I really want to start this post with a long overdue thank you...for all the lovely comments and best wishes that have been left since Little Treasure arrived. I don't always have time to read blogs or reply to the words that people leave for me, but I really do appreciate each and every one of them, so a huge thank you to everyone who visits me here in my little corner of blogland!
Yesterday I had my first day of unashamed selfish indulgence since Little Treasure arrived...a get together with the other girls in The Wednesday Group (the textiles group we formed after studying City and Guilds Embroidery together). We all made our way to Lois's house for a day of chatter, cake, laughter and fun with colour.
Our get togethers always start off in the same way...with a good natter, a cuppa and cake.
Lois is a master in the kitchen and the brownies and cookies she'd made soon disappeared!
We all work on our own projects between catch ups, be it the textile postcards we set ourselves to do each month or things we're experimenting with ourselves. There's always a great deal of "oooo-ing" and "ahhhh-ing"! Here are Ann, Anni and Kathleen admiring some free machine stitching that Grace has been working on.
To our joy, Lois has been having a sort out of her studio and let us loose on all the fabric she's parting company with. We all went home with black bin bags full to the brim with all the pieces we found and claimed for our own!
Here's Lindsay having a good rummage. The 'snip snip' of her scissors, carefully cutting scraps from fabrics she discovered, could just be heard amongst our whoops of delight and the rustle of fabrics being turned out of bags and boxes!
Kathleen loves using woollen fabrics in her work, so was particularly pleased when she found the sleeve of an old Aran jumper.
Unfortunately, it was a bit small to use as a hat, so she'll have to find something else to turn it into!
When we could drag ourselves away from Lois's exciting stash of fabric, we de-camped to her studio in the garden to try our hand at printing, dyeing, painting and daubing fabric with all sorts of colours and designs.
Kathleen looks on as Grace uses one of Lois's gorgeous indian print blocks to create a tea towel.
Grace's hand printed tea towel...a closer look at the work in progress.
Ann prints some fabric with an indian print block too. The gorgeous colours she chose even matched her apron!
Here's Kathleen, working on her tea towel design.
Lois treated us all to a truly mouth-watering homemade lunch...
...with chocolate and raspberry tart for pudding. Yummmmm!
After lunch we all tried our hand at using silk paints. We rolled, tied and pegged our fabric before painting, daubing and splattering it to create all sorts of patterns and effects.
The finished results looked really pretty drying on the olive tree outside Lois's studio.
Here I am working on my silk scarf creation.
I tied up parts of the scarf with string before daubing various colours on to it whilst it was in a plastic container.
Here's how it turned out...before I tried out some more techniques and added other colours to the design.
Everyone's designs were so different. Ann created colourful spots, Alison's design was made using pegs and Anni and Lindsay created fish scale-inspired patterns.
We even managed to fit in some fabric dyeing using a sachet of Dylon colour - Rosewood Red.
Kathleen was very valiant in her role of 'Chief Fabric Fisher Outer' from the bucket of dye...and ended up going home with hands that were a slightly different shade to what they had been at the start of the day. Let's hope she's managed to wash it all off by the time we all get together again next month!
