Memories of Judy

Quite a few years ago, at a Carol Wilkes workshop, I picked up one of the "petals" I was making and pinned it to my top as a brooch. My friend Judy, immediately took one of hers and did the same thing. It led to a bit of a competition, with each of us making textile brooches. Judy made more and always seemed to me to make much better ones. She went on making lots, and seemed to have a new one every time I saw her. Which was often. She was a good friend.

On Friday morning I got the news that she had died, six weeks after a heart operation that went very wrong.

On Friday afternoon, I was moping around the house, not able to settle to anything, when I found the original "brooch". I played with it some more, added some stitching, trimmed some threads, and now quite like it.

So, here it is. I'll wear it to her funeral this week, still wondering who I'm going to "play with" now she's gone. No-one else I know plays with fabric and thread in quite the way she did. I've lost a kindred spirit, and I'm very sad.

My "sandpit"

If you like to play with colour and stitch, this is a fun way to do it. Pieces of fabric, roughly square or rectangular in shape are laid down over a very fine cotton backing (you're going to embroider through a few layers, so it needs to be thin!). Over that, I have laid a few pieces of chiffon, etc - anything that I can see through to the fabric underneath, but which changes the colour slightly. Use a running stitch in a few places to hold everything down, then start embroidering. Experiment with the stitches, and the colours. Play!

I did a workshop with Effie Mitrofanis a few years ago and she has a quilt made from pieces like this that she calls her "sandpit" (sandbox to those of you who don't understand the Australian term) - because she can go and play in it whenever she wants. This is the start of mine.

Decorating with stitches

This is the Angel decoration that I've been working on. The patterns were in Inspirations magazine a quite a few years ago, and I've made one for myself and given a number away as gifts over the years. This is another one for me and will be hanging on my Christmas tree this year. Just a few more stitches, then I'll cut it out and sew around the edge (adding a hanging thread as I do that) and stuff it with a small amount of cushion stuffing.



And a brooch that I've made for myself. The background is silk paper, and the metal is a brass shim which I heated in the flame of the gas stove, to get some blues into it. I then machine stitched it, and painted bits of it with a blue-green nail polish andf a purply one, and added beads.

Christmas is coming...

...and so are some photos for this blog!

I have a new digital SLR camera. It was a Mother's Day gift to both of us from my husband. He says that, on the grounds that he had something to do with me becoming a mother, it's only fair that he gets to share the gift. Hmmm.

Anyway, it's a wonderful Canon EOS (the same as the one I tried out). He wanted to make sure I was happy with the "feel" of it before he committed to buying one. I find that so many cameras are too big and clunky for my hands. They're obviously made with a man's hands in mind. I've always liked Pentax, for the reason that they feel right in my hands, but so does this Canon. The best part is that the lenses from Dad's camera fit it, and Dad has given me those. His sight problems (Macular Degeneration) mean that he can't see to take photos anymore.

The problem is, though, that I now have to learn how to use it, and the last couple of weeks have been rather busy. Our kitchen has been renovated in that time, and now looks fabulous, but the dust and dislocation has been rather a lot to contend with.

Last Saturday, I escaped the confusion and went to an embroidery group meeting. Needing something to take to work on, I unearthed a Christmas Angel decoration which I started embroidering a couple of years ago. It's embroidered with metallic threads on white silk, and will be a challenge to photograph well. So, the challenge for this weekend is to get a photo of it onto the blog. That's after I finish my study assignment, which needs to be in by Monday. But at least I'm getting ready for Christmas early!

A different view

I've been increasingly frustrated with the camera that I have been using. It's a small, autofocus one - a "point and shoot". The photos just never seem very sharp, and close-ups are a problem - I can never get the details that I want.

This morning, I had the loan of a digital SLR camera. These are the results I got in a few minutes in the garden at just one tree. Wow! I need one of these! Just look...

This is the blossom on the tree -
I love the colours in the bark -
And the morning sun was caught in the spider web -
Stamens from the blossom had been caught in the spider web, too -

Autumn Colours

Eevry year at around this time, we try to visit Orange, a town in the Central Tablelands of NSW. It has a climate that is almost European, so the gardens of Orange feature plants that suit that climate. Cook Park is a beautiful public park near the centre of town that was planned and planted over 100 years ago. When we lived in Orange, over 30 years ago, my Sunday mornings were spent reading the newspaper in the park, while my husband spent some "quality time" with our son, playing on the swings and visiting the duck pond. Maybe that's why this park always has such a calming effect on me...but I think it also has something to do with the beautiful trees...



There's also a lovely old conservatory, where they grow prizewinning begonias.


Apple and cherry orchards surround Orange (it was named after the Prince of Orange, not the fruit!) and in recent years, vineyards have been replacing some of the orchards. There's some rather delicious wines coming from Orange now. We had lunch at one of the wineries, looking out over the vines and the mountains, and enjoying a glass of Zinfandel, which is a very enticing red. It went very well with our venison pie. A few bottles of it found their way into the car to come home with us, along with a bottle of a locally made cherry liqueur that we couldn't resist.

Campbell's Corner is an area planted for autumn colour and always worth a visit at this time of the year, too -





I needed a photo of the lichen growing on the road, as well. I'm sure there's inspiration for an embroidery there -

Book Work

I haven't been completely idle over the last few months, although I haven't been keeping my blog up to date. These books are beautifully handmade by a clever graphic artist I found, occasional pages are made of gorgeous batik paper - a different colour in each book. With a textile cover made to match, they seem to make a hit every time. One of these was a birthday gift. The others went in "plain brown paper bags" to the two people who agreed to be my referees in the search for another job. They deserved a special thankyou!

I try to relate the cover to the colour of the batik pages inside. The batik pages in this one are purple. It was a birthday gift for Lee.

Another flowery one. I just love the way that this knitting yarn looks like fantasy flowers. The batik pages in this book are a citrus yellow, and the backgound fabric was handdyed by Lisa -



Sandra intends to keep this one handy for writing down those very special quotes she finds while reading or studying. The batik pages in this book are a purply blue. Sandra, my previous work supervisor, gave me a lovely dragonfly pendant as a farewell gift, so I just had to give her dragonflies in return -