East Exhibition

By June Carroll

By Carol Dixon

Went to Braintree today ,with Margaret to go to the O2 and E.a.s.t exhibitions. Both very interesting. More pieces appealed in the East exhibition.
A couple of beautiful,what I am going to call,memory dresses by Libby Smith incorporating text embroidered on net and newspaper snippets.
Some really interesting work, as usual, by Jeanette Bright on foundlings and Mercy. One piece by Julie Topsfield that I really liked.
Some terrific textured pieces by Carol Dixon and some clever work on maps and journies by June Carroll.Annoyed with myself that I didn't take notes or enough pictures. Did give Margaret and myself time for a good chat and some ideas have been sparked off I think.
Nice lunch in the cafe attached to the museum. Weather was great ! All in all a good day.

Etsy September Challenge

Our challenge for September was to create something on the theme of 'Birds'
I had seen an article in Quilting Arts magazine on pet and animal portraits so I thought I would give it a go.I chose to do a Chaffinch as they have a fair bit of colour on them and we do get a lot of them in our garden.I adapted the method a little but started with creating a background of hand dyed fabrics by strip piecing in green including a few bits of blue to represent the sky.I then enlarged a picture of a male chaffinch and turned it into black and white using this final image to make a tracing.I used the tracing to machine the shape of the chaffinch from the back of the fabric tearing the paper away when completed. Then from the front and using the original image as reference I added fabric pieces and some machine embroidery to recreate the bird. I also used my embellishing machine to create his legs and to 'knock back'some of the background and the fabric on the bird. To finish off I added a few buttons and some hand stiching and then made a quilt sandwich using a light wadding and some calico.



To my great surprise I won the challenge this month.Thank you if you voted for me.