Monday Crazy Patchwork

Today we have been playing with the most lovely fabrics and trims. We have hand painted lace and bonded and cut up beautiful embroidered silks

We have been making Crazy Patchwork and just like the Victorian originals we have made ours using snippets of lovely precious fabrics and all kinds of little treasures: broken jewellery, beads, velvet flowers, lace. 

We will be embellishing them next month with hand stitching using silk and hand dyed threads.

I just wanted to show you Dawn's finished and framed piece from last Month's workshop.

And Stella's Work in progress from last month. This is painted tissue with applied silk papers.

She has started to hand embroider it.

Isn't that an amazing texture? And we were all drooling at the gorgeous colours.

I can't wait to see what they do next with all my stash. Sharing and inspiring each other is just the most fun you can have on a dreary old Monday!

Rain and Rust

Last Summer and Autumn I had a great time rusting fabric in the garden. I  tried out lots of different fabrics but my favourites were fine silk habotai, and vintage lace and doileys. 

It was always a surprise to see how much the fabric had dyed and the amazing patterns that were produced. Sometimes the rust ate right through the fine silk and made fabulous crusty holes.

In September I used some of the fabrics with handmade silk paper as a base for some of my original illustrations for Open Studios. 

After Open Studios was finished my butterfly of a mind moved onto other things and I completely forgot the last little rusty package... till today!

I went out in the pouring rain to rescue it and here is what I found.

So fabulous! 

The silk especially has amazing patterns. It is Eco dyeing, just using nature to make beauty all by herself. Its just a kind of magic! 

Happy day! :o)