Friday 18 January 2013

fire 2

This was my entry into the Fire competition at the Hodgson Loom Gallery. I won the prize in the 2D mixed media category. The embroidery resulted from a photograph I took early one morning a few years ago, of a close up of one of the trees in our field. This was bonded upside down onto a bamboo cleaning cloth ( Yes, the ones you are supposed to use for dusting!). Bamboo fabric has the feel and lustre of silk. The white paper on the back of the printout was then rubbed away mostly with a sponge. More of it than I intended was removed so I then worked inktense pencils and sepia pen into certain areas. The whole was then stitched using stranded cotton in a Kantha stitch.
The U3A herb group met on Wednesday. Three of our members did short presentations. Jenny did one on herbs used by North American Indians and gave us some beautiful print outs. Sandi told us the fascinating history behind recently discovered illuminated manuscripts in which cats are depicted wearing medieval clothing and there are borders of herbs and flowers surrounding them. At a later date we are going to try to work out which plants are illustrated. Lesley talked about the myths behind some of the herbs used by ancient Greeks and Romans. I gave a short talk about knot gardens which led to discussion about box blight and alternative herbs that we could use as edging plants.
We also exchanged information about seed catalogues and discussed possible venues for visits in the spring and summer.

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