I just stumbled on this blog – TLLT – “blogs and photos as fable, fairytale, fiction and fact”.
Delightful, inspiring visual connections juxtapose photos from Flickr in tales that are sometimes astonishing and sometimes funny and always beautiful.
sketchbooks
TRACEY have an ongoing call for
“the submission of ‘notebooks/sketchbooks’, crossing the boundaries of science, art, design, technology, education. The intention is to demonstrate drawing as a necessary tool in the thinking process – all sorts of thinking.”
The submitted sketchbooks are displayed online.
They also have a fascinating collection of ‘found drawings‘ – “images arising by accident rather than from any conscious process”.
back from Islay
Just returned from a wonderful week on the Hebridean island of Islay. We stayed in a delightful cottage at Kintra Farm, looking west over the sea – beautiful sunsets.
Islay is home to many beaches, from sand that stretches as far as the eye can see, to rugged coves where seals haul out onto the rocks, and pebbly strands with glass clear water. Home to deer, wild goats, rare pigs, alpaca, many colours of sheep and cows, rabbits galore and all sorts of sea and land birds, plus eight whisky distilleries – we visited the newest at Kilchoman, but came home with Bruichladdich and Bunnahabhain – and a brewery.
On the textile trail, we visited the Islay Quilters, Elizabeth Sykes Batiks, and Tormisdale Croft Crafts, which doesn’t yet have a web site, but is full of luscious yarns and handdyed silks.
Highlights of the week were watching the seals sleep, swim and fight at Portnahaven, and encountering a beach sculpture of a woman gazing out to sea at Machir Bay. She fascinated me, I’m thinking about garments with nets and ropes and the colours of the rocks further along the bay.
designboard done
I got my designboard together and emailed it to Linda. I scanned in the cuttings, sketches and paintings and added some text, so the board as a whole only exists digitally. I’m putting all the bits and pieces in a sketchbook so I can refer to them easily.
the inspirational images are cuttings from Country Living
The hanging’s going to be in three sections. I’m thinking of the bottom layer in lightweight felt, maybe merino with some silk fibres for lustre, with two dyed sheer silk layers laid over it, so that I can cut back through one and both layers of silk and/or trap some shapes between the silk layers. Appliquéd ‘flowers’ on the surface could be silk organza/machine stitched slips/silk paper shapes. I want to keep everything quite light. Time to experiment and sample and see how it might work.
conditions for creativity
I love these words quoted at the beginning of Creative Quilts, Inspiration, Texture and Stitch by Sandra Meech
Conditions for creativity are: to be puzzled, to concentrate, to accept conflict and tension, to be born everyday, to feel a sense of self
Erich Fromm