Book Wraps from Scraps

'Field Notebook'

 

The muse is in hiding at the moment - after  working on 4 pieces concurrently earlier in the year, now I've completed them , I'm still deciding what to do next. Not that I'm short of ideas - thinking about  my replenished  indigo stash  I've bought Anne Woringers book   but meanwhile like Linda, if in doubt , make a book wrap! After the success of the sale of 'Little Gems'  at the Festival of Quilts a few years ago, CQ is  heading up next years Tombola, this time of bookwraps. As this is something I've been thinking of for a while  for my own sketchbooks, it seems a good  time to try out some ideas. The prototype above needs some tweaking, particularly the tie closure and it's a bit of a tight fit for the Seawhite 'starter' sketchbooks I'm  fond of using but it's a good use  of  an acrylic painted piece that didn't really work 

 

 I save all the offcuts when I trim my quilts  but it's a while since I've used any ( for this  Journal Quilt from 2008 below) so I've accumulated several baskets worth!  I've been having productive  fun trimming them down and sewing them together with zigzag.

 This is my favourite piece so far - it will make a good matching sketchbook cover to go with my sketching bag and camera case ( also made by recycling a failed project - the acrylic paint gives extra water resistant coating.

Festival of Quilts 2009

A week has now gone by since Festival of Quilts - time to assess what stuck in my mind. First of all - Little Gems . What a triumph, earning just short of £10K for the Guild. You could hardly get to see the miniatures for the queues. I contributed 4 quilts - spare journal quilts from when I got carried away and did 2 or 3 per month. I was thrilled to receive a card from the lady who won the one above ( assembled from leftovers for 'silver threads among the gold' -for Guild 25th anniversary). She saw Klimt's influence in it and now she's said it, I can see it too!

I had a new camera and I haven't yet got used to its autofocus so pictures of quilts aren't that great ( plus always a bit concerned about copyright). I did ask permission from Liesbeth Williams who had a display of her coursework and sketchbooks in the 'Further Education' section. I love her sense of place, concentrating on the Anglesey landscape around her and I enjoyed our discussions.
Looking through my photos ,my favourites among the competition quilts were not the blockbuster winners or even those by 'names' but those I'd wished I'd made myself: 'Windows' by Janine Ayres, 'Roadwork 1 ' by Sue Dawson, 'The sentinels' by Jane Allen,'Container Port' by Mike Wallace.

The work I admired most in the galleries were those of Chunghie Lee (more about that in another post); Janice Gunner(wonderful indigo); Christina Ellcock and Sarah Wesby ( I would have been tempted to buy one piece if it hadn't already sold - bought the catalogue instead). Minding the SAQA stand last thing on Saturday was a real treat, surrounded by some great works, my eye continually drawn to the simplicity of 'Squam Lake-Early Autumn' by Denise Linet.

I set myself a shopping budget and nearly stuck to it: art materials from Art Van Go , an irresistible sea green silk from Susan Briscoe, equally irresistible hand dyed fabrics from The African Fabric Shop and silk organzas and threads from Mulberry Silks. Not quite sure what I'm going to do with the 'silk spaghetti' from Thredfairy but it came in such lovely colours.....

Inspiration can come from such unlikely sources. My room in the Hilton overlooked a flat roof colonised by moss - it could be a landscape or river delta from 'Earth from the air' .

It seems appropriate as I will be focusing more on bryophytes as part of my job, with a couple of weekends in September devoted to scientific meeting and field courses to refresh my identification skills.

And the contrails in the sky seen from the motorway on the way home were fantastic.