Kindred Spirits Textile Art Exhibition May 2008

Welcome to a preview of our first Exhibition, held at RHS Rosemoor, Gt.Torrington Devon from the 3rd to the 11th May 2008. We each made one of these dolls for publicity purposes within Rosemoor, and raffled them during the Exhibition.
Meet the Kindred Spirits... from left to right Carol, Val, Vinnie and Sarah, on our Private Preview Evening, standing in front of our Calendar pieces. We each made three pieces, and are selling a Myths & Legends CALENDAR 2009. The piece on the lower level just behind Carol's shoulder is one of Vinnie's she reached the finals with in Quilting Arts Calendar Challenge for this year. It was our gain she wasn't one of the chosen few, as it is now part of ours!

This is our Experimental Wall that has 60 A5 pieces on it of mixed media, anything and everything, all sorts of experiments we have tried, mostly individually, over the last eighteen months, whilst we have been creating the pieces for the Exhibition. It has caused enormous interest during the Exhibition, and has created a real discussion area.
This is the top left hand corner..............
top right hand corner ...............
bottom left hand corner................
and bottom right hand corner. If you click on individual quarter pictures, you should get a closup view of the pieces.

Kindred Spirits have been together for less than two years, and once we decided we would put together an Exhibition, it was then a decision as to how many pieces, what size, and of course the most important thing - THE THEME. We decided on MYTHS AND LEGENDS and each piece is 24" x 36" and mounted over a wooden frame and stapled into the back. We made FIVE pieces each, depicting any type of myth or legend . To the right of each piece is a note telling the story of the legend we are each expressing in textile art.

These are Vinnie's .......... each one depicts a Greek Legend

PENELOPE'S SHROUD
FLIGHT OF ICARUS
PERSEPHONE'S RETURN
THE SIREN'S SONG
DANAE'S VISITOR

These are Sarah's....... some local legends amd some Greek myths

DREAMING OF A UNICORN
OKEHAMPTON CASTLE BY MOONLIGHT
ST.GEORGE AND THE DRAGON
PANDORA'S JAR
ORDER AND CHAOS

These are Carol's................ depicting the Four Elements as Archangels

THE FOUR CLASSIC ELEMENTS
ELEMENT OF AIR ARCHANGEL RAPHAEL
ELEMENT OF WATER ARCHANGEL GABRIEL
ELEMENT OF FIRE ARCHANGEL MICHAEL
ELEMENT OF EARTH ARCHANGEL URIEL

These are Val's ............. depicting myths and legends of the magic land of fairies

THE UNICORN IN PARADISE
THE MERMAID
MOON GLOW
SUNRISE OVER AN ENCHANTED GARDEN
TREE NYMPHS

We hope to be able to find some suitable venues and have the Exhibition travel around for the next few months. Who knows, it may finish up at the NEC Birmingham next year ............!

Thanks for stopping by and taking a peek.

Kindred Spirits Exhib. May 2008

I need to focus all my energy on new work for our Exhibition coming up in early May at RHS Rosemoor in Devon. Together with Carol, Sarah and Vinnie, we hope to create an Exhibition to knock everyone's socks off. Rosemoor is a huge Royal Horticultural Society Garden with something for everyone in Great Torrington, Devon, set in wonderful rural surroundings.
I will not, therefore be blogging for a while, or indeed visiting any blogs (boo hoo!) but I will be back in two or three months, with a vengeance!
Thanks so much for dropping by - it is very much appreciated. Val

SOUTH WEST QUILTERS RETREAT 2008

Last week, from Sunday 27th January until Friday 1st February, I spent a most wonderful few days in the company of these lovely ladies (plus another six who had to slope off earlier than 4.00pm on Friday!) making mixed media Accordion Style Books.I was the Tutor and the idea was to introduce these ladies, in a gentle way, to mixed media, as they are all Quilters and usually only work in cotton fabric. Actually two of them (Dot and Mandi) were already well into mixed media. However, we started by making a large piece of 'Artwork' which they then embellished in various ways, before cutting it up. In the meantime they made up four double sided pages (a couple of ladies made five!) put together with fabric hinges (to take the keebab sticks which made very good legs) and then embellished these with hand stitching and lace etc. They then covered their books with emulsion paint, and when dry painted with dry brushes what colours they fancied, although you can see one green one there in the picture (well, you always get one in a class don't you!)

Actually, I had more than one in my Group, as you can see in the pic. below - she didn't paint her pages at all - rebellion, that's what I call it!

Unfortunately not all the Books are here on the table, as I didn't start taking pictures until lunchtime Friday, by which time a couple of ladies had already had to leave, and of course none of them was completely finished, although they were all well on the way.

I did think you might like to see some of their 'stuff' while they were working; I'll just briefly name each one as we go:

Jenny

Pam
Sandra
Arlene
Sally
Desira
Jean
Mandi

Dot
Sally
Pat
Linda
Linda (the Rebel!)

Maggie

Out of the fifteen ladies taking the Workshop I think only one had previously come across ATCs, so it was with huge pleasure, as you can imagine, that I introduced them to such delights when I asked each one if they would make me an ATC from their Artwork as a personal Memento of the Retreat. Here they are, all fifteen of them, and fourteen of them are 'firsts'. Just gorgeous, don't you think?

Textile Challenges - January

The Challenge for this month on Textile Challenges is to make a paper quilt 12" square, with a fabric backing - actually following the criteria in the latest edition of Quilting Arts magazine. As you can see I don't take very good photos!
Here is a closeup of the top half using my scanner - a lot easier! The papers I used are table napkins, the main 'quilt' is a whole napkin which had a cream centre and green border originally (I nobbled from my next door neighbour over Christmas) I seem to be painting a lot of things 'orange' lately; it must be this ready mixed paint I have!
This is a closeup of the bottom half, and you can see I have embellished the painted napkins with beads, eyelets, tyvek, a piece of lace and various rubber stamping. There is some hand stitching with metallic thread (in the top half) but most of the stitching is done with the machine.

Calendar Girls 2008 - January

I've received my first Post Card of twelve from Carol M one of the Calendar Girls 2008 Group, of which I am a very proud member!
Carol has free machine embroidered leaves and sunflower petals onto painted Lutradur, then burned some of it away, to reveal the blue underneath. It is gorgeous, and makes a great start to my full set.
To see the inspiration and find out more, just click on the Calendar Girls pretty button on the right hand side of the page.