Things that go bump in the night

My man is away for the weekend,so it is Saturday night, glass of wine and settling in font of the TV when Barnes starts barking like mad in front of the patio windows. I go to investigate, thinking there might be an intruder in the back garden, who has come from the lane, which runs parallel to the house. Off we go to investigate ( the dog cowering behind me) and all we find is an empty can of cider. Well done Barnes. At least he heard something and gave me a good warning.
This morning I discovered what he had really heard. The garden wall had collapsed. It had been leaning for a while and I had been concerned that it wold fall on the Grandchildren. Grandad constantly reassured me that it would not fall! The wind must have pushed next door's tree against it, and caused it to collapse. Thank goodness it went when it did, when no-one was around to get hurt. I can now design my garden around the ruin that is left. This is a great project for the spring. The garden bed in front of the wall was in need of redesigning as nothing will grow beneath the tree which over-hangs from next door. So no plants were lost. This patch of land should get full sun but the tree prevents this. It is a dreaded Leylandii!
Need I say more. Although the bed is south facing nothing will grow beneath these poisonous leaves so I now must come to terms with what I am going to do with this plot of land. Has anyone any ideas? It is approx. 12 foot long and 5 foot wide buried beneath bricks and rubble.

Windy golf and wet under foot.

The rain has let up at last.

I've managed to get out and play some golf on a wet, and windy course.

At Ainsdale the kiter's were out today. Barney is hiding in the middle of the picture. He has been busy giving the rabbits a bad time this week, although they are always more canny than he is.

My friend has been clearing an industrial unit after a tenant 'did a bunk' and left her with a large number of unmade cushions. The inners are made from good quality white cotton which will dye beautifully.

Textile 21 are thinking of making an outdoors textile installation for their next exhibition at Norton Priory, Cheshire in May. Our initial ideas are to use squares of fabric, which we will dye after applying a design using wax as a resist. I think these cushion inners will be ideal to use for this. Here they are drying in the sunshine after washing to remove the factory dressing.

I have been busy designing two pieces for the exhibition, using the painted fabric I posted last week. I'm not too excited about this. Hopefully it will come to life with the stitching.

Rain and more Rain

Sorry to sound more gloomy but that is the warm ,wet, winter weather for you. Will it ever get light again? Thank you all for the welcoming comments. I wonder if I will be able to keep this up when the sun starts to shine!

Thanks to Maggie for the instuctions on the bond-a-web prints. I'll give it a try with my roses pics tomorrow and post the results, if they turn out ok.

The wall-hanging is made from painted fabrics applied by free-machine stitch, with some tiny beads, used as the centre for one flower. You can see other examples of my work on the 'Textile 21' site, www.textile21.co.uk. Maria (Maria's Muse Blogsite) has also set up a Textile 21 blogsite, where examples of my work and the work of others in the group can be seen.

Today was my man's birthday. I was going to take him for a round of Golf on my course, Formby Ladies Golf Club, but it was far too wet, so I baked him a nice cake instead.

Too wet to take Barnes on the beach today, so here is another picture to remind us of the sunny days.

Longing to get out in the garden or on the golf course or the fells. Let up rain please!

Gloomy Days

After a busy day yesterday, off we went to enjoy some fresh air and the last of the sun (in fact the only sight of the sun for many days)

I took this photo off Formby Point looking towards Liverpool, at 3.30pm. You can just see a large ship entering thhe Mersey and the Merseybay wind farm.

Today is too gloomy to inspire me to do anything. Off to the doctor's at 3pm, so just filling in time before then.

Bring on some bright, sunny days.

Busy, busy, busy.

This is the wall hanging I started at Prisicilla Jones' workshop in December. Today I finally finished it. I could not fit it into one picture, so here is the top, middle and bottom.

This workshop was such an inspiration that I decided to use a similar technique for some of my pieces which will be included in the Textile 21 'Outside In' exhibition. Here is a page from my sketch book with my initial ideas.

I decided to use the faded roses I had in a vase left after the christmas celebrations, (far too nice to throw away) I also wanted to use a window view ('Outside In' through the window) so I decided to divide my canvas into 9 squares. I also found some great canvases at Au Natural 30x30cm squares at four for 4pounds, a great bargain, at a pound each!

I have an embelisher and this was a previous piece of some echinaechers.(sic)

This was the result of a 'Workshop on the Web' article. See Mag Stitch., a great inspirational blogsite

I decided to try a piece using the same design idea but using a different technique. So I spent this morning making prefelt, embellishing and felting the piece.

Consequently, there is a lot of drying going on in my kitchen at the moment as I dry the fabrics I painted for the applique/fabric collage piece plus the felted piece is very wet.

Here are the results of my hard work today.

Fabrics drying after being painted with white emulsion and orange and green acrylic paint.

This is the background for my felt piece. Neutral merino tops pre-felted, embelished with dyed silk tops from Oliver Twists and then felted until the fabric had shrunk to fit the canvases I have bought.

I should have played golf this morning but it was so wet and windy that we decided to give it a miss. Instead I worked on the wall- hanging I started at a Priscilla Jones Workshop I went to, in December, at The Platform Gallery in Clitheroe. I attached the flowers and did most of the stitching. I still have a few areas to finish but it is almost done. I'll show the pictures on my next post. I'll take it to the meeting of Textile 21 on Saturday and see if the rest of the girls feel it is good enough to enter into our next exhibition at Norton Proiry, in May.
I had a break to take the dog a walk inbetween showers. The lighting on the beach was exciting so took a few snaps. Barney is in the background chasing the seagulls.