Day One

All weekends at West Dean start on a Friday evening, with a meal, a chance to meet fellow students and a bit of preparation for the following morning's practical session.
The emphasis over the whole of the introductory weekend was very definitely on drawing.  Not my strong point, but I had fun trying to improve!  Saturday morning found us out in the grounds searching for bits of shrubbery to use as tools for drawing trees.  We'd been issued with black ink and a what I considered to be an unnecessarily large sheet of paper.

First choose your tree.

Some people drew a whole tree, or even a group of trees.  Others went for a more detailed approach, a particular branch or an interesting part of the trunk.  I decided on a couple of branches of a yew tree that were hanging over a laurel bush.  The branches were making attractive shapes and I found that the pointed end of a laurel leaf makes a surprisingly good 'nib' for drawing spikey yew leaves in black ink.

After lunch we were sent into one of the courtyards of the college to draw shadows.  This time we were armed with charcoal and another oversized sheet of paper.

The idea was to lay the paper on the ground and draw round the shadows that fell on the paper.  Then move to another area with different shadows and add them to our paper.  Then move again, so that we built up layers of shadows, some faint, some dark, some lacy, some bold and straight, all being cast over each other.  The finished drawing was full of interesting negative shapes and great fun to do.  Although my poor old knees were wishing I hadn't crawled quite so far under that middle bush! 

Fitted around these two major projects were smaller ones involving splashing lots of paint about, in response to some carefully structured words, working as a group to make a huge paper sculpture and using mixed media materials to give our individual interpretations of what it means to live a creative life.

It's Finished

In the end it turned out more Echinacea than Helenium and the satin stitch gave way to straight stitch, but it was always going to be 'interpretation' rather than 'representation' and I rather like it!
The background colouring is done with fabric paints, the flowers are sketched in with a fine-nibbed fabric pen and the stranded threads are from a selection of autumn colours that I found in my stash.
You can tell I'm pleased with it because I've mounted it tidily in my samples book. Pieces I'm not happy with tend to end up stuck in a drawer somewhere.

Work on Wednesday

Course materials for my next OU module arrived today, earlier than I was expecting!  Gardening and stitching have been abandoned while I work through the list of what's been sent and what I have yet to buy.  EA300, Children's Literature, is my first Level 3 module.  As well as the course-books there are a dozen set books, most of which I've read, either in my youth or to my son when he was young.  The few that I didn't know I bought early on to give me time to read them before the module began and I have managed to do that, so I feel fairly well prepared.
Of course, when I enrolled on this module I didn't know that I was going to be given a place on the Visual Arts Diploma, but I've checked the OU assignment dates and I'm hopeful that the two courses will dove-tail fairly well, without too many clashes.  But maybe that's just my natural optimism!

Sunbonnet Sue

A little bit of applique fun!

As some of you already know, on Monday I was given a place on a Foundation Diploma, which if all goes well, could be the gateway to a Visual Arts Degree in Textiles.  The Diploma could take as much as two years and the degree a further year on top of that so it's something I've had to consider very carefully.
The Diploma is essentially a part time course, so should fit fairly easily around my Open University studies, although there are bound to be clashes along the way when assignments are due.
There will be those who say I should sit back and enjoy my retirement - grow old gracefully, but the chance has come my way and I think I'd be wrong to waste it, although at the end of a long day at college I may feel differently!

Applique

 I've been playing with some ideas for applique flowers.  The sample above uses some odd scraps from a piece of fabric that I dyed a long time ago.  I found it again recently in a basket of abandoned patchwork bits.  The colours have faded nicely over time and I like them a lot better now. 
These samples will tie in with the field samples I posted in May.  Flowers were the other aspect of our local National Park area that I wanted to explore, so this will be the second half of that project.  A lot of chalk downland flowers are blue, just like its butterflies, so my old piece of fabric is a good starting point.

This sample has a bit more 'bling' about it.  Both fabrics are brightly coloured and shiny, but the effect is toned down a lot by adding a layer of organza to give what I believe is called shadow applique.
Both samples were made using good old bondaweb, I'm afraid my patience no longer extends to doing it the traditional way.

In other news, Open University Creative Writing results are now out.  I'm very pleased with my grade especially considering that I chose not to submit anything for one of the assignments.  My next module, Children's Literature, has a very long reading list so I've started to add the set books to my Kindle so that I can skip through the ones I don't yet know before the course starts in September.

Friday's Flower

My garden is packed with inspiration at the moment.  Firstly it's buzzing with insect life, loving the settled warm weather.  I can't remember a better year for butterflies.  We started early in the year with cheerful yellow Brimstones, always a good sign and the number of species has just kept growing.  Red Admiral and Peacock are easy to spot, but I'm even beginning to be able to differentiate between the various 'brown' ones like Gatekeeper and Wall.
Secondly there's an abundance of flowers, some newly opened, some already turning to seed.  We did a lot of replanting last autumn and the investment has really paid off.  Time now to use some of this floral inspiration in my stitching.  I'm going to start with this helenium.  For some unaccountable reason I'm drawn to use satin stitch.  I hate satin stitch.  I have a very bad record with satin stitch.  Nevertheless, I'm tempted.  This could end in tears!

Butterflies

Cross stitch is something I rarely do these days, but I couldn't resist these.  I found the patterns in a very old magazine.  As anyone who stitches will know, no matter how many threads you have in your stash you never have quite the right shades for a new project, so I've improvised.  As you can see, I've turned them into something useful with plastic 'coaster kits', they'll look good on the garden table.