Big blog before a bit of a break

So, Sarah went off this morning to spend the day with a friend, and the other two decided they'd like to play on the computers and generally muck about, so I decided to leave them to it for the morning anyway, and do some work myself. I went back to what I was doing yesterday, which was the brown postcards, ATCs and journal quilt. As you can see, I finished them all. One of the ATCs (the one with the diamonds) is for a swap on the Textile Challenges group - it was a shape lottery, you signed up then got a random shape you had to include in an ATC - mine was diamond, as you have no doubt guessed. The other two will be available to swap in a month or so, when I have a few more spares - I'll offer up a general swap when I get enough...


And the journal quilt follows a similar theme - the colour is probably closest to true on the JQ. The brown background is linen, and is from a pair of much loved trousers that have simply worn so much they aren't really, well, wearable any more. So rather than throw them out, I harvested them for backgrounds. Then added some strips of brown velvet from a square I received in a treasure hunt, some brown silk I bought in San Diego about 12 years ago, some scrim, brown mulberry bark, and brown yarn which I was given by my friend Barbara (who doesn't blog) who inherited it from an artist friend on her death and passed it along to me (with a number of other treasures) to use in my work. Sheila had done a lot of interesting multi-media work with fabric, lace, yarn, and so on, so you can imagine there were lots of lovely goodies I took away with me. And some clay faces and words. I think it's interesting - though I didn't notice until just now - that on the postcards, the brown velvet wanted to be at the top, but on the JQ, it wanted to be at the bottom. Whatever.





I also worked on the next step of the little mystery quilt I am doing (on Nancy Rose's site), then decided it was time to feed the kids some lunch and take them outside before they destroyed each other or the house (as there were only two of them around - and not the two girls - it took much longer for them to get to the point of being at each other's throats...) so we went off for a little (large) walk in Richmond Park, followed by tea and ice cream, respectively. I've posted a photo of some very cool tree - well, not really bark, as it's from the inside of a fallen and rotting tree - but tree bits. If you want to see more of our Richmond Park excursion, there are lots of photos in my flickr album.






And finally, just a note to say I will be away at my MIL's house (no internet) for a long weekend, from tomorrow morning some time, so don't be surprised if I don't blog until Sunday evening or so. I'll do the goals for next week then, also, rather than now. It's a good thing I caught up with all the blogs I read last night, as by the time I get back, there will be hundreds of posts again...