The goodies......

Quilting Arts Blog Challenge

Look what I found in the mailbox today! What a lovely surprise when I got home from another gruelling day at work.
Quilting Arts editor Pokey Bolton asked people to comment on her blog about the textile technique / area that they were focusing on at the moment. The first 30 to reply received a lucky dip bag of goodies. Using these we have to make something and send a piccie in by 13th October! Suggestions from Pokey include - fibre art postcard, tiny quilt, handmade book, series of ATCs, fabric bowl or fabric house. Decisions, decisions, decisions.
I have a gorgeous piece of turquoise silk, some lovely dyed lace scraps and various other fabrics / papers. There is a coffee filter that has been dyed and a lovely piece of glittery paper - not sure what that is. Yum! Just need to make something now...that's the hard part.

New computer desk!!!!

Now that we have broadband and it works better downstairs my other half decided we could move the computer into the living room (giving me more room in the spare room - yippee).

First off we picked a disrceet cabinet that would house the computer behind closed doors in the corner of the room. Then Paul remembered how much stuff I have around the computer and decided that big is best! He picked the biggest (but not the most expensive) desk in the shop and it took him over 4 hours to put together! I have to say I live with the Flat Pack King!!! He didn;t swear once. So here is a slightly blurry picture of my new computer area (before i add my clutter!)

This hasn't scanned that well!

Lime green fabric

Discharging Fabrics with Ruth

Well what a busy few days. On day 1 with Ruth we tried devore, thickened procion dye and direct dye painting. Then on Friday we tried discharge printing and more direct dye painting. I really enjoyed the discharge technique as I have wanted to try it for ages but never dared. I thought that it would be really messy and smelly but it wasn't that bad. Ruth is really good a showing how you can achieve a lot in a small space and without a dedicated dye room with lots of sinks! We worked on laminated sheets and cleaned everything up with baby wipes! My favourite tip was using baby wipes to clean up!!!! I will definitely be trying more dyeing stuff at home now that I have seen how easy it can be to do in a small space and how easy you can clean up.

Anyway, enough of my waffle here are some pictures of the fabrics I discharged. One is cotton that I had dyed lime green and the other is black discharge velvet. In both cases I have printed with plain discharge paste and then printed with magenta textile paint added to the discharge paste.

The only thing that disappointed me was that everyone else had made really abstract blocks that worked really well and I had leaves! I went on to try some more abstract images as well but I do quite like these canna leaves.