Technology .... Good or Evil?

Sorry for being away so long, I've been tied up with technology and some good old-fashioned procrastination in the form of thread winding. I have so much City and Guild work to do, it's organised, I know what I need to do but here I am again. Glued to my iPad! With a laptop on my left and an iPhone on my right!

So, thread winding? Well, Tori said it was addictive and she wasn't lying! I have to wind at least 1 a day and last week I was up till 1.30 winding! But oh my god do those lovely little chunks of colour and texture look good. You see the variations in the thread like never before. Yum yum.

Photo editing and publishing is my other current passion and here are a couple of examples.

Tomorrow I'm off to help Anne run the Zigzag stall at the 21st anniversary celebrations for the South Cheshire Embroiderers Guild, it looks to be a great day.

That's just a mini update for now. I promise to blog again soon.

Back in Action aka I love my sewing machine

God it was good to be back using my sewing machine today, I've been making something special but it's a secret present so I can't tell. I was finding it hard getting back into my City and Guilds homework so it was nice to do something that was totally unrelated.

I've also been procrastinating by playing with my photos using editing apps, it's so instant. You click on a few buttons and see your pictures come to life.

Sunny woodland scenes are one of my favourites and I took this one at Centre Parcs in Cumbria. And I've got loads ... will I ever get any work done!!

This weird scene is a low down, close up of a paper collage I made using little screwed up pieces of rough paper. Then I manipulated the image until it started to look alien and super strange.

I love the way all the hairy bits of paper became highlighted and spiky, makes it look like a funny bug.

It's a while since I took this photo at Trentham Gardens and I still love it, it's going to form the basis of one of my machine embroidery samples.

The original colours were soft pinks and greens, they're a lot shinier now!

You can see the little pollen stems and the petals, nature is so wonderful.

Finally just a bit of fun with Photo Splash. Widemouth Bay in Cornwall is covered in these fantastic veined pebbles. I had to stop myself from filling my pockets, then my bag, then a sack! In the end I had to be satisfied with taking lots of pictures.

Back from a glorious time

I had ever intension of keeping my blog going whilst I was away but Budapest totally overwhelmed me with it's beauty and I just fell in love. I spent the first week wondering around in a daze visiting museums, sitting at street cafes and enjoying the gloriously warm weather.

This was the view from our hotel room high up on the 9th floor, there was a lovely wide window ledge that just asked for you to just sit and stare. We left the curtains wide open at night and woke up to the beautiful sight of the early morning sun shining on the Buda Castle.

Mid week I discovered the Grand Market with it's abundant displays of vegetables and lots of meat and bright red sausages. As you take in the sight it's easy to forget the turmoil that has beset this city during it's life

There was a hundred opportunities to take lots of source photos of huge stacks of vegetables, hanging displays and sickly piles of meat. I've had great fun on my return playing with these pictures, I restrained myself from taking a full hundreds worth but I've got plenty! I am sharing my pics on Instagram as Mollymeg69, this a great iPhone app that's used by amateur photographers to quickly share their creations.

I hope you've enjoyed this little taste of Budapest now I need to get back to my City and Guilds. I have all the materials and ideas I just now need to get down to actual doing!

Take a look at my stash for my 'Give me Shelter' mud building hand embroidery series.

Escape to the Beach

Well Nancy is packed, plenty of beer and burgers so not long now and we'll be on the road. If anything exciting happens I'll blog some photos. We're only away for one night so will be back soon.

Sadly we've had to leave our little westie with a friend who's going to take her on holiday to the Isle of Mull with him and his curly wurly westie Molly. This is Jem In Perrenporth in July, she hates the water so this is as close to surfing as she's going to get.

Badge of Honor!

Well I finally did it! I've sewn through my finger with the sewing machine. Ouch. Luckily it only stabbed the nail, it's quite sore but doesn't look too bad. Serves me right for taking the foot off the machine so I could get into an awkward spot then shoving my finger in there to hold down the fabric. I'm trying to make some extremely padded quilting by sewing little pads and tubes of muslin stuffed with wool fibre onto pelmet vilene. It looks like a medical experiment at the moment!

This is Tori patiently cutting out letters from freezer paper to use as stencils for the sign going up in the window of Zigzags to advertise their birthday on 27 August from 10 till 5. We're working on some imaginative ways to make the day super special.

I've nearly finished the quilting samples and can finally look at the chenille sample without getting an overwhelming urge to just bin the blasted thing. It's just so flat, so flat and so dull. So I added a few lines of stitch to hold down the layers and then took a fork to it and ruffled the life out of it, good stress relief!!! Still not really happy but I need to leave it for a while so I don't over stitch it.

I have a big thank you to send to Tori who spotted these suitcases outside the excellent charity shop next door. Cost me £8 in total, a total bargain. They will probably feature in my presentation before becoming part of Mani the Campervans restoration.

Dipping and Diving

Another day at the wonderful place called Zigzags. My perfect local fabric and textile art shop, this is were I am studying a City and Guilds certificate in Creative Techniques. I'm at that stage now where all the plates are spinning, I can see the end date but all of my stuff is in a state of half (if I'm lucky) completion.
We are doing the 2 mandatory Design modules: Research for Design (7113 - 001) and Sampling (7113 - 002) and 2 selected modules on embroidery: Collection of Hand Embroidered Textiles (7113 - 200) and Collection of Machine Embroidered Textiles (7113 - 208).
The early days were very painful, learning to play again. Getting messy and making slightly shy pictures made with ripped masking tape and charcoal, then oh my god we were told to make a drawing of some flowers! Panic all round but now it's starting to feel more comfortable. I have my design work in some sort of presentable order and the machine embroidery is ticking along nicely. By the time we started the machine work I'd got an idea of how the syllabus worked and was able to 'build' a sketchbook with labels to organise and monitor my progress.
I've since gone back to my unfinished hand embroidery work and replicated the sketchbook idea for this module too.
Back to today. Its been niggling me that I have started lots of hand embroidery samples but none of them are really completed or in anyway ready to present, so today I've been edging my quilting samples. I have a number of samples that have machine stitching on and will need some hand stitches so they can be included.
I have completed 10 quilting samples from designs I developed based on the floor plans of

the Rolex Learning Centre in Lausanne in Switzerland. I bought an Architectural Review magazine and it included an article about this remarkable structure with huge circular segments that are connected by sweeping walkways and tunnels. These walkways literally 'sweep' up and down, in some places at a 30 degree angle!

In one piece I used photographs of the centre and layered them between Japanese paper and straight stitched some shapes lifted from the floor plans.

Whilst I was edging the pieces which I am going to work into 1 or 2 wallhangings that can be folded into a 'pack' in a concertina way, I was soaking a base I have made using dissolvable fabric. We have to complete a sample on canvas and after getting inspired at a Jan Beany workshop I decided to make my own canvas with wool. I used some hand dyed Rachel Middleton wool which I laid down in a grid shape. Using YLI thread I sewed a cross stitch on each place where the wool crossed and then added some machine zigzag stitch on every third row to hopefully keep the fabric together! The plan is to add as many different kinds of square canvas stitches in a nice light wool.

The sticky stabiliser is almost gone and a couple of good swills tomorrow should have it clear. I probably should have put the canvas stitches on when it was still wrapped in the dissolvable fabric but I so wanted to see the fabric as a canvas.

Just to top off the day I've had my nails done in preparation for my trip to Budapest, not sure what my lovely and long suffering hubby will make of them!,,

Scary Setting Up!

Cripes! Its been a long road getting set up so I can write my blog on my iPad but using photos from my iPhone. Lots of app searches, log ins and set ups I think I've finally got it! Flicker activated with a speedy uploader app, blog set up with blog writer app that allows me to drag photos straight in from flickr (I can't get the URL link to work for love nor money!) For sheer laziness, Dragon app set up so I can just 'talk' my blog out loud and copy and paste the words in. I even seems to understand what I'm saying, a miracle in it's self!
I hope this leads to more interesting blogs in the future......and someone might even get to read it if I'm brave enough to advertise it!!!!

Look! Look! I got a photo on too!

Inspiration and intimidation!

What a wonderful day at the Festival of Quilts at the NEC, the work on display was a feast of colour, talent and emotion. So many different styles and examples of just about everything from beautiful traditional patchwork to amazing youthful creations of simple paper and plastic.
As always I got over excited at the Husqvarna stand and bought 3, yes that's 3 new feet for my super Topaz. I meet Kim Thittichai, a wonderful sparky and very clever lady. Check out her website. Once the City and Guilds is done I am off to do one of her exciting workshops.