pulled round to the back before being stitched down so as it was not visible. I was then left with a large area of blank fabric that needed to be filled with something!


I cut a tree stencil that would overlap two of the pieces and used fabric pastels to fill it in. Once it had been ironed to set the colour I then stitched a broken running stitch round the edges of the tree and stitched in the 'knots' with a little more detail.

I think, for the minute it is finished, but you never know. Maybe I'll come back to it and tweak it some more!

Birds Birds Birds

Had fun making these birds from felt that had been painted with gold acrylic and embellished with stitching. Some of the beads are had made paper beads and the tassel is felt, ribbon, cord with lots of 'found' treasure attached, keys, shells, charms etc.

'Tis the season to be jolly.......

A little wall hanging for the Christmas Season......