Double colour

My friends at The Stitch Society* Yorkshire have asked me to do a make and take workshop for them in June.  It has to be something that can be made in around two and a half hours and I wanted something suitably summery. So here it is!  A rosey posey fascinator - perfect for Summer weddings or a day at the races.

I've based the design on my wire flower brooches and I wanted to keep the lightness and translucency of the materials.  I have made these using two-tone crystal organza.  I love the way the colour changes as the fabric moves.  The one in the picture is made from a cerise shot with yellow and green shot with black.  I've added some twists of wire and small beads as a nod to the original design.

A spot of raspberry

My Mother's Day treat - afternoon tea prepared by my lovely girlies and served on a raspberry-spotted, china tea set handed down to me by my mother. What could be more special than that?  Well maybe the raspberry and almond cake that's sat on it but that's another story!

Red sky at night

I have to confess, I've never had any formal art training so when my local art group enlisted the services of tutor, Jane Austin, to teach a water colour class, I jumped at the chance!  Jane works with a wet-on-wet technique. It's fast, it's bold and Jane likes to work on big pieces of paper so it was already ticking lots of boxes with me.

We worked from a photo of an evening sunset. Your eye is drawn to the brilliant colours in the clouds, but it is the dark formations in the foreground that provide all the drama.  These were achieved by mixing deep blues and alizarine crimson with small amounts of red and yellow.  As the paint dries and the paper soaks up the colours, subtle variations appear which add to the depth and complexity of the subject.

The effect reminded me of my Wall to Wall series of hangings: the hand mixed dyes were taken up by different fabrics giving variations of colour and the discharge dye bleaching process revealed hidden layers.

My first attempts at this water colour technique were a bit hit and miss but I can see the potential and it has reawakened my love of hand dyes fabrics.