Prepared

With a heavy cold, I went to work well prepared this morning.

With my Mum’s voice in my head, I did indeed feel better once I got there.

Into action

With a National Celebration just on the horizon and fabric on the worktable, it was time to crank up the bunting machine!

The pattern on the fabric is printed one way up, so rather than waste half of those triangles, I opted to stitch the pieces without the flags upside down.  Oh dear… the welsh harps are best seen from South Africa, Australia and New Zealand and I’m hoping that it isn’t a hanging offence to include a crown wrong way up, too.  Still, the flags are good and the initials WC spot on, centre stage.

I now have a couple of fat quarter sized pieces and a few other bits left and am wondering what I might do with them.  Any ideas?

Hybrid

Not long ago, if I’d heard the word “hybrid” I’d have been thinking of roses.  In craft circles now, the term’s been adopted to describe the process of using both digital and more traditional media to create an effect and I’ve been having fun following along with Jessica Sprague’s Mouse Paper Scissors class.

I’ve tried making digital books before, eventually reaching the conclusion that though it’s fun to play around with Photoshop and a few digital photos, I actually enjoy the process of cutting and sticking too.  Not only that, but printed out sheets of paper, however clever, are just that – flat and rather uninteresting.

But print things out and then cut them, maybe adding a little something else along the way and we’re talking something different.

Mouse Paper Scissors has come to a close this weekend, so I’ve been tying up a few loose ends, downloading the last pdfs and finishing the final project – a mirror frame.  Throughout the course, there’s been a succession of prompts for “Observations” and these scribblings were to be transcribed and printed out on to some background sheets provided as part of the class.  I wouldn’t say that my scirbblings are particularly earth shattering and it wasn’t easy to write them most of the time, but write I did and sure enough, yesterday afternoon I spend time cutting and pasting into Photoshop, ready for today’s sticking session.

I have to admit that I’m quite pleased with the result.  Not only was it fun to do, the demonstration videos and the Photoshop walkthroughs were interesting and remarkably well produced, making the whole process pretty straightforward.  The mirror frame was a clever way of utilising many of the techniques taught as part of the class including putting shipping labels through the printer – clever!

My favourite observation?

Something to remember.

At the show

One of the benefits of volunteering for a day on the Denman College stand is that I get to see the show like this

Unsurprisingly, it’s much easier to see the beauties on show when it’s empty!

This year, our stand had a great view of the catwalk and I was pleased to see a return to traditional skills and some excellent tailoring on display.  Yes, it’s fun to watch youngsters being creative and having been taught needlework by a teacher of the “old school”, I would hesitate to advocate that old fashioned,  rigorous and stifling regime.  But being firmly of the opinion that we have to learn the technical skills before we can go too far off piste, the sight of beautifully tailored jackets and trousers being celebrated lifted my spirits.

I found the display of old undies interesting – especially the liberty bodice!  Thankfully, I never had to wear one but remember clearly the little girl called Lynn in my class, who endured a fair bit of teasing because she did.

It was fun to chat to interesting people and to meet a couple of fellow bloggers.  MandyCharlie  and Noelle were early birds and so there was time to talk knitting, blogging, quilting and the WI!  So, two more blogs to add to my RSS feed…

As usual, I had to visit The Eternal Maker for a little blast of Japanese goodness at similar prices to buying there.  As you can tell, the Russian Doll theme continues.

Fabrics Galore is another favourite and I enjoyed finding some new, fresh fabrics for my bread bags.  Whilst there, I spotted this

which may or may not turn into some Royal Wedding bunting.  Pity the initials are “WC” don’t you think?

Other finds were some metallic Brusho spray and a new Clover product. Then, just when I was giving up on the overcrowded unpleasantness of the Hobbycraft section, I spotted a bit of a Holy Grail

Interfacing which will make it possible to cut fabric using my CraftRobo (now called a Silhouette on this side of the Atlantic, too).  I snapped up those two packets and a few spare blades to give it a try.  Watch this space.

Finally, following on from my recent posts about weird geographical juxtapositions, here’s one last one from the show for you.

Returning to the map thing

I decided that, rather than scour the internet for printable maps of the areas I want to include in my holiday journal, which seemed to lead to all kinds of inadvisable and extremely dubious sites, I’d just go and buy a cheap atlas to cut up.

But do you think I can bring myself to cut it up?

So, whilst scanning and printing out the maps in question (which undoubtedly is going to cost me more in printing inks than the atlas itself), I came across this curious juxtaposition of pages.

I know, Cyprus looks so comfortable there in the Bay of Bengal, doesn’t it?

This could give a child a seriously distorted view of the world, don’t you think?