Dreaming Spirals

Last year I traced part of a medieval woodcut print of a cityscape using one of the Dover books, and made it into a Gocco screen.  I’m not sure that the screen I made was very successful because I didn’t shade it enough to give it dimension and the resultant prints just weren’t very clear.   I printed several Moleskine journals with it and put them in my Etsy shop.  Here is one so you can see what I mean:

Actually this one is even more unclear because I used white ink and gold embossing powder!   But I did do some with white ink on black which wasn’t much better.

Anyway, they’re not like that anymore!  This afternoon I got the watercolour paints out and highlighted a few of the features, I hope more successfully:

Here’s a close up of that last picture:

I also tried a different sort of highlighting on the black one:

I did this one with a silver pen.

I stamped this one with my angel stamp as I think she looks pretty medieval too!   

These are all for sale in my shop on Etsy, by the way.  What do you think? Does my colouring improve them or spoil them?

This is just a quick reminder that I still have about 8 fabric bundles for sale… and as a way of clearing some space in my studio the next person in the UK to buy some can have 3 bundles for the price of 2! Just pay with the Paypal buttons for two and email me to let me know which other one you want and I’ll mark them as sold. I’ll post on here when they’ve gone. You can find them here. This offer will expire at midnight on Wednesday 3rd June.

And I also have a number of Print Gocco machines for sale – I haven’t got any B6 machines but I have several PG10s and PG10 Supers. They are on my Print Gocco machines page.

If you haven’t the foggiest what I’m talking about, there’s a page of links about the Print Gocco here.

This is a card I printed with it. I really must get it out and print some more… they really are addictive once you get going!

There are still more fabric bundles waiting to be snapped up! And here are a few extras for the next 2 or 3 people to buy them…

I found a load of nappy liners which I bought to do cool melting and burning stuff… you can stitch into them and colour them and heat them and they distress nicely.

I’ve also got lots of African dutch wax prints fabrics – if you buy a fabric bundle I’ll put some of them in – they are good size pieces (half a yard, a yard etc…).

My studio is looking very different now – I’ve moved the tables round and my design wall and I can get around a lot more in there! I don’t feel quite so hemmed in. I was hoping that it might be possible to put a kitchen type sink in there but it looks like that is impractical so I’ll just have to keep running to the bathroom if I want to rinse things out:(

Pics soon… and I haven’t forgotten the report on my week at C2C!

Here’s a pic of the yellow/orange fabric bundle:

And in its bag:

SOLD

And one of the red ones (the other is in the post before I went away).

And in its bag:

And this one has reds and purples:

I’ve had a request for photos of the blue/purple and blue/brown bundles, so here they are!

The blue/purple one:

And here it is in its bag:

SOLD

And here is the blue/brown one:

And in its bag:

SOLD

Phew!  Just got back from a long weekend in Somerset and am now raring to go! 

As I was saying last week, I am having a big clearout of fabrics because I want to concentrate on dyeing and painting wholecloth fabric rather than using small pieces of miscellaneous fabrics for patchwork.  So, if you want fabric and thread for embroidery, patchwork, collage, layering or whatever, here’s your chance! 

I have sorted them into bags of roughly 300-400 grams (12oz to 1lb) .  The fabrics are mostly in pieces which are fat quarter or fat eighth size, some more, some scraps, some with bits cut out but still plenty of good usable stuff.  I think all the bags have at least some hand dyed cotton and/or silk fabric; there are also pieces of organza, chiffon, silk, scrim, velvet, etc.  It’s all a mixture, sorted by colour.    A real lucky dip!!

I am selling them at £18 per bag plus postage – UK is £2 and you can use the Paypal button at the end of this post. 

Here are a few examples of what you will get in a bag:

This one is mostly blues – 340gm.    There is some turquoise metallic organza, about 5”x19”, about a fat quarter (maybe more) of grey-blue hand dyed cotton, just over a fat quarter of turquoise stretch velvet, just under a fat quarter of pale blue cotton, a fat quarter of blue-green batik fabric with fish on, about a fat eighth of blue-turquoise mottled cotton fabric, approx fat quarter turquoise vintage Laura Ashley cotton fabric, same amount blue tulle,  about half a yard of Michael Miller zigzaggy fabric (the colourful one in the foreground), just under fat quarter of blue fabric with little ferns on, piece of navy blue cotton, some scraps of indigo dyed cotton, piece of nepalese hand dyed lokta paper, about 2 metres of blue satin ribbon, several lots of thread.UPDATE – SOLD NOW

This one is 330 grams and mostly greens (veering towards yellowy or browny greens).  Here we have some hand dyed yellow-green scrim or cheesecloth, about 12” by 30”, some green cotton fabric just under a fat quarter, green tulle about the same size, hand dyed green velvet roughly 12” square, acid dyed yellow-green silk dupion about 8” square, about half a yard of green rayon fabric with little diamond pattern, fat eighth or so of green cotton fabric with watermark effect, three pieces of various shades of green cotton, one with swirly pattern, hand dyed green-brown felt about 20” by 8”, strip of hand dyed cotton oranges, purples, turquoises, 4”x28”, hand dyed green silk rod, 4’ 1.5”wide green organza ribbon, various hanks of thread.

These are 330 grams, again, and more greeny purples.  There’s about a metre of green metallicy lace with daisies on it (very glittery!), some funny shimmery green/purple fabric, four different hand dyed green cotton fabrics (fat quarter to fat eighth size) … can you tell I’m getting bored with measuring things?!! – about a fat quarter of silk crepe which I bought in France, hand dyed with green and flecks of magenta and orange, some silk dupion, a very spectacular 9” square piece of silk habotai which I painted with pink and green silk paints using salt – it looks a bit fireworky, scraps of hand dyed silk rod and silk fibres, about a fat quarter of hand dyed green/purply-pink butter muslin, some very shimmery greeny polyester organza good for dragonfly wings, about a 9” square piece of hand felted fibres with silky threads trapped in it (green), some darkish green cotton fabric with a black overall swirly pattern on it.SORRY, SOLD!!

That’s all I’m going to describe because I can feel myself wanting to put it all back again and keep it for myself but I must clear it to get some space to create more!!! 

£18 plus £2 postage (UK) – if you are overseas, email me and I’ll send you a Paypal invoice with amended postage. Give me your colour preference in the ‘Message to seller’ box. Or leave a comment if you have any problems!

UPDATE: I have now put photos of all the bundles with Paypal buttons (postage to UK only) on this permanent blog page.

The colour combinations I’ve got are: yellows/greens; red-purples; blues/blue-greens; yellow/oranges; reds; golds/browns; purples; orange/blue; black/white; reds/dusky oranges; blues/browns; sea greens/blue; greens; and blue/turquoise. Ask me if you want to know more about them.