Patchwork bag

This is my first foray into patchwork, and the bag is mainly hand stitched, with machine stitching around each square before turning right side out, plus on the handles.

The bag is made from 20 Japanese folded patchwork squares – each square starts out with a sandwich of two 12cm squares and a 12cm piece of wadding. Four 8cm squares are folded to make triangles, and added to each corner. Once the piece is securely stitched around the edge, it is turned and the centre square hand stitched in a running stitch.

The 20 squares are then joined by hand into a flat piece (as one of the photos), embellishments added (in this case – buttons), and then the final edges hand stitched to give the bag its shape.

One square is folded over to make a “fastening” with elastic and buttons.

The handles are made from black and red fabric strips, with iron on interfacing for extra body.

I’ve loved doing this, and just bought material to do another in turquoise shades, with butterfly and bee motifs.

Ayton Art Exhibition 2015

Well, it's amazing what you can achieve when the pressure is on and there's only 4 weeks to go!
These are my 6 entries for this year's exhibition. I was inspired by Puffins from my recent visit to Norway and the Arctic Circle, hence the collage, and the lino prints. Then no exhibition would be the same without an IRIS picture of some sort! The last two pictures are for the separate room, where the theme is "Interpretation of a poem". I've done an extract from The Gruffalo, when OWL meets the mouse and invites him for dinner ... and secondly, a view of Scarborough North Bay, inspired by John Masefield's Sea Fever ...  "And the flung spray and the blown spume.."
The exhibition runs from July 25th to August 2nd 2015

Puffin Coaster

I've just been to a workshop at The Stained Glass Place, and am delighted with my first ever coaster!

I started with a template on paper, coaster size, to show what colours go where. Then I put one piece of 3mm glass over the template, outlined a puffin in liquid black, and coloured in the eye, part of the head and his back. Picture two is the other piece of glass, to which I added sprinkles (or piles!) of FRIT - tiny glass pieces. Some were sprinkled onto glue, but the larger areas just had glue round the outside, to stop the molten glass oozing out of the "sandwich". I left the coaster to be fired and collected the finished item 24 hours later. Emma explained the science behind fusing glass - all fascinating - it's a great workshop. Now I've seen the finished product, I would be more selective about choosing the colours to use. Watch this space - there are more courses coming up!

Rabbit booties

Toddler sized booties in 100% wool - fun to knit. Maybe the pompom is a little on the large size!

Cruise Ship Crafts

I've just got back from a cruise to Norway and Russia. As there were 8 "sea days", there were three art and craft tutors to keep us occupied, culminating in an exhibition on the final day.
Jessie did a range of craft work items - and she had a mountain of wonderful ribbons, buttons, self adhesive greeting tags, materials etc .... for us to choose from, for each craft. Here's what I did - a Japanese folded patchwork earring holder (or needle case) in "Russian Doll" material, a wicker heart decorated with "Suffolk Puff" flowers, cross stitch cards, silk painted cards, Liberty fabric beaded necklaces, and gift boxes made from one piece of card - and the surprise of those is they fold flat for storage. Some great ideas for hand-made Christmas presents!

Sarah and Geoff lead a "printing without a press" series of workshops, with the aim of us making cards. There were 20 of us, and the range of ideas and end results were amazing - each so different and successful.The fish were done from a piece of funky foam, and the puffins were done using lino cutting tools, and a piece of soft lino. As a complete beginner, I loved learning the process - and now I have more idea of what to expect, I need to practise! I feel the need for browsing the internet for the tools and materials, and adding them to a birthday wish list!
PS The cruise was good too!