Dreaming Spirals

A couple of weeks ago I ordered some Misty Fuse from Joggles in the USA.  10 yards of it cost about $31 which is pretty good.  Except that today I got a letter from the Post Office saying that I owed them £11.45 for customs charges.

£11.45 for $31 dollars worth of stuff?  I thought there must be a mistake somewhere.  $31 is about £20.47 according to an online currency converter (and actually Joggles were running a promotion so I only paid about £20 including postage).   Here is how the charges panned out. £3.45 for VAT.  And £8 to the Post Office for the privilege of collecting it.  I think someone is being a bit nitpicky here.  Usually they don’t bother with goods under about £25 value.  Oh, and to add insult to injury, they stuck a nasty great sticker on the Tyvek envelope that Joggles had sent it in…

The irony is that it still worked out about the same price as buying Misty Fuse in the UK.  But I think I’ll get a whole bolt next time.  And a few extra Joggles goodies…

Spring is beginning to emerge here in Wales.

The supermarket online delivery  came this morning so the fruitbowl is looking well stocked, and in the fridge is enough food to warm the cockles of 3 teenage boys’ hearts.

And today is DS3’s birthday… when they start having birthdays I know spring is here.  All three of them were born this time of year.  His cake arrived too…

Outside is looking a bit dead still but today the sun is shining.

Yesterday I decided my clothes needed a new lease of life so I used some washing machine dye that I bought in the Woolies closing down sale – those trousers on the right used to be a yukky light sort of khaki colour – I like them much better in a terracotta brown.  And the teal jumper in the middle used to be quite a nice green  … till I forgot to wear an apron and it got various paint splashes on it!  And the other two jumpers are a lot nicer now too.  I shall look forward to wearing them.

Cobweb has decided it’s spring too and that it was warm enough in the sun to curl up in the garden.  Let’s see how long it lasts, eh?

First of all, let me show you a photo of the reeds in February, just so you know I’m keeping up with my resolve!  (Not that one lot of photos a month is exactly onerous but still…)

I love the colours in that one.  It was a glorious, crisp, sunny winter’s day last week.

A few weeks ago I signed up to do an online course, hoping to get my creative mojo going again, and it definitely worked!  I did LK Ludwig’s Printed Patterned Painted journal making class – Karen Stiehl Osborn was doing it and mentioned it in her newsletter. 

Here are a few of the painted papers I’ve made:

Can you believe these were made with acrylic paint, a few old credit cards and some foam stamps or stencils?  My (mostly) home made stamps box is getting fuller:

I have actually made two journals out of them so far, but don’t seem to have any photos yet!  Here is one in process of construction.

Besides all this, I spent most of last week monoprinting over them with a gelatin plate – this time I used Rayna’s recipe and it is still going a week later!!! Last year it cracked up after a day or so, and Rayna’s recipe is definitely easier so I will be using that from now on…  I seem to have been so busy printing that I haven’t taken any photos yet so that’ll be the next post.    Last week it was half term and DH was away in India and I seemed to get a lot more done, for some reason!  I also finished the two large reeds hangings finally so pics of them will be forthcoming as well. 

Over the last year, I have been doing a lot of family history research.  I’ve been lucky in that first my Aunt, then my parents and my brother, have built up a huge family tree and I’ve been adding to it and looking into it more.  I have also been given various family treasures by family members over the years and I decided recently to photograph them and put them all together rather than scattered all over the house!

I’d love to find out more about this handkerchief.  It was given to my Nan by my Grandad during the Second World War.  I think it is silk, but the edges have been cut in a scallop pattern and outlined in pen, and the heart decoration is a sort of raised embellishment.  The writing is also in pen and there is no stitching on it at all.  Apparently while my Grandad was in the army, one of the things he was involved in was running a prisoner of war camp so I wonder if this was made by one of the prisoners?

My Nan wore this hat at my parents’ wedding in 1959. 

My Mum’s cousin (who was a lot younger than her because she was the daughter of my Grandad’s oldest brother… I had to look that up on the family tree!) was a house servant when she was young and she gave me her maid’s uniform – this is the cap and one of the cuffs she wore.  I’ve got the apron and collar as well but the apron is too rumpled to photograph at present and I don’t want to risk it picking up all the gunk on the iron (wonder how that got there?!).

I took this photo the other day of the reflection on our bedroom ceiling and thought it fitted in well with a post about vintage textiles.  Doesn’t it look lacy?  (I think that is a reflection on the state of the windows but the less said about that the better.).

Around Christmas time I treated myself to a few of Lisa Peter’s gorgeous raku buttons – I love her pottery and I had a hard time deciding which to buy.  I love the earthy feel of these three….

Also around this time, I decided to take advantage of the snow and do some snow dyeing.  I did this totally erratically without referring to any written instructions but I like the way these turned out.  I piled all the fabric on top of each other and this is what it looked like with the snow on top (complete with bits of organic greenery to add to the design!)

Here is one of the pieces of fabric – this is quite transparent cotton organdie (I always wondered what organdie was from the song Scarborough Fair!).

I hung this up on my design wall over the top of one of my practice reeds samples and was interested to note that the reeds were more visible through the black part than the white, for some reason…

Here is a closer look so you can see what I mean:

I think I’ll have to exploit that property sometime!

This is some silk crepe fabric:

I love the strokeable texture of it here:

The colours are closer to the above photos but this one captures the markings better.  I may have taken it when it was wet.  For some reason, silk crepes and organzas are very difficult to photograph without the colours being washed out.  Anyone know why?  I wonder if it is related to the way the light reflects off the fibres.

I have been slowly washing out more of the fabric.  In between buying some gorgeous teal coloured boiled wool/viscose fabric and making it into a jacket!  More later on that…

I printed this piece of silk with corrugated cardboard (the yellowy bits) and then overprinted with a gocco screen made with the same stamp that I used for the maroon coloured fabric in the last post.  I think this one changed the least when I washed it out. 

Here is the washed version:

And a detail:

For the next piece, I used these ochres from Clearwell Caves in the Forest of Dean, and soy milk as a binder, made from soy beans. 

This is what it looked like when I painted it.

And here it is washed … I like the way you get more definition in the washed version.

Here it is on my design wall, next to a piece which had been previously rusted dyed and which I overpainted with the ochres, giving some subtle textures.

This one looked the most unpromising when I printed it.  I’ve got a feeling I used it as a wiping-up cloth and then screened over the top with the gocco screen made from the image of a letter.

It definitely looks more promising now!

Last week I had a break from washing out fabric and did some dressmaking for a change! I went shopping in Cardiff the previous weekend and bought this gorgeous teal coloured boiled wool fabric from the newly opened John Lewis.  This jacket only took a morning to make! I did make a practise version with some green cotton/viscose fabric I had lying around and actually this one was easier to make because the curved seams were a doddle with this stretchy fabric.  Also, I didn’t have to hem anything as it is boiled wool and doesn’t fray!  It’s super warm and cozy and I’ve already worn it a lot.  Which is more than can be said for a lot of my previous dressmaking attempts!   I bought the pattern a few years ago meaning to use it with some of my dyed fabrics and I have even more incentive to use it now I’ve made it twice.  It’s the swing fever jacket from CNT Pattern Co (no affiliation).