Frances Pickering - A Special Place

Last week my daughter and I attended a four day workshop run by Frances Pickering at Art Van Go. We first saw her beautiful books at Alexandra Palace in 2009. Examples of her work can be seen on her website which is well worth a visit. If you haven't met her or seen her work she will be at the Knitting and Stitching Show again this year.

The title of the workshop was 'A Special Place' and I decided to use my allotment as my inspiration.

Here you can see Frances Pickering (with the red hair) and some of the class

We were going to make little books out of fabric, painted and stitched. The first thing to do was to use thinned gesso (which could be coloured) and rub it into the fabric with a spoon. We then had to thoroughly dry it, this was time consuming and rather boring but essential. Page size strips were then torn which makes a lovely noise.

The first thing to make was the cover. You can see two stages of the cover and the lining.

We then inserted the pages and started decorating them.

It is very easy to draw and paint on the stiffened fabric. The pages now need stitching and finishing off. I am planning on taking the book with me on my travels. I may even make some more.

Here are some of Frances Pickering's books. They are all quite small and fit easily into your hand.

Here are some pages from some of her sketchbooks. You can see how essential it is to try out your ideas before you commit them to your final book.

Here are the books made by everyone in the class.

I asked everyone if I could take a photograph of each of the books. I let them choose which page to photograph.

Festival of Quilts

Last Friday, on our way to Sheffield, my daughter and I called in to the Festival of Quilts at the NEC. The variety and number of gallery exhibitions was truly inspiring. We kept thinking we'd seen everything, walk round a corner and find another amazing display.

Here are two that are related to the previous post on Coast.

Left: 'Shifting Horizons' by Caroline Higgs  Right: 'New Horizons' by Ann Louise Williams

 Left and top right (detail): 'Travellers Blanket with Circles' by Dijanne Cevaal. This was an old dyed blanket with scraps of fabric from around the world appliqued and stitched over (like Kantha) with a variety of hand stitched borders.
Centre right: this quilt won third prize in the art quilt category. The colours and stitching were amazing and we kept going back to have a look.
Bottom right: 'Honeychild' by Meredith R Grimsley. This was part of a gallery exhibition: SAQA Metaphors on Ageing.

Left: an example of quilting displayed in a 3D format
Top right: 'On the Edge' by Hilary Beattie. Go to her blog to see how it was constructed.
Centre and bottom right: two from a collection by Anatoly Belik.

Sandra Meech is one of my favourite artists. She combines digital photographs within her dyed and quilted work.

More of my favourite artists - Linda and Laura Kemshall. You can start from Linda's website, then go to each of their blogs and DesignMattersTV, all of which are worth visiting.

Below are two pieces of work by an amazing artist called Annabel Rainbow. Not only was the work beautifully made but each piece was thought provoking. I also like the way she included photographs of the construction.

'Switching Off'

'Hello dear, what did you do today?'

Coast

The second year students were set this topic as their summer project. Here are some images from my recent visit to Hayle in Cornwall. The presentation of the images has been inspired by the way that Carolyn Saxby  presents a lot of her work.

Hayle is about 5 miles from St Ives and has the most amazing beach.

People enjoying the sea, although it was still too cold for me.

A selection of plantlife.

The cheeky chap on the left would knock on our door everyday to be fed.

Some pages from my sketchbook

Yarn Bombing et al

Okay this is a little late but in July this year for the end of year activity we created this installation.
The boat is covered in knitting and sits on a large patchwork sea that contains sea creatures made from giant pompoms. The tie dyed bunting was from an earlier group project.

Sikh Wedding

The other weekend we went to Birmingham to attend a Sikh wedding. It was a gorgeous event, everyone was very friendly and we had a wonderful time. I thought I would share a few of the beautiful fabrics with you.

Most beautiful of all were, of course, the bride and groom