Bad blogger and halloween fun!

Hia all I thought I would bore you with more proud Mummy pics! Here is my littly ready to go out and scare the neighbourhood!

This is supposed to be a wink!

Here is my spider card for the lottery swap on my group this month, it escapes me who was my partner now!

I have been a bad blogger of late, very behind with a halloween party for the Soul Journal group, so my deepest apologise. the mother in law has really screwed up my usual catch up time in the hols. Here is my attempt to carve a pumpkin!

I have something to announce too, My group Textiles Challenges are just formulating the new challenge/ swap for next year. They is going to be a challenge/swap accross the whole year for house fronts, to take over from the arches we have one this year. If you would be interested in taking part please come over and sign up!!!

Fibre in form and a confession

I have started an online class with Carol and Lynda as I said before. Here is what I have been working on, starting with tyvek samples...

and wovn strips of fabric

Textured paper and and machine couched threads

Lace.

I am really enjoying the class and have done a ton of samples, but I don't want to bore you with doens of sample pics!!!! If you haven't signed up or Carol and Lynda's class - Fibre in form - then here's the link.

Now i found out the other day that i had left a freind down on a swap, over a year ago, maybe more I think I had asked to swap with the wonderful jo Wholohan. She sent me the most delicious card and somehow I didn't send her one in return. How unlike me, must have escaped my list, but guity as charged and so to make amends I made her this, slightly bigger than postcard sixe piece. It is hand dyed cotton, lace, fabric paper bird and copper heart. I am very pleased with it. I hope she likes it and the few other bits i am going to send her to ake up for being such a forgetful cow!

Ellie's famous!!!!

If your out and about in the UK check out a copy of the Garden News today. My Dad writes for them and got a fab picture of Ellie and her new Dahlia! Named for her! Now if you can ignore the man with the weird tash you will be all good! I am soooooo proud!

Cathy's challenge

Cathy Of Winter Wanderings challenged me to get some stuf done this weekend and as I was behind with a few things, which i HATE I made some postcards and ATC's. This one is for Annette and is based on the book the Labarynth. It is hand made felt - my first ever piece!
The next is my embellishment lottery swap for Kate and I literally drew the short straws, and got Straws as my embellishment. I did like using them actually!
The next samples are for Lynda and Carol's Fibre in form workshop, if you haven't signed up, it is worth it's weight in gold and the £30 fee is a snip! Snip get it! I am on fire today, one of my kids asked why she had written down cotton duck on her book, and I said I asked you too, your not Quackers!!!!! Then proceeded to make myself completely uncool by laughing my head off!
I digress I have couched lots of yummy threads and some texture wallpaper to do these samples. I also cut lots of tyvek and did stuff with it, but it is ready to stitch and I haven't had time yet, so boring till I have done that!

I decided I may as well work some motifs from the armour sheet while I was on it and so I am still working on this one. I LOVE how this one has turned out. I can't wait to do more.

If you are thinking wow what's going to happen here then hop over to Fibre in form and sign up or keep it in mind for the next round of classes, it will be the best £30 you will have ever spent, I guarantee it! Carol and Lynda's tutorials make all these awe-inspiring techniques seem easy! I am having fun, at last!

Still stuck!

I wish I could get out of this pit/ mental block/ arggggggg!!!!! I am finding the less I do the less I want to do. I haven't even done any drawing o late - shocking. I wish I knew what was wrong. I have a lot on my mind and a fair bit on my plate too, but usually that is the very time when I get masses done, as I can hide in my art. But not so at the mo. I did this sketch book spread for my new armour project a fortnight ago and have done NOTHING since. What am I to do? My course doesn't have all the funding it needs and we have to raise £2600 this year and next. This is supposedly being done by selling our art work, now I can't see this being achieved, that is contributing to my lack of drive I think, maybe!

I vow to sew tonight, and try to get a grip! Of my commitments if nothing else! Hope everyone else is having a better time of it. Thanks for all your comments, they really lift me. I am ridiculously down, not my usual form at all, hopefully I will sort my head soon, I think Lynda and carol's new course will be a good thing for that.

What a suprise!!!

Well, what a day I had yesterday, I woke up feeling very ill, full of flu and very sorry for myself an almost 5 minutes after coming downstairs there was a knock at the door, and with my usual breed of pesimism, I uttered "What's this now?" Well what it was was a huge parcel from Lynda Monk (Purple missus). Now we have got to be firm friends through bogging, I realy found a kindred spirit in Lynda, and hope she feels the same. Well I knew she was sening me some bits, but when I opened the parcel and realised that I found a splash of colour, now this is when I turn into the kid on christmas morning. I was expecting raw fabric so now I am ripping the paper off like a nutter, it even caused Craig to stop to see what was going on - and that's rare as his normal utterance is more textile crap! Well even he was impressed. This is what I found.......



and here's he back

Well you could have knocked me over. Lynda has been working on this for a while with little tasters, saying it wasn't going well, saying she didn't like it and there's me, oh it'll be fine, it'll turn out great... and she stil says it isn't good enough. Well I Couldn't be more bowled over, more grateful, more in awe of her work. I have got to tell you at CRAIG's URGING... and that never happens!.... It is on the wall already, in the dining room no less!!!!! This is uncharters waters for Craig to ask for a piece of work to be hung, never mind on the dining room wall.

So publically I want to say THANK YOU LYNDA, I LOVE IT AND YOU ARE SUCH A GOOD FRIEND.

September arch

My Mojo is slowly coming back! yey! I did some sewing for the first time in a while last night. i made and arch for Judy and she wanted a tree and leaf theme. I used Grace's idea, she is a friend from my C+G class. I layered up little offcuts of organza on to a stretchy velvet and stitched sort of squiggly tree markings, then I used the soldering iron to burn through the layers, and make it look like knots in the tree. then i used tiny snippets of organza between 2 layers of dissolvable and FME'd over them in a leaf pattern. I disolved the fabric and then stotched them to hang from the top of the arch. The leaves have curled - on purpose - to make them look really autumnal! not bad for my first bits back.

Something special

I have something really special to share with you al today. I am so chuffed with this I can't tell you! Some of you may know that my Dad is semi famous in Wales, he was a Gardening programme presenter in Wales, on BBC2 a programme called Gardening together, Ivor Mace. Now how he got this job was that he once grew the heaviest onion in the world...... Now before i go any further I know your giggling, I can hear it from here, everyone I tell laughs! and here's why!!!!!!
Now he also grew the biggest leek in the world too, but that's an aside just to explain How my Dad know's a Dahlia grower called Roy Tudor. Now Roy creates his own varieties of Dahlia's and he came up with 2 new ones. One was named after a fabulous lady called Dilys Ailen, she is an amazing flower arranger and did the flowers for my wedding, her's is deep red. The ohter was a light pink, with a tinge of lilac, as my Dad says. Well Roy not having anyone to name it after asked my Dad if he could name it after my Ellie, so here she is .....

Dahlia Ellie Taylor

HOW COOL IS THAT!!!!!