Crafting with Kitty

One of my twin daughters, Kitty, was ill and home from school today so we did a little crafting. First of all we used my Sizzix Big Shot, Bigz Die Owl #2 and some sticky back plastic - very Blue Peter! Kitty enjoyed making some cards.

Next we tried out an idea we had seen on Pinterest - pixie houses made from broken plant pots. 

We used a small plant pot and some pieces of a broken vintage floral plate - Kitty had great fun smashing up the plate to make smaller pieces ... A couple of years ago I was lucky enough to attend a workshop, held at Hope & Elvis, with Janine Nelson of Smashing Chintz, so I still have a stash of broken pottery pieces ready for mosaic fun!

It was quite a fiddly operation but Kitty really enjoyed building up the little layers and decided to use some collected seashells (I have lots of those too, and driftwood!) to decorate the top. Our results might not look like the elaborate ones on Pinterest but it kept my 5 year old poorly girl and I occupied in the autumn sunshine today!

Degree Show 2013

This time last year I had my degree show, I graduated with a 2:2 from Nottingham Trent University and hold a BA (hons) in Decorative Arts. It was a long, rather tough, degree at times, my twins were born at the end of my first year, and unpleasant personal circumstances meant that I had to take an intercalation (University's posh term for a break!) half way through my third year. I'm proud that I got to the end of my course and was selected to display some of my work at New Designers in London in June 2013 too! My largest art quilt was also exhibited at the Festival of Quilts at the Birmingham NEC in August.

Here are a few photos of the processes which were involved in my final body of work - art quilts based on my own photography taken with special access at National Trust's Calke Abbey, which I manipulated digitally before having printed onto linen, layered with hand-dyed reclaimed fabrics (old cotton sheets, woollen blankets) and linen. A great deal of hand work went into my final pieces - from selecting the dye colour mixes to use, painstakingly hand-dyeing the fabrics, through to damaging the fabric, hand-sewing it using a traditional linen darning method and tearing the fabrics to the exact size I wanted. I hope that you enjoy the photographs and I'm looking forward to visiting the current NTU degree shows this coming week. 

New to blogging but wanting to share more than Twitter or Facebook allows!

Hi there

Just getting started with blogging, lots to share in the coming weeks and months - we take lots of photos of the things which we create and these might be quilts, upcycled clothing (Steampunk and Boho/hippy/Lagenlook being our "style"), faux taxidermy, textile sculptures and found objects!

Looking forward to connecting with fellow artists, vegans, parents, nature-lovers, the curious of mind and joyous of spirit!