Sew Busy and WOYWW

I completely missed Wednesday last week!  Somehow the days are melding into each other and I'm losing track of doing all the regular things like WOYWW and putting the bins out!

I do have a good excuse as I've been busy sewing laundry bags for front line NHS staff - they will hopefully help reduce the risk of contamination by allowing scrubs to go straight into the washing machine while in the bag, therefore reducing the amount of handling needed.

My dining room table is now my desk and someone kindly donated a huge pile of old cotton fabric that can withstand a 60° wash - here are the first dozen bags I made.

I am linking up with Julia over at WOYWW this week -

I hope you are all staying safe and well, and managing to be busy and creative!

Decay and Repair Embroidery

This week for WOYWW I have done another 4 index cards for the ICAD challenge.  As part of my decay and repair theme I was pleased to find a couple of old button cards which I used as backgrounds - one still had the white circular marks on it where the buttons had been (top right).  

Also this week, with it being too hot to do much I got stuck into my new, updated copy of The Subversive Stitch - Embroidery and the Making of the Feminine' by Rozsika Parker.    It's a fascinating book for anyone who loves embroidery and needle craft, or has an interest in women's history or feminism - it was an incredibly useful book when I was studying for my degree in Textile Art and I was so pleased to find it had been republished and brought bang up to date.

COLLAGE OBSESSION - A GREY THEME

This week Collage Obsession tempted me with the theme of 'grey'.  It's a colour I love but don't work with that often.

I decided to put together two grey photo collages, using photos from my archives - one based on sewing and the other based on the beach.   

Why not nip over and visit other grey-themed work at Collage Obsession.

SUMMER OF COLOUR - WEEK 6

It's sadly the last week of Kristin's Summer of Color ice cream challenge and this weeks flavour is Watermelon Ice - in other words bright red with dark brown (for the choc chips!).

I've really enjoyed this colour palette and ended up doing two sketchbook pages continuing my pollen theme.

 I transferred the tree images using Golden Gel and then heated it around the trees to create tiny little white bubbles to represent a pollen 'haze'.  The band above the trees is made of tiny little beads.

I wanted to say a big thank you to Kristin for hosting the Summer of Color Challenge and also to everyone who has so kindly stopped by and left such lovely and positive comments - every single one has been so appreciated.

Still on the this weeks colour theme I think Lobelia Cardinalis 'Queen Victoria' has to be one of my all time favourite plants - these photos are from my garden last summer as it is late flowering and not in bloom yet - I wish it went from Spring through to Autumn!  I am linking these palettes to Rosie's Color Me Weekly.

  

I have been loving these colours and really enjoyed putting together some photo mosaics for Mosaic Monday over at Little Red House.   

SUMMER OF COLOUR - WEEK 4

This weeks ice cream challenge over at Kristin's Summer of Colour was Strawberry Lemonade Punch ice cream - in other words working with the colours pink and yellow.

 I wanted to continue working with my ongoing pollen theme but the colours just kept taking me to the beach!  I decided to incorporate both the pollen and the beach themes and I used images of shells, silver wire and beads, along with a pink cutout tree that I hope looks like coral now that I've cut the trunk off!

It's difficult to see the wires - they just look like pencil lines - so here's a close up of the wire and beads.

This is pretty much all the pink stuff I own!

But I do have some lovely pink and yellow Rockroses and St John's Wort in the garden at the moment - I have added them to some old photos to make a Strawberry Lemonade Punch photo mosaic to link with Little Red House!

While still in the pink/yellow frame of mind I found these beautiful caterpillars on some Verbascum plants at my local garden centre.  We moved the plants they were on to the back of the display so the staff would hopefully not find them and destroy them!  These caterpillars turn into Mullein moths and boy, can they eat Verbascum at a rate of knots!

I am linking these colour palettes to Colour Me Weekly over at Rosie's Leavesnbloom. 

 And finally, after playing around in photoshop with this photograph I took of a fern against a slab of slate, I rather liked the yellow and pink effect I ended up with.  Quite appropriate for the challenge, but not very realistic!