Fingerprint lovebirds, romance, very pink!

The weather is still terrible, but the days are longer, and spring is not far away. Naturally my thoughts turn to fingerprint Lovebirds!

 I made the Twelve Robins of Christmas cards last year, and really liked them so I am keeping going with fingerprint birds in groups of twelve, and here are the Twelve Lovebirds of Romance.

 I like the pink and yellow, adding gold beaks and pink legs with gel pens. The legs are slightly sparkly, which is rather cute.

What a romantic gesture, a greetings card with not one but TWELVE dear little lovebirds hopping about on spindly legs.

The cards are on my Etsy shop if you're feeling the love.
http://etsy.me/1d3i3LR

Pink trees in my last blog post, pink lovebirds - what's going on?! But I am embracing it, and I am sure my more gothic side will emerge once more very soon.

Blossom trees made by hand

I am beginning to think about the spring blossom, that isn't so far away now. Tiny buds are showing on my two ornamental cherry trees. I found some fabric scraps that spoke to me of blossom, springtime, and perhaps a little snow,

and made a hand pieced little tree. The colours are not what I usually go for, but I really like the effect, and made it into a greetings card.

And here's another, much more busy and utterly uncharacteristic, but again, I really like it!

Here's the card, elegant on its tiny easel,

and I am loving making rather girly trees! They're in my shop,  etsy.me/1eCltUZ
Happy Spring!

Miniature log cabin. Sewing, silk.

I have been making some miniature pieced log cabin patchwork blocks, just to try and fix in my mind the order in which the logs are pieced. I thought it was better to sew minatures, and by hand, rather than larger blocks by machine. I am hoping it will put the piecing order back into my memory!

A miniature block, 6cm square, needs a template, and I have marked some calico, complete with numbers! The fabric will go on the other side of the template, and I can sew along the lines, and see what I'm supposed to be doing.

So the central square is tacked in place, a lovely gold dupion silk. I'm using silk for the whole block.

The square begins to grow,

and the back starts to resemble a mad chaos of stitches, although it isn't really chaos,

and finally, the square finished,  put into a greetings card, and resting on a tiny easel.

I have made several, and am so pleased with them I've made them into greetings cards, and put them onto my Etsy shop. https://www.etsy.com/uk/shop/quarto17?ref=si_shop

Lovely little log cabin blocks!

Pen y Garreg dam. Huge waterfall. Mythical figure!

A very wet day in the Elan Valley. I didn't need a filter on my camera to get this image, the rain provided it.

And a sighting of a magnificent mythical being, arms outstretched, with a white cloak of furious water swirling down. Warrior? Magician? I couldn't tell.

As soon as I saw the face, I no longer believed in Pen y Garreg dam as a construction, but as living being. The energy in the air created by the water no doubt helped.
And the trees so fragile before the rushing cloak of white.

What a magical place.

Mari Lwyd. Finger puppet commission. Wassail!

 The Mari Lwyd, or Grey Mare, is part of an ancient Welsh tradition, taking place over Christmas and New Year. It's a ritual to bring luck and celebrate the turning of the year. A noisy group of people go from door to door, singing and bantering, hoping to gain admittance and a reward of food and drink. They accompany one of their number  disguised as a grey horse, holding a real horse's skull aloft and draped in white sheets. The jaw was often made to snap, and the Mari would dance and weave, chasing children and causing chaos.

My friend the artist Clive Hicks-Jenkins has a long and deeply emotional relationship with the Mari Lwyd, and last year saw him creating a remarkable work for chamber orchestra narrator and puppets,
The Mare's Tale. He describes it and the piece beautifully, and much better than I could, on his blog.

http://clivehicksjenkins.wordpress.com/2014/01/01/the-mare-steps-out-in-2014/

Clive commissioned me to make an edition of eight Mare's Tale finger puppet collage gift cards, celebrating The Mare's Tale, to give as gifts to his creative collaborators.  He sent me artwork to use as the collage for the cards. It was interesting working in black, white and grey, as my natural inclination is towards extreme colour!

I used white tissue paper stuck over the skulls to give an impression of material. And strips of a textured black paper to give a little shine.

I printed the word mari on each card using grey ink, a wooden titling font and my Adana letterpress machine. I didn't want it too obvious, the word emerging as you look at the card.

Then to create the finger puppets! The man with the Mari was straightforward. I used black yarn with a tiny sparkle in it, and Clive told me brown eyes. The Mari was more tricky. I needed to get the idea of a skull, which I made by looking very carefully at Clive's design and then interpreting it in wool!

The body needed to look fluid and above all not solid. I knitted it in an eyelet stitch which gives a loose holey effect. I did try fabric draped round the head, but it looked like a headscarf, not suitable at all. So I stitched random and varied lengths of wool to the top of the head, and fastened them loosely to the body, which I hope gave the impression of movement and fluidity.  Here's the entire herd;

The finished cards looked  detailed and dense, with the word mari letterpressed on the back.

The Mari placed above her companion, and really quite menacing.

 Each card was different.  Then printing on the back of the presentation box for each,

which was backed inside with crumpled purple tissue paper, and tied with gold thread. I didn't photograph any finished cards in their boxes, but they looked very good!
My thanks to Clive for this great commission.

Happy New Year!

Keeping warm with Log Cabin sewing. Quilting. Loving it.

Setting up the sewing machine in my study. What a pleasure! After a break of about 10 years, I have had the strong desire to start sewing again for a while, and the time between Christmas and New Year has given me a chance to try it.

I have never been a traditional quilt maker, but I do like the strip piecing method that gives a block called log cabin. I have used it a lot, but in my own way! The square blocks should be half one colour and half another. Mine don't quite do that.

 I couldn't quite believe how much I had forgotten about sewing strips of fabric into squares, and also how much I loved doing it. I must buy an unpicker however, which will speed up the correcting of mistakes. But the virtue of the method is that the quilt top grows quickly.

I love the way a busy pattern on a fabric becomes so intricate when cut up and pieced, and the shapes formed by the solid colours. This is a lap quilt, or I suppose a wall hanging. Life is too short to make full bed quilts. I rather like the finished quilt top, photographed on my bed earlier.

Not a brilliant photo, but it gives an idea of the three broken diagonal stripes made of strong coloured dupion silk. I need wadding and a backing fabric, and then to try and remember how to hand sew the quilting.

Here's one I sold a long time ago.  A friend spotted it in a house he was visiting, and photographed it for me.

Lots more planned! What a lovely start to 2014.