Using it up

This years theme is Using it up. Catherine has been quite stringent to this and has been putting together a baby quilt with scraps she had.

Isn't it pretty?

Dorothy had the screen print out and put down some seed heads onto the lutrador piece she painted the previous week. This is to be a book cover.

Its very delicate and muted.

A New Year, a New Project.

The group decided to use up some of the materials we had in our cupboard. They were divided out and then the group decided to have the theme of 'Inspired by Caithness'.

Sorting out the materials.

Joan painting her bondaweb.

Celia's 'hoosey', Dorothy's field of silver and Ella's wee bag

Shirley's couching sampler.

Ella and Ann wind wee skeins of silk. They were doing this for most of the morning!

Louise's embroidery of Morven and the Flow Country.

Messy Fun

Anne has been encouraging us all to wet felt. As the group is easily swayed by pretty colours and messy fun we had a go and made some corsages for Christmas.

Catherine opted for the less messy 'needle felting' version.

Here are some finished objects the group has been working on.

 This is Shirley's take on Caithness Flagstones.

 This is an embroidered cover for a notebook by Louise.

 Dorothy has made some Harris Tweed cushions.

 Catherine has made a beautiful quilt from Tweed.

 Celia wished us all a Merry Christmas. The tree was from the lutrador sandwich she made cut up and stitched over.

Joan has a habit of finding her scissors around her house and puts them into her bag for safe keeping. At last count she had 6 pairs. The group is okay for scissors if Joan has her Mary Poppins bag.

We are in Print

The Great Scottish Tapestry books came. We ordered ours through the Book Depository.

 

It was very satisfying having our hard work in print and the book is very professionally written and published. It was a nice book to sit down with a cup of tea and ponder through. 

Whilst we expected some more information on the stitchers and some photos there was a small list of our names and where in Caithness we were based. The photos do not do the panels justice so we recommend all readers of the blog to go visit the tapestry if they can. It is so far confirmed that it is going to be exhibited in Aberdeen, New Lanark and the Scottish Parliament in 2014 with more dates to be announced. Also noted on the Scottish Parliament in their 'Highlights of 2013' was the opening of the tapestry exhibition. We were proud of this fact. 

Autumn Leaves and Robins

 Shirley's Autumnal Panel. She's machine knitted the fabric then fulled it in the washing machine. Then added some leaves and was embroidering them down using a variation of stem and blanket stitch.

 Celia's purchases. One from Thurso which was machine embroidered and the other from Vietnam which was hand embroidered.

Celia's wee robin.

 Shirley's lutrador panel. Its icy blue with a top layer trapping in various threads and leaves.

Dorothy's Hymn book cover. This is a three layer sandwich of lutrador, threads and sparkles and then bondawebbed with a chiffon top layer then embroidered down.

Catherine's Autumn leaves. She'd painted some lutrador and then hot air gunned it to get some holes. She was matching threads to start embroidering onto it.

Paint everywhere

On a trip down to Inverness to a Highland Textile craft fayre the group decided to get some Christmas cards started. They made a list of materials and These are some of the results.

This was Shirley's hand embroidery of some Pictish runes. We were joking on what they meant. I'll let you make your own mind up.

The Scottish Parliament

The Great Scottish Tapestry has been exhibited in the Scottish Parliament.
Celia, Dorothy, Catherine, Shirley and Valerie went down to the preview day for the stitchers on 2nd September.

Ella and Louise went on different days. Joan is waiting until it tours closer to home.

Louise took the family and whilst the whole event was overwhelming for them they were delighted to see the Caithness panel and tell other visitors that they too had taken part in its making.
Louise got talking to other visitors and was stood in front of the panel for 45 minutes telling everyone with great pride of her groups part in the Tapestry.

The group felt the whole tapestry together was amazing, overwhelming, artistic and beautifully stitched.  We also had to deal with the fact that our panel has been handed to the people of Scotland and is not ours any more. We felt that our panels quality was equal to the rest of the panel and we were really proud to be part of Scotlands History.

The exhibition has attracted over 300,000 visitors and it is going on tour around Scotland and then is going back to the Scottish Parliament in 2014 for 3 months. Louise would recommend taking 2 hours to look at it all and breaking for lunch in the very reasonable cafe in the Parliament and also go have a look in the debating chamber if you can as the Parliament building is very artistic and design elements are hidden around every corner.

Our textile artist group will carry on with the theme of Caithness Inspired work until Christmas. It is nice to be able to be free to paint, cut, stick materials again but seeing the panel again made us miss it.