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Fc asked a lot of questions so here are the answers, I congratulate you Fc the cats I have had the pleasure of the company of never learnt to sew, all they did was practise acrobatic tricks with my fabric when I was working on it then sleep off the action on the piles of fabric I tend to have about me,

......how do you get the lino to imprint so well onto fabric?

Fabric is more absorbent than paper so takes easily but the hard part is keeping it there as it can wash out, the other difference is you cannot use some printing inks because of the oil content it will rot the fabric in time, hence canvas needs a ground before oil painting or it would disintegrate,

What sort of paint did you use?

Water soluble oil based ink as in the collographs, acrylic paint, textile paint (not silk paint they are too thin),

Is it all machine embroidery?

Yes, mostly, on work I am creating to sell it keeps the price down but I do love hand work and so use it on larger pieces and personal work for family and friends,

Did you embroider before quilting?

I work them together a sort of embroidered quilting style, I started as an embroiderer and came to quilting in recent years, I love the extra dimension it gives work,

Fc thank you I think I might put this as a FAQ page on my website,

time for the next journal quilt, May last year, I was still following my ‘woman’ theme, after the gilded cage of April I had started to think of the female interpretation of the see, hear, speak no evil only I was not thinking of evil but how women are quite often witnesses but have/had no voice,

Woman 5, original image width cropped so three images fit the journal width, inkjet printed, machine quilted, the border is handcrafted batik fabric,

The Woman’s hour serial now is , it expresses the social confinement of women in the mid twentieth century, I remember well how women not only took their husband’s last name but his first name too the prefix of Mrs being the only indication that they were female and not the man, they were expected to give up work and they were considered mad if they wanted a ‘career’ this still applies in the world to many women and many more suffer greater imprisonment, in my life I have had more freedom than my mother and my daughter has had more freedom than me but when the most discriminated against person in the workforce is a mother of young children equal freedom between men and women is still a long way off.

I am posting a link to another textile artists blog because the photos she has posted really had an impact on me, we read ‘numbers’ in papers on blogs, we hear ‘numbers’ on the radio and tv (well I don’t have tv but many do), can we visualise the numbers??? I can’t and I suspect many people cannot, the students at Reed Collage Portland Oregon have brought some numbers to life, the lawn at their college has become a sea of white with some red,





Remember as you look that each white flag represents six, yes 6 dead Iraqi people and each red flag one dead American, no British dead or other countries represented so this is not the full total of deaths and the killing continues………

well our electric went out Saturday night and was still out Sunday morning….oh no, I usually catch up on my e mail and blog reading Sunday mornings… I had to find something else and spent time reading some textile magazines a friend has lent me,

that was all I had to deal with but I kept thinking of the many people who are relying on the electric for their heating and cooking, this winter I had been feeling a bit fed up with so many solid fuel fires, fed up with the dust but today I welcomed the warmth they gave me, perhaps I’ll rethink the work and dust,

I was going to post some nice photos last week but the week kinda run ahead of me and I didn’t catch up till now, so here’s a photo of some of my Harris tweed babies, all off experiencing life without me, the yellow one is still in Britain, the purple one is in Australia, the orange one is in Montreal and the blue one is in Pennsylvania, I loved them and a part of me didn’t want to part with them but the house is full enough,


Hope you’ll had a good Sunday,

I am sad to hear of the death of Sally Clark, I never understood why she was accused of the death of two of her children and I was shocked when she was found guilty because a Roy Meadows ".
This was not what I and the parents I had worked for were told by paediatricians, mid-wives, general practitioners, health visitors and other healthcare professionals working with babies and young children, they to a whole had said the exact opposite, they had warned parents that if there had been a cot death in the family then there was a much greater risk of another cot death.
I worked as a maternity nanny from 1988 to 1997 and during this time there was lots and lots of advice and changing opinions about cot death but one opinion never changed even when I worked in different countries and that was that if there had been a cot death in your family then your baby had a great possibility of dying from cot death.
I have never trusted our legal system, a legal system that imprisons grieving mothers while allowing paedophiles to roam free is a very sick legal system.

the programme, Monday evening ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ radio 4, this week was about Lewis, the proposed wind factory and the RSPB, if you want to hear it, it is available on line until next Monday via the listen again link,

*21:00

19 March 2007
A controversial wind farm on the Outer Hebridean island of Lewis has split the local community, despite winning the approval of the Council for the Western Isles. Conservation groups including the RSPB are concerned that the 181 proposed turbines and their associated infrastructure will harm populations of rare breeding birds and damage peatland habitats. But with renewable energy at a premium and a welcome injection of jobs for the island, the scheme is an attractive economic proposition. Brett Westwood explores the difficult decisions to be made in shaping the future of Lewis's landscape and prosperity.*
from the beeb web pages,

I know this is a nature programme so that perhaps explains why it tended to concentrate on the effect of the wind factory on the birds, no where did I hear the ‘T’ word, Tourism, they spoke of jobs created but again no mention of jobs lost in the tourist industry, if Lewis wants to keep it’s women then it needs to keep it’s tourist industry because tourism employs a large female workforce, the jobs created were only during the building stage, there was mention of the surveys done, I’d like to know who does give their opinion in these surveys because I have never met one person who has been asked their opinion, the migrating Whooper Swans were mentioned, someone claims to have looked for them and said they couldn’t find many so do not see how it can be a problem, well they obviously didn’t look at the loch between Galson and Dell because they were there again as I have seen them every year since I moved to Ness, there was no mention of the carbon released when they dig up the peat beds,

they mentioned that land is owned by the community but they did not say that the Galson estate has only just come into the ownership of the local community, a community that does not want the wind factory but the go ahead was given by the previous private owners of the Galson estate,

I used to be pro wind energy but since I learnt that the main reason for wind factories is to sell green units to companies that do not intend to clean up their act, I am against them,

as for all those greenies who protested loudly about Mrs Tiggywinkles being killed, I haven’t heard one single word of protest at the disruption of wildlife habitat and deaths of hundreds of birds and small creatures, but I expect that’s because they are the very people this electric is going to on the mainland,

can you tell I was not impressed at the way the programme portrayed Lewis,

I can't quiet believe it but the radio has just played Joni Mitchell's 'they paved paradise' and the line I think is most appropriate is
'you don't know what you have till it's gone'

or woolly windows as my friend calls them, the inspiration for this design came from a window I saw in a house in St. John’s Wood, London where I worked, it was June, they employed a gardener and there was a beautiful display of colourful flowers and shrubs, in the main room (living room, lounge, sitting room, etc.) there is an opaque leaded window, so imagine seeing the colourful garden through the opaque leaded window, I had to jiggle the design a bit to fit the Harris tweed idea but I liked the way it turned out and I am happy other people do too.


Summer window was the first one I made and the only one in this design I still have, the quartet I showed in are from left to right, Autumn Window, Spring window, Heather window (this one is purple but the photo has come out blue) and Aqua window, then I had a request for a blue one slightly smaller so I made Ocean window.


a detail of Ocean window so you can better see the Harris tweed.

after the last post I thought I would write about the inspiration and how it develops into a full blow work of Art, as I said the inspiration for the Windows was a leaded window, when I went to the source photo and sketch there was not as much colour as ‘I remember’ this made me realise how much other sources were influencing my vision, so this post is mainly photos of my sources of inspiration,
the original window and my original sketch,

some flower inspiration,

some tree inspiration,


and ofcourse Harris tweed

sketch book notes for the Harris tweed Windows,

because lots of people who liked the larger wall hangings could not buy one due to finances/space etc. I made some small ones,

today (Saturday) was the meeting of the art group, Debbie Cullis gave us a demonstration in pastel painting animals from photos, she gave a good demo but as it took a while legs were aching from standing for so long and most of us just wanted to start our own painting, I had been apprehensive as although I enjoy working in pastels I have never worked from a photo before, nor have I done animals before (well except for a couple of cat drawings),
I had forgotten to bring a photo but Debbie was used to people like me and had brought photos for us to use, I chose one of a group of sheep with long curly horns and decided to centre on the head and horns of the sheep, I like strong shapes and contrasting textures, the soft wool and hard horns, I really enjoyed working the sheep which surprised me as I had not expected too and enjoyed the afternoon, it is always nice when that happens,


Sitting on the bus home thinking of the pastel sheep and seeing sheep on the moors I think I would like to take this further, I think a sheep series might take shape, the cogs are turning.