Still sick but up and stuff to show you

Been signed off work for yet another week - having no immune system means that this viral chest infection is going to be here for a long while.  I hope to be well enough to go back to work on 11th May.

I am out of bed now and although coughing loads every time I move or speak I am able to sit very still in the workroom :-) - I did also step into the garden - find fresh air does help. So here are photos.

I have done three journal pages - they are a bit similar - same colour and same techniques but I hope to get a bit more adventurous.
Not sure why the photos sideways on when they are saved the right way up !
Left is my old A4 recycled diary sketchbook, right here is my new A5 landscape sketchbook

here is my other A4 sketchbook 

The garden looks lovely and spring/summer like. The Iris are looking good - fallen over so I have staked them.  

Most are very dark but in the corner there is a pale one !

 Then the Clematis Montana has gone absolutely mad on the fence and the one on the wall opposite is a double one.

 

And finally my pot apple tree - I hope that each of these blossoms will become an apple - here's hoping

Making again and again and again

UPDATE - I have been selling these to France, USA and UK over the last few days - Whoop Whoop!!

Have spent this weekend - making recycled fabric notebook and sketchbook covers - the fabrics include sari silk and unique fabrics made by me. Some include A5 sketchbooks, some include A5 lined notebooks, some are A6 and contain a mixture of recycled papers - including brown paper, wallpaper and coloured papers. Now I just need somewhere to sell them!!

Update October 2013 - garden, Cas Holmes (New York) and Klimt Jacket

This is the first year I have not gone to the Knitting and Stitching show - feel lack of inspiration - I know by going it may have ignited my inspiration but I have not been in the right place to encourage it.

Garden update: First celeriac picked and eaten (delicious!)

 Last of the tiny carrots - Yummy!!

25 pounds of tomatoes picked, ripened and these last few turned into Pasta sauce and frozen. Onions drying in the garage,

Cas Holmes course pics - I was really disappointed with the course - not Cas - just the work I did based on her ideas - I was not organised enough and could not 'see' what the outcome should look like.  This is my 'page' but as you can see it is not balanced or exciting - won't do more of these...

However I did have a bit of an ah ha moment when one evening I went of on a tangent using my New York pics - This was a left handed (I am right handed) drawing of NY from under the Brooklyn bridge when I was there a couple of years ago,

 Turned into a paper collage - This is roughly A3 in size and I love it.
It even looked good photocopied - the tonal values are good.

The next one was portrait in layout and was also lovely.  The next was stitched rather than drawn and did not look right so I cut it up and re-arranged it but am not happy with the re-arrangement 

so I have divided it into three and two sections look good on their own,

My next plan is to try to translate these pieces of work into fabric works.

Klimt Jacket update: I have started to join the main pieces together.  Sorry a couple of the photos are a little blurred.

 I have started working on the lace that will be the ruff at neck and cuffs- its made on fine net and has thread only edging made on water soluble - yet to be dissolved.

Close up.

New York Quilt ? What New York Quilt?

Some has just asked me about the New York Quilt well (this blog will be quite heavily photo laden). I had started a quilting course with Ineke Berlyn earlier this year but had to give up after only the first day because I can't drive too far with my bad knee. However the New York quilt idea was brewing before I went and was encouraged a little there.... The exercise we did (filling in the gap) which I showed you before and the dyed fabric - I had not shown were reminding me that I wanted to do something following my visit to NY last year. The fabric dyeing using the colours of the first exercise consisted of 10 squares in grey - just making the dye lot more and more watered down until the colours became paler and then a larger piece trying to get the grey/greens and reflections of the original picture as a background.... close up of the middle greens. I have no idea what Ineke was going to teach us to do with these pieces but I have put them to one side and looked at them regularly. The other evening I took lots of my photos of New York landscapes and traced the outlines of the skylines overlapping 4 completely different skyline pictures and came up with... this one was of the same building but from different photos. The next step was to colour the pictures in using my new Koh-i-nor water colour paints.. this was too dull, this too bright, next grey only but I think I got the tones in the wrong places so then this blue is just right - when viewed using greyscale printing it looked good so this is the chosen design.... At the same time I also coloured the other design.. too dark, using oil pastels - boring, too dull

- final one is great and may one day also become a textile piece. Today's task was to enlarge my first design - so I sent a copy of the drawing to my printer asking the machine to print it using 16 pages (4 x 4) well this has come out rather too large!! Tomorrow I will try again slightly smaller - still not sure how I will translate the fabrics into the design but I will have fun trying. There are several other photos that I keep looking at and have several other ideas too!