Featured

It was slightly overwhelming yesterday to receive not one but two publications in which my work is featured. I knew they would be coming but it was still a lovely surprise to have them arrive on the same day!

The first one is an article I wrote about the 52 Journals exhibition for the magazine Fabrications, Quilting for you, May/June 2015 issue . And to my great delight all 52 Journal Quilts are featured. I had left the option of which ones to choose to illustrate the article to Sally Stevens, the editor of Fabrications, and she managed to squeeze them all in over 6 pages, starting on page 84. If you are interested in buying a copy you can find it on newsagents' shelves here in the UK but you can also buy a copy here where ever you live. As you can see above one journal quilt even made it to the cover (bottom right)

The other publication that landed on my doorstep is the book 1000 Quilt Inspirations; Colorful and Creative Designs for Traditional, Modern and Art Quilts, by Sandra Sider.

It features two of my 52 Journal Quilts as well as 2 other journal quilts made in 2013 inspired by themes on The Sketchbook Challenge site. This is indeed a very colourful publication, simply featuring the most stunning array of small quilts. There is mention of the techniques used in the Image Directory in the back but mainly it's simply eye candy. I'm so pleased to be part of it. You can obtain this from Amazon UK here.

As you can see above one of my JQs even gets an entire page to itself! I had a little party all by myself in the studio yesterday in celebration. It's not often days like that come around!

 

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Published in Popular Patchwork

It was a wonderful treat to open the April 2015 issue of the Popular Patchwork magazine and see a review of my 52 Journals exhibition in there, written by Gillian Cooper. You can find it on page 23. Gillian and I have know each other for quite some time now and we had a great discussion about my work and the exhibition when she came over to visit it in Peebles, and before that at the Loch Lomond Quilt Show (sadly now no longer!)  where the work was originally shown in 2013. The picture you see of me in the article was taken there.

She is one of the few people I know, who is as enthousiastic about textile art and everything related to it as I am and it's always a pure pleasure to talk to her about it. She "gets" it! Not an expression I'm that keen on but I can't think of a better way to describe it. It was also very interesting to see which journal quilts she had selected to picture in the article. Even at the exhibition itself I was so fascinated to see which people liked which journal quilts. It varied it amazingly from visitor to visitor. It is a very thoughtful article and although it may seem strange, it gives me more insight into my own art.

So a big thank you is due to Gillian and also to Popular Patchword for featuring it so beautifully! THANKS!

Tributo alla Serenissima Journal Quilt

All Good Things was the December challenge on the Sketchbook Challenge site. We all know how that saying goes: "must come to an end", and I don't want to imply in any way that Venice is about to go under. Lots of money and advanced technology means that such a catastrophe isn't about to happen. What will however finish is the Challenge itself. This will be the very last one and no more themes will be set in 2015 although the blog site will remain available and if you want to start from scratch you can go back to January 2011 and work on all the themes in your own time.

This also means that I will no longer make these monthly 10" square journal quilts after having followed all the prompts religiously for 4 years. And I did feel a sense of relief. Had they continued with themes then so would I. I'm made that way. Once I start a challenge I carry on even when my heart is no longer completely in it. These challenge JQs have produced some of my best work and although some of them were sold during the 52 Journals exhibition, looking at all of them together as I have just done shows the progression of my art over those 4 years as well as the much wider range of techniques I now use compared to a few years ago.

Because it was the last one I took the liberty of forgetting the ending of that All Good Things saying and took just the words as they stood. Nothing more good, or even best than Venice and when I made my mixed media page for the imagined holiday on The Documented Life Project last week I also made the background for this journal quilt which is another of my Venice inspired art. No idea how many Venice related pieces I have made over the years but a lot! And no doubt more will appear in future.

I made the background using calico (muslin in US), my gelli plate and a variety of stencils from StencilGirl. You saw that piece of fabric on an earlier post. Then I used the Carolyn Dube designed large Venice stencil (also from Stencilgirl) and added the outline of those iconic Venetian buildings. I hand stitched along the outline of them. and then added the inches which were leftovers from a previous project and embellished them.

I felt that necessitated something in the left corner area to balance those inchies and thought about a cloud floating by. A fragment of text came to mind and you can see above that I handstitched it on and covered it with Diamond Glaze to make it a bit more sturdy. Little blue star embellishments were added to the sky.

Larger blue embellishments were glued on as seen above. I never fully trust any sort of glue so stitching was also added to hold them in place. For some reason I couldn't make up my mind about the binding and the white one you see is the third one I tried (yes, I stitched the previous ones on and then undid them!). I'm still not fully happy with it but sometimes you have to accept that the perfect binding can't be found, at least not here in my stash.

I haven't decided yet whether or not to continue with  the other series of  journal quilts I have been making monthly for the Contemporary Quilt Group. It will depend on the size and the guidelines they set which won't be revealed till January so I'm keeping my options open. I will have been making journal quilts since 2004 so for 11 years non-stop. Perhaps it's time to draw a line but they have contributed greatly to the development of my art so maybe just one more year of making just one a month! Will keep you up to date as soon as that decision has been made.

It's very unlike me to make so many decisions for the coming new year. It feels like time to take stock this year and decide what I want to do most with my time considering that there is only so much that can be cramped into any one day. If you have been checking out the side bar you will know I have joined some new classes and projects about which more in future. More and more mixed media work seems to creep in so it seemed a good investment to learn more about the techniques used. I'm probably (in fact, definitely!) biting off more than I can manage to chew but I do love a challenge! Nothing learned is ever a waste, has been a life long motto.

Pointing in the Right Direction

We have almost reached the end of The Documented Life Project 2014 with week 51 in which our task was to add: Arrows. I only added one arrow but it is a big one. For the background I used a piece of gelli plate printed paper made when Lenna was here.

 

I then used a copy I made on watercolour paper of no. 30 of the 52 Journals, called Triangles (you can see it above and read about it on this blog post). It's now in a private collection (i.e. my mother is the new owner!). The piece I cut out was stitched onto the background, made into an arrow using paints, and outlined with a variety of markers.

I stamped and outlined the text: Pointing in the right direction.

The right direction being 2015 which is approaching with lightning speed. I will once again do The Documented Life Project 2015 but have not yet decided exactly in what shape or what planner if any I will use. The project organizers are using a Dylusions Journal which I have on standby but the disadvantage of this is that it would be hard to stitch on pages within a journal nor is gelli plate printing easy. I usually prefer to use separate pages and then tip them into a planner. Watch this space to see what I decide to do, but I had better start making that decision soon.

 

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Sitting in the snow? And VAT problems.

We have had 10 power cuts since Tuesday night, high winds, blizzards and falling overnight: about 4 inches of snow. Our electricity has just come back on so I'm sneaking this through while it lasts. So much for updating the infra structure and replacing power poles over the past few years! I'll have a few choice words to say to Scottish Power. It all looks very scenic but needless to say it's also very cold. Thank goodness we have a generator so we can switch our heating system (which runs on LPG) on.

We were reconnected at 11.55am and the first thing I felt like doing is ordering something from Amazon, just because I now can. Mad or what!

By the way you might have noticed that the sidebar was in a bit of a state of confusion. I have now sorted that out, I hope, and I have also removed all links to order the digital catalogues of my previous two exhibitions, the one in 2011 and the 52 Journals one this year.In the meantime the printed versions of the catalogues remain available from Blurb. Order by clicking on the image of the catalogues in the sidebar.

This is because digital downloads will be subject to VAT or it's equivalent in the EU country the buyer of such potential downloads resides from the 1st Jan. 2015 rather than in the country the seller is located. In order to implement this I would have to admin this as well as pay the VAT to the country concerned. You might have noticed on my Facebook page that I have signed two petitions, one to our business secretary Vince Cable (won't be voting for him, although to be fair I hadn't anyway) and one to the EU Commissioner in question.

The idea was to make huge conglomerates like Amazon and Google pay more tax (they currently hide in low VAT EU or outside the EU countries) but in fact what is now happening is that small businesses,( usually only one person) trying to make some extra money selling patterns and the like digitally directly to buyers, are being lumbered with admin they simply can't cope with. They are being forced to register for VAT in every EU country, when their income is below the threshold for VAT in the UK. As a result they will probably move their digital sales to third parties such as, guess who, Amazon, Apple and such. Which in turns means Amazon will no doubt still be better off while many small enterprises will cease trading. I certainly won't be selling any digital products to any EU country other than the UK and I'm not alone. So what has this EU rule achieved? Less trading within the EU area. Which seems rather contrary to what the EU is meant to be about. Why are small traders such as us capable of thinking this through and EU officials as well as our own government are not? I could answer that but won't!  No rudeness or nastiness on this blog.

Sorry, this is boring stuff if it doesn't concern you directly. And it won't be the end of it. At the moment it only concerns digital products but more will be added in future.  If you want digital quilt patterns, ebooks, emagazines, online classes etc. and you live in the EU, you might want to sign this petition too. Here is the link. Be quick though, the EU  administration goes on holiday on the 16th December (while the rest of us beaver on!) and the 1st Jan is ever so close. More information can also be found on the blog of my friend and fellow quilter Susan Briscoe here.

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Vacant Hand

Amazing to think we have reached December already while outside the hollyhocks still flower and the last roses are hanging on. But fact is, week 49 of 2014 has arrived and our task for The Documented Life Project was to: Trace a hand on your page.

I can't even remember how often I have done this exercise over the years in a variety of art and personal development classes. I just wish I had kept them all. But at least I had preserved the last version mainly because it was used as inspiration for Journal Quilt no. 3 of the 52 Journals project. You can see it below and if you are interested it's for sale at £125. Just contact me by e-mail (address in the side bar). As the Journal Quilt is 10" square I enlarged my hand print and also changed the colour. The original hand was smaller and orange.

So I cut that hand from it's white background and adhered it to a gelli plate printed page cut to size to fit in my Moleskine planner. I used a variety of markers and watercolour brushes to integrate it further as you can see below.

It needed text (at least in my opinion) so I started to look for quotations about hands and came across this one by Sir Walter Scott in The Bride of Lammermoor. It's part of Lucy Ashton's Song and reads as follows:

Vacant heart, and hand, and eye,

Easy live and quiet die.

I found it on Saturday and have been thinking about this quotation ever since. Could it be true? And if it is, it must mean a difficult life and hard death for me, as my heart and mind are full to overflowing (although I sometimes wish for a Pause button on my thoughts!), my hands never still and my eyes full of wonder. Would I exchange it for that vacant heart, and hand, and eye in order to get such an easy life and death? No! And in fact how could you make that choice. Who we are and how we live, what experiences we have and what happens to us, is for a large part not in our hands. Even should we wish for a vacant life it's highly unlikely that we'll get it.

Who wants vacant eyes anyway when you can see so much beauty in the world such as this morning's sunrise. You can see the pictures below.  I'll take my chances with a heart full to the brim, hands always busy and eyes soaking up the beauty of the world. It is surprising what that quotation made me think about over this weekend. It took over my mind. Having it on the page will remind me of all those thoughts in the future.

12 x 12

You may remember that back at the end of August during the Peebles Arts Festival I met a French photographer called Angela Mejias who had an exhibition of her photographs there. She also popped in to have a look at my 52 Journals exhibition and invited me to take part in an exhibition called 12 x 12. This signifies that all entries including frames, mounts etc. have to be 12 x 12 cm (approx. 5" square). Here are my 2 pieces that will be going in the mail to France very soon. They are both dominated by circles as that is the shape I'm most known for. You will also see that they are closely related to The Documented Life Project page I did for this week. These are just smaller versions. You can read up about the technique there.

Amazingly enough (synchronicity at it's best) I was watching a video this week that used the same straight stitch with beads as you can see in the detail above. I picked it up during my City and Guilds Embroidery course some 20 years ago and love the sense of movement it gives as the beads can move along the thread. Clearly I'm not the only one that likes the idea. 

You will have seen a detail of this piece earlier this week when I was stitching this one. Here I've used reverse appliqué while the piece seen at the top uses straight forward applique.

The exhibition will take place between the 12th December and the 11th January 2015 at Udal Aretoa, Pasaia, (note this website is in Basque) San Pedro, Spain and then between the 24th February and the 14th March 2015 at the Espace Cultural, Mendi Zolan, Hendaye, France. Hendaye is the town twinned with Peebles. This is already the 19th time the exhibition has been taking place, although it's a first for me. I wish I was closer so I could pay a visit but should you be in the area it's worth having a look. As far as I know most if not all pieces will be for sale. Mine are, anyway.

Thank You!

It's over and done with. The 52 Journals exhibition has come to an end. I had it all prepared. I was going to photograph the closed door of the exhibition room but as it turned out too much loveliness was going on and in the end my camera stayed in my bag. Instead I had many visitors this morning,received a large bouquet of flowers and  4 more pieces were sold. John and I went for lunch with some of those visitors afterwards and had a wonderful time. . It was a marvellous end to what has been an amazing 6 weeks. 

With the pictures from my bouquet I want to say a HUGE thank you to everyone who came to the show, bought pieces and cards (would you believe I sold the very last card this morning!), left wonderful messages in my Visitors Book, and gave me lovely feed-back on my work. Also a massive thanks to the Museum Staff for first of all putting on the exhibition and then helping me in all kinds of ways. I was made to feel very much at home in their Museum and Gallery.

Thanks too to everyone who asked when the next exhibition will be on. Give me at least a few years, please! But I will be hard at work on making more art very soon and I can't wait!

If you want to see a bit of the show again, you can! Thanks to my sweet and adorable friend Lenna who came over specially from Florida to see both the exhibition and me there is a video show of the show and me giving a talk about it to a group from Dumfries. You can find it here:


We will be taking all the pieces down on Monday but for the moment I'm just so over the moon with how it went and I didn't want to wait to say that THANK YOU from the bottom of my heart!

Just one more day

 

There is just one more day to go for the 52 Journals exhibition. The gallery will be open from 9.30 - 12.30 tomorrow morning and that will be it! So here are some final pictures of the show.

Below a view of one of the pieces that has caused more comments than any other: the skull, based on a photograph I took in Glenholm graveyard. Despite attracting a lot of attention it hasn't sold so if you're interested you'll know where to come!

 

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The last few days

 

The last few days of the 52 Journals Exhibition are upon us and it has been satisfyingly busy today. Hopefully it will keep going like that right till the final day on Saturday. This is the door you come through to enter the gallery.

And this is another view of the show, complete with visitor book. It's filling up rapidly wirh lovely and much appreciated comments and it will be great to look back at once I have retreated to my studio and am back making art in the months and years to come.

On the way home from Peebles I took the single track Shiplaw road. The sun was shining and I enjoyed seeing that beautiful rolling countryside of our Scottish Borders.

 

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Blipmeet at the Exhibition

I had some more blippers visiting the 52 Journals exhibition today and you can see Mr. and Mrs. Harebrain above. Needless to say that's their blip user name and it's Mrs. Harebrain that I first met on the Blipfoto site. My fellow blippers have been such a wonderful support to me during the show, which now has only one more week to run. It's one of the miracles of the blip community that we all feel like we are members of one large blipping family and I love meeting more and more blipping photographers in person. You can see the photo Harebrain took of me here.

The exhibition has also given me the opportunity to meet in person with friends I previously only knew online and of course the very best thing was that Lenna who I have known for about 10 years was over last week. She bought one of the pieces in the show called Shelter and you can see it hanging in her house here.

For those of you not in the know Blipfoto is an Edinburgh based site for photographers where the only rule is that you can upload one photo against the day it was taken. I have been a member for almost 4 years now and haven't missed a day yet but you don't have to blip every day.

It seems amazing that the exhibition will be over in one week's time. On the one hand the time has flown by and on the other it feels like I have been sitting in the gallery surrounded by my art since forever. I will be dedicating next week more or less full time to being there in person, but if you want to make sure I'm there send me an e-mail or alternatively phone the museum on the day of your visit on 01721-724820/

Tomorrow I will be at the Scottish Quilt Championships in Ingliston and I will reveal the good news I received regarding my two quilts in this show then!

From the window

 

From the gallery we have a lovely view into the courtyard of the Chambers Institute, where today we could even admire a wedding party. Again the gallery was lovely and busy with both visitors I knew and ones I didn't. I was already floating on air for reasons that will become clear on Sunday (or you might have discovered already on my Facebook page) and the day passed in a pleasant haze of excitement.

 

 

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